I guess we could say that the classical guitar piece, Romanza is to the classical guitar player the same as Stairway to heaven is to the steel string guitar player. It´s the piece everyone wants to be able to play.

It´s not known who composed Romanza but a lot of guessing has been done. Was it Antonio Rubira? David del Castillo? Francisco Tarrega? Frendando Sor or was it someone else? The melody was probably composed in Spain sometime after mid nineteenth century. It´s style is typical for “pop” music of that era. The first known recording of the piece is from Madrid in Spain and was done somewhere between 1897 and 1901.  One of those who have claimed to bee the author is Narciso Yepes but that can hardly be the case because the first recording was done before Yepes was born. But we can give Yepes the credit for making the Romanza world famous. It was his arrangement and his playing in the French film Jeux interdits which drew attention to this beautiful haunting music.

 It´s really not that hard to play Romanza technically speaking but there are few tricky parts though. The A part is written in e-minor. The melody runs up and down the e string while the other strings sound open. Here it is important to pay notice to the harmony so it won´t overpower the melody. The A part is played twice.  The B part is written in e-major. It´s harder to play the B part because of the full barre cords and stretches  that can be quite hard to accomplish. To finish the piece the A part is played again once. Then it´s the question whether you should play the melody with tirendo or apoyando? Two guitar teachers have heard me play the piece. One said I  should play the melody with apoyando while the other said should play it with tirendo. Well in my opinion you should go with tirendo unless where you want to put special emphasis.

I think there is no right or wrong way to play the Romanza. Just play it with a feeling. If you watch the videos in the end of this article you can hear two totally different versions of the piece but both of them are excellent.  When I play the Romanza I draw a picture in my mind of a young couple in love, walking together in the hot summer sun. The only thing they can see is each other. When the A part of the melody comes to an end I can see the sun setting down and the evening shadows creep in. When the B part is played it is completely dark and the young couple head home. Then the A part is played again and the morning sun rises. Don´t these images set the right mood? They work for me.

Here you can get the Romanza in pdf format and here you can get it as a TablEdit file. To view TablEdit file you need Tef viewer. It´s here.

References

Murphy, M. J. 8. December. 2012. Recording the mysterious “Romanza”. Twilight Guitar. Fetched 2. February 2014 in http://twilightguitar.wordpress.com/2012/03/08/3448/.

Romance (guitar piece). (n.d.). Wikipedia. Fetched 2. February 2014 in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romance_%28guitar_piece%29