Scores
These are my arrangements (as PDFs) of some, mostly traditional, pieces for guitar and celtic harp. So far as I know there are no copyright difficulties but contact me if you think otherwise.
Harp
- Brain Boru's March a little more aggressive than you'll usually hear
- Cam ye o'er frae France a rare example in Scottish music of a triple hornpipe, or tune in 3/2 time
- My Dearie unusually lyrical for a strathspey
- Eilidh's Slide a 'slide' is an Irish dance. I've added slightly firm harmony
- Eleanor Plunkett by Terence ('Turlough') o'Carolan, perhaps his most beautiful tune
- The Dark Plaintive Youth often attributed to Carolan, but sounds traditional
- Bannocks o barley meal Jacobite political satire with a driving rhythm
- Si bheag, si mhor Well-known Carolan tune
Guitar
- The Highland Brigade at Magersfontein a bagpipe tune from the Boer War
- Port Joan Morrison based on a bagpipe tune by Matt Seattle
- Edward the Second based on a minuet from an old (1773) bagpipe collection
- Little Birds Sing Cheerily birdsong from the Rook Manuscript of 1840
- A Scots Tune a very pretty piece of counterpoint from the Rowallan MS, c. 1620. Resist the temptation to 'correct' the flattened sevenths!
- Gabot (gavotte) from the Rowallan MS. I like to play this followed by Barrios' 'London Carapé' - two dances separated by 3 centuries of time and 6000 miles of space (otherwise you can play the Gabot without the G scordatura if you find it easier)
- Federico Morreno-Torroba: Burgalesa in F# Re-fingered to be played with the 6th string set to F#. See note below.
- Miguel Angel Cherubito: Homenaje a Victor Jara Victor Jara was a Chilean guitarist and song writer who was imprisoned, tortured and murdered by the Pinochet regime. This desolate funeral march for guitar is reconstructed from a tattered manuscript I found in a music shop in Barcelona.
- Enrique Granados: Op. 37 No. 10 also known as Danza Triste or Melancólica. Cleaned up from photocopies of a photocopy.
- Enrique Granados: Op. 37 No.4 also known as Villanesca. Also cleaned up from poor copies.
Guitar & Scottish Smallpipes
- El testament d'Amèlia inspired by the famous Miguel Llobet arrangement of the Catalan folk song
- A mi me gusta la gaita traditional Asturian - 'gaita' is the Asturian bagpipe
Torroba's Burgalesa in F#
Torroba's Burgalesa in F# is a funny thing. It's very difficult to play, and yet the melody is like a simple folk tune - 'Burgalesa' means 'girl from the town of Burgos'. So why F#? It's because Torroba wanted a change of key to the flattened submediant, a tonal move which appears in many of Schubert's songs. Flattened submediant!? That means that the new key is a semitone below the sixth note of the original, a tonal shift with a very moody effect. If you play around with a pencil and paper you will find that F#/D major is one of the few key pairings related in this way that are playable on guitar.
The most familiar example of this change might be Elgar's Enigma Variations. Nimrod enters in E-flat after a variation in G major with a feeling of sudden darkening - a 'drawing down of blinds'.
The impact in Torroba's Burgalesa is the opposite - the flattened sixth of F# is D, but the opening tune re-stated there sounds like a sudden burst of sunshine.
For this piece to work it must flow very languidly from the guitar, and the best way to do that is to get rid of those awkward left hand stretches by setting your sixth string to F#. But there is more justification than just making life easy: if you play in F# with your sixth string on E, everything sounds acoustically dull, because you have no basses on an open string. Set the sixth to F#, you have something ringing and singing. Technically you only lose one note in one bar of the original - an E on the open sixth string because you have set it to F#. Don't worry, just play the E an octave higher.