Aaron Rabushka wrote:

>The version of the Stravinsky/Segovia encounter that I heard involved
>Stravinsky's telling Segovia that he wanted to write a guitar work for him
>and Segovia's totally rejecting the offer since he didn't like Stravinsky's
>work. As I understand things many guitarists now curse Segovia for that.

If you look at Segovia's repertoire, it consisted mostly of traditional
Spanish stuff and baroque transcriptions (the many pieces he commissioned
are mostly along traditional Spanish lines, and the baroque transcriptions
he did himself).  He had a particularly elegant style of playing, and was
very concerned with establishing the guitar as a "legitimate" classical
instrument.

There is another story that illustrates this.  When he met Villa Lobos
at a Paris party, VL grabbed a guitar and played some down and dirty Rio
street music for him, so alarming Segovia that he fled the party, after
asking VL to compose something for him.  VL responded with the Etudes, of
which Segovia as far as I know only ever played No. 1, which is in the
style of Bach; he ignored the other, highly Brazilian-flavored ones.

Thus, it is likely that he would not have wanted to play a Stravinsky work
(unless it were closely tailored to his style of playing, which Stravinsky
could certainly have done if he had wanted to, considering the great
variety of compositional styles he adopted through his career).

As to whether guitarists curse Segovia because Stravinsky didn't write
anything for guitar, they might well have cursed even louder if he had
done so, because it would probably have been ferociously difficult!  In
any case, it is fascinating to speculate about what kind of composition
he would have turned out.

Jon Johanning // [log in to unmask]