LEYENDA (Preludio-Asturias) Isaac Albéniz
Having been popularized by Andrés Segovia, this piece is
widely considered the quintessential "Spanish guitar" piece; that being
the case, doubtless it would astonish most to learn that the work was originally
written for the piano, and in London to boot! First published in 1892 as
the opening preludio of a three-movement set titled
Chants d'Espagne, opus 232, a publisher incorrectly included this
work as part of the unfinished Suite Española, opus
47 — two years after the composer's death. That error
has been retained to this day.
Albeit unplayable by guitar in its native key of G minor, the original
signature is perfectly suitable for piano. I have restored the two C-sharp
grace notes in measures #72 and #76, which were pretentiously and
improperly naturalized in later editions. The 'forbidden' melodic interval of an
augmented second clearly was intended by the composer, in order to evoke a
Moorish feel to the cante jondo section. Nostalgia for his homeland
inspired that interval's usage in several other pieces as well.
There are MP3 files for both piano and guitar.
Disklavier & MIDI users: set your keyboard to play MIDI
definition #25: Nylon Guitar. You will love the result!
SAMPLES | SIZE | |
Asturias .mid | preview, piano version (5:38) | 24 kb |
Page 1 | 5 pages total | 247 kb |
Page 4 | 242 kb | |
DOWNLOAD | ||
Asturias_sheetmusic .zip | pages in pdf format | 281 kb |
Asturias .zip | 2 MIDI files,
Finale 2005 file, XML transportable file |
110 kb |