The truth* about Andrés Segovia:—

Self-taught? A myth.

When little Andrés (age four) heard a guitar for the first time, he wanted to learn to play one. His father (a church organist by profession) was pleased that he was interested in music, but put the kibosh on the guitar because he felt it was the instrument of the gypsies and other undesirable people (thus displaying his ignorance of guitarists such as Fernando Sor, Francisco Tarrega, and a host of others). He wanted Andrés to learn a "legitimate" musical instrument like the piano or the violin. Andrés didn't take to these at all. He said that in his childhood view, a piano was a monster that screamed at you when you poked its teeth, and a violin was a creature that cried when you beat it with a stick. A guitar was an instrument that you could hold in your arms, and when you stroked and petted it, it made sweet sounds. He was adamant about wanting to learn to play the guitar and, as young as he was, he refused to give up.

The result of his father's objections to Andrés' learning the guitar was rather counterproductive, because whenever he got the chance, he would manage to hang out with the gypsies (the very people his father objected to) and get the gypsy (flamenco) guitarists to show him things. Apart from the extensive use of rasgueados, flamenco technique and classical technique are almost identical. How Segovia managed to get a guitar and spend enough time practicing, I'm not sure—but obviously, he did. He was probably so determined that his father gave in.

One would have thought that with his initial instruction on the guitar, he might have gone into flamenco, but his father's playing of classical music at home had its effect. That's the kind of thing Segovia wanted to play, but on the guitar. He got a copy of Dionisio Aguado's guitar method and carefully taught himself. Then he moved on to the studies of Fernando Sor, and by the time he was fifteen, he auditioned to enter the University of Madrid, where he learned music theory and all the rest of it.

Andrés Segovia was essentially self-taught as far as guitar technique is concerned, but to characterize him as totally self-taught is not accurate. He had a thoroughly grounded formal musical education.

I'm sorry, but one cannot justify the advantages of a lack of formal musical training by pointing to Segovia.

Don Firth

*I've forgotten many of the details, but I read all of this in a series of articles written by Segovia in the Guitar Review, an irregularly issued magazine put out by a group of New York classic guitar buffs in the Fifties and Sixties. It's publication was pretty sporadic, sometimes only one issue a year, and someplace along the line I lost track of it. Apparently, though, it's still truckin'. *TWANG*