Angelo Gilardino
✝ 2022
On 1967 I started my work as an editor of the Italian music publisher Edizioni Musicali Bèrben. During these four decades, I have worked for the guitar repertoire along four lines: 1) editing and publishing the existing, unpublished works of composers who entrusted me with such a job: eg, Castelnuovo-Tedesco for his "24 Caprichos de Goya", "Passacaglia", "Variations plaisantes", "Platero y yo", etc; 2) discovering, rescuing, editing and publishing works, whose existence and/or location was unknown: eg, Respighi "Variazioni", Antonio José "Sonata" and all the works of the series "The Andrés Segovia Archive" (30 voll.); 3) commissioning, editing and publishing new works from contemporary composers, either already known as authors of guitar music (such as Rodrigo, Tansman, Santorsola, Berkeley, etc.) or known for their instrumental music, but who never wrote for guitar before (such as Farkas, Orrego-Salas, Wissmer, Bettinelli, Stevens, Read, etc.); 4) re-editing already known and already published works with new criteria (eg the "Suite Compostelana" by Mompou). How many hundreds music books and how many thousands pieces have been added to the guitar repertoire through my editorial job I do not know, and I prefer leaving the compilation of such a catalogue to future scholars, who might feel and interest in such an investigation.
Coincidentally with the delivery to the Publisher of the material for the publication of the 30th book of "The Andrés Segovia Archive", ("Sonata - Omaggio a Boccherini" by Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco) and with my 65th birthday, on last November, I have informed all the concerned parts that my activity as an editor has arrived to an end. A very satisfactory activity, which has demanded a big part of my energies, and which has taught me so much about music, guitar and life. I believe that a man has to be able to decide when it is the moment of writing the last word on a page of his life: and for what my editorial work is concerned, I feel this moment has come.
A composer on my own - so far obliged to find a difficult compatibility between working at my own music and at the music of many other composers - I need now to devote all my powers to the works I feel I am now capable of creating : since two years I have resigned from my charges as a Professor in the Italian State Conservatory, at the end of last year I resigned from my charge as a director of the Andrés Segovia Foundation, now it is the time of getting free from a responsibility which has marked my life for 40 years, but to which I do not want to give also "The Remains of The Day".
Of course, my cooperation with Edizioni Musicali Bèrben will follow for the publication of the works I will write: an excellent publisher, who has given a concrete realization to many of my projects and also to some of mt dreams and to whom I am and I will be grateful forever.
Angelo Gilardino
Coincidentally with the delivery to the Publisher of the material for the publication of the 30th book of "The Andrés Segovia Archive", ("Sonata - Omaggio a Boccherini" by Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco) and with my 65th birthday, on last November, I have informed all the concerned parts that my activity as an editor has arrived to an end. A very satisfactory activity, which has demanded a big part of my energies, and which has taught me so much about music, guitar and life. I believe that a man has to be able to decide when it is the moment of writing the last word on a page of his life: and for what my editorial work is concerned, I feel this moment has come.
A composer on my own - so far obliged to find a difficult compatibility between working at my own music and at the music of many other composers - I need now to devote all my powers to the works I feel I am now capable of creating : since two years I have resigned from my charges as a Professor in the Italian State Conservatory, at the end of last year I resigned from my charge as a director of the Andrés Segovia Foundation, now it is the time of getting free from a responsibility which has marked my life for 40 years, but to which I do not want to give also "The Remains of The Day".
Of course, my cooperation with Edizioni Musicali Bèrben will follow for the publication of the works I will write: an excellent publisher, who has given a concrete realization to many of my projects and also to some of mt dreams and to whom I am and I will be grateful forever.
Angelo Gilardino
