George Harrison y la guitarra clásica

Antonio Morales, Eva Celada y Elena Cendón, Memorias de Antonio Morales «Junior». Mucho antes de dejarme, Madrid, mr, 2008, pp. 66-67, 106:

"...por esos años [finales de la década de los 50, en Madrid] tuve mi primera guitarra y mi primer profesor...La guitarra era oficialmente mía, regalo de mi tita Marina. Tuvimos profesor Ricky y yo. El problema era que el profesor, D. José María de la Fuente, era de guitarra clásica. Los dos nos desesperábamos mutuamente, yo, por tener que aprender lo que no me gustaba y él, porque, en cuanto se daba la vuelta, yo empezaba a tocar algo más rítmico o moderno.

-¡No toque eso!- me decía enfadadísimo.

Yo ponía cara de «yo no fui» y volvía desganado a entregarme en brazos del arte clásico. Finalmente ganó el profesor y aprendí lo que él quería. No se me daba mal la guitarra clásica, pero me gustaba más cantar acompañándome de ella...

...Ricky se incorporó a las clases de guitarra que desde hacía tiempo ya recibía yo del profesor de la Fuente. Después de hacer lo imposible conmigo por enseñarme guitarra clásica, algo que casi consiguió, su nuevo objetivo era enseñarnos a los dos hermanos a tocar flamenco. Cuando no pudimos más con algunas piezas de Albéniz, dejamos las clases y con todo lo que habíamos aprendido ya podíamos disfrutar tocando las canciones que nos gustaban...


cbaixo
 
Última edición:
MOJO, George Harrison commemorative issue, 27 de septiembre de 2011:

"...MOJO: I'm curious about George's process in the studio. Do you recall any stand-out moments where George brought something in or made a song click?

PAUL: Oh yeah, sure. There were quite a few. I would think immediately of my song And I Love Her which I brought in pretty much as a finished song. But George put on do-do-do-do [sings the signature riff] which is very much a part of the song. Y'know, the opening riff. That, to me, made a stunning difference to the song and whenever I play the song now, I remember the moment George came up with it.* That song would not be the same without it...

...MOJO: George played a classical nylon-string guitar on And I Love Her. I recall George getting into Andrés Segovia for a bit. Does that ring a bell?

PAUL: I think 'for a bit' is the operative phase. We fell in love with the guitar and we didn't discriminate. It could be a Spanish guitar, a classical guitar. It could be a Gretsch, a Fender, a Gibson. We kind of loved them all. It was like a dream, it was like walking through Santa's grotto. There was a great sense of wonder for us. I remember so clearly being at Pete Best's mother's club - the Casbah in West Derby in Liverpool - and George came in and he opened up this long, rectangular box. It turned out to be a guitar case. We wouldn't have guessed there was a guitar in there 'cos till then you hadn't seen these long rectangular cases which are now perfectly normal; we'd seen guitar-shaped cases. And he opened up this long box and in there was... I'm not sure if it was a Fender. I think it might have been a look-alike, a cheaper copy. But man, it looked good. It looked so glorious. Moments like that were very special. We were in love with guitar, of any kind.

George and I used to do this little thing, which is the J.S. Bach thing. I think it's called Fugue or something. [sings Bach's Bourrée in E-Minor] We didn't know it all but we learned the first little bit. We made the end up. What we liked about it was that it was harder than some of the stuff we were playing, it was part of our development, 'cos it was two lines working against each other. You've got the melody [sings] and then you get a sort of [sings] bass line working against it. I tell audiences now that that was what gave me the start of Blackbird. It's not the same notes but I took the style of there being a bass melody and a treble melody in the same guitar piece and made up the song Blackbird from that. I clearly remember George and I used to sit around doing our own version of this Bach thing. It was like a little party piece: it was a little something to show that we weren't just [adopts pompous voice] one-dimensional. It was a little show-off thing. The point I'm coming back to is that, Yeah, we were aware of classical guitar players. I was a big fan of Julian Bream - who was a British classical guitarist - and I think George was too*.

We used anything we could get our hands on for ideas. The other very influential piece was a piece by Chet Atkins that we tried to learn called Trambone. That is a nice little bit of country picking. And that's the same thing - there's two things going on. You got a bass line and the treble line. None of us quite mastered that except a guy called Colin [Manley] out of [Merseybeat contemporaries] the Remo Four. For us that was the high spot of their act when Colin just did this instrumental. But the point I'm making is that all these lovely little things were little turn-ons and we assimilated them all into our music. So we definitely weren't snobs..."


cbaixo

* El subrayado es nuestro...
 
George and I used to do this little thing, which is the J.S. Bach thing. I think it's called Fugue or something. [sings Bach's Bourrée in E-Minor] We didn't know it all but we learned the first little bit. We made the end up. What we liked about it was that it was harder than some of the stuff we were playing, it was part of our development, 'cos it was two lines working against each other. You've got the melody [sings] and then you get a sort of [sings] bass line working against it. I tell audiences now that that was what gave me the start of Blackbird. It's not the same notes but I took the style of there being a bass melody and a treble melody in the same guitar piece and made up the song Blackbird from that.

Queridos amigos,

Pues a mí la pieza clásica que más me recuerda a Blackbird, al menos en su comienzo, es este andantino de Ferdinando Carulli:


Os pongo aquí una versión de Blackbird para que comparéis:


Como veis, las dos piezas comienzan de forma similar. Le comenté el parecido a un guitarrista amigo de Paul McCartney, a ver si si me aclara algo.
 
Hola Julio,

Carlos Bonell me contó la misma historia. En este vídeo aparece él en el estudio de Paul McCartney tocando la Bourrée de Bach, después de que Macca relate la conexión de esta pieza con 'Blackbird'...

Un saludo,

cbaixo
 
Carlos Bonell me contó la misma historia. En este vídeo aparece él en el estudio de Paul McCartney tocando la Bourrée de Bach, después de que Macca relate la conexión de esta pieza con 'Blackbird'...

Amigo cbaixo,

El enlace no funciona pero creo saber de qué vídeo me hablas.

Está claro que el Bourrée de Bach, como dice Paul McCartney, es un contrapunto a dos voces. El Blackbird no es un contrapunto, pero sí una melodía acompañada en la que el acompañamiento tiene su propia melodía. Joaquín Zamacois, en su Tratado de Armonía, menciona esta modalidad de melodía acompañada en la que el acompañamiento "establece competencia con la melodía protagonista". Quizá Paul McCartney se refiera a eso cuando compara ambas obras.

La pieza de Carulli es una melodía acompañada sin parte vocal alguna, claro está, pero su conducción por décimas es similar al acompañamiento de guitarra de Blackbird. Además está en la misma tonalidad y los tres primeros acordes son idénticos en ambas composiciones, de ahí mi comentario.
 
Querido Julio,

Vaya... A mí sí me funciona... Qué extraño... En fin...

...La pieza de Carulli es una melodía acompañada sin parte vocal alguna, claro está, pero su conducción por décimas es similar al acompañamiento de guitarra de Blackbird. Además está en la misma tonalidad y los tres primeros acordes son idénticos en ambas composiciones, de ahí mi comentario.

Cierto...

De todos modos -y si seguimos las propias palabras de McCartney- parece que fue la pieza de Bach (=o más bien, el recuerdo de que esa pieza funcionaba con dos "melodías", una de ellas en el bajo*) la que motivó la composición de 'Blackbird'. Hay que tener en cuenta que la formación académica de Macca, en referencia a la música, es nula...

Macca también es conocido por su mala memoria en relación con cuestiones del pasado (=sobre todo cuando se le pregunta por aspectos muy concretos de su época Beatle**...) Tal vez ese extracto de Carulli tuvo algo que ver en la gestación de 'Blackbird' y no lo recuerda...

Un cordial saludo!! ;)

cbaixo

* Según McCartney otra pieza de este tipo es 'Michelle'...

** Entre otras muchísimas anécdotas, es famosa la respuesta que dio cuándo se le preguntó por el tipo (=marca) de cuerdas que usaba en su famoso Höfner 500/1: "...Uh?? The long shiny ones..."
 
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cbaixo
 
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