Ana Vidović: belief

Transcript context

…Mark Prendergast, in his book on ambient music, makes the argument that a lot of earlier classical guitar works — Rodrigo, Villa-Lobos — that they’re really anticipating very recent trends in ambient music, and they’re much more pathbreaking than classical music critics had realized, even up until now. What do you think of that argument? There’s something about this creation of a hovering sound world that, say, Villa-Lobos did that we still haven’t caught up to fully in our musical understanding. It’s a precursor of Brian Eno’s, say, among others. Whenever you choose a repertoire, a piece that you like to play, it’s important to study and learn about the composer and what they were trying to do. A part of it that I think we still struggle as guitarists — analyzing the music is very, very important. Looking at the score, understanding what is going on. Pianists, violinists, cellists are taught to do that from a very, very early age. We, as classic guitarists, don’t fully understand that yet. I think that’s a very, very important part. Also, learning about the composer, learning about the history — when they lived, why they composed in a certain way. Going into the background is very, very important. I think, as classical guitarists, we still have to learn how to do that. It’s an important part. Guitar is a very interesting instrument. Sometimes we just want to sit and play, and not so much go into the depth of the actual piece and learning about all the aspects of the piece. Like I said, the background is very, very important. Then the music that you play comes out differently. It’s a different quality when you actually know what the composer was intending to do. What can you learn studying the score without a guitar nearby or without touching the guitar? What happens in your mind?…

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