Andrés Segovia
Who is Andrés Segovia?
Andrés Segovia Torres was born on 21 February 1893 in Linares (Jaén), the son of a carpenter, and was raised by well-off relatives. His family looked unfavorably on his devotion to music and would have preferred he study law, so for years he had to practice in secret to avoid being scolded. He began playing the guitar at age four and gave his first public appearance in Granada at fourteen, performing a concert there at sixteen using scores he found in libraries and his own transcriptions of classical works.
Career
He officially debuted in Madrid in 1913, for which he had to rent a better guitar than his own, and achieved his first major international success after a concert in Paris at the age of thirty-one. Although his training was closer to the classical tradition than to flamenco, and he was practically self-taught, his figure proved decisive for the history of the instrument: he turned the guitar, until then considered a popular instrument, into a concert instrument in its own right, and worked alongside luthiers to perfect the modern classical guitar, with better acoustics, higher-quality woods and nylon strings. After his tour of the United States in 1928, composers such as Heitor Villa-Lobos and Manuel M. Ponce wrote works expressly for him, in addition to his recovery and transcription of pieces by Francisco Tárrega.
Style and discography
Segovia practiced around five hours a day throughout his career and devoted much of his life to expanding the instrument’s repertoire through transcriptions and commissions to contemporary composers, thereby laying the foundations of the classical guitar repertoire of the 20th century. His students included guitarists such as John Williams, Alirio Díaz and Christopher Parkening, who spread his teaching around the world.
Legacy
In 1981 King Juan Carlos I named him Marquis of Salobreña in recognition of a life devoted entirely to the instrument, and in his final years he wrote his memoirs, titled “La guitarra y yo” (“The Guitar and I”). He died on 3 June 1987 in Madrid, leaving behind a legacy that turned the Spanish classical guitar into an instrument of international prestige in concert halls around the world.