The Flamenco Concert Guitar: The Author, the Configuration of its Repertoire and its Audience

Abstract

Ever since the Spanish guitar achieved a space in the nineteenth-century stage as a solo instrument, both the performer and the «author» of aires populares (popular airs) achieved a new kind of prominence that previously had ben accorded to the anonymous pueblo or community. This concept of the «author» took shape in this particular moment of the history of the Spanish guitar and its individualization, although less in reference to flamenco guitarists than to «academic» guitarists, especially Damas, Arcas, and the Huertas. The legitimization of the soloist's personal repertoire in that early period took place in the context of short interludes inserted in intermissions of different kinds of larger theatrical or musical works, although with a consistent meaning. Subsequently emerging were solo flamenco guitar concerts, in accordance with the increased importance and recognition of prominent performers and venues dedicated to flamenco.

 It is from the Romantic period that the individuality of the «creator-genius» and also virtuoso interpreter of aires populares emerges as a principal attraction for audiences of connoisseurs. However, it took longer for the flamenco guitar to be accepted in this manner, both in terms of its repertoire and in the appropriate format for performance spaces. The first flamenco guitarists who played solo concerts (from Paco de Lucena and Paco el Barbero to Miguel Borrull or Ramón Montoya) seldom performed as soloists, instead serving primarily as accompanists to singing or dancing in the period around 1900. Rather, it would be the generation of Carlos Montoya and Sabicas that would finally consolidate the status of the flamenco guitar as a solo instrument.