With more music than anyone could listen to in a lifetime available at the touch of a button, it's easy to forget how many masterpieces have been written, heard, loved and then lost.
North Texas guitarist Iván Duran Aguayo recently set his sights on producing what he believes to be the first complete recording of an obscure piece of music history, Premier Concerto pour Guitare, Op. 48, written by English composer Ernest Shand around 1895.
Aguayo first picked up a guitar at 12 years old. He said his mother encouraged him to pursue the real thing instead of the video game Guitar Hero. He's since played for audiences as a solo performer and as a leader of the Texas Guitar Society, a for-profit musicians' collective based in Dallas.
Shand was born in Yorkshire in 1868. Although mostly forgotten by the public today, he was known in his time for his extensive repertoire of classical guitar compositions and playing abilities, in addition to his career as an actor and singer. Music scholar Stanley Yates described him as the "foremost English guitarist of the nineteenth century."
Shand penned Op. 48, a Spanish guitar piece in three movements, that Aguayo eventually found the sheet music for in a Georgetown, Texas guitar shop. Aguayo thought the piece looked interesting, so he bought it for $20.
"As I started learning the guitar part I noticed its elegance, its beauty and how sophisticated the guitar part is," Aguayo said.
But when Aguayo tried to find a recording of the concerto online, he discovered something odd: nothing. From his research, no one had recorded the piece before – at least, not with a backing string quartet, as it would have originally been performed.
So, Aguayo decided he would record it.
The sheet music that Aguayo found included the string quartet part, which had previously been considered lost. For years, only the guitar part and a piano accompaniment existed. Scholars eventually reconstructed the string part, keeping it as true to what the original might have sounded like as possible.
From Aguayo's research, he found that the concerto with strings re-premiered in 1999, but the performance wasn't recorded.
Aguayo and a string quartet performed Op. 48 on video at Keller City Hall on Mother's Day last year. A solo section called the cadenza featured original music composed by Aguayo.
The final recording Aguayo and the Texas Guitar Society are planning to release isn't done yet. They want to make sure it's just right, so they retouched some parts at a Grapevine recording studio in November.
Recording musical history
Aguayo and a small team of artists and editors were tucked away in a soundproof room at a local church. The space was filled with musical instruments, recording equipment and screens monitoring sound levels as they jumped up and down. While the recording of the live concerto performance poured out from the speakers, Aguayo noted the spots he wanted to re-do.
He played into the microphones set up around the room. Then he listened back with the team. They experimented with how they would drop the new fragments into the big picture.
Cameron Hayes edited the project. Although he had been recording, mixing and mastering for years, this was his first time working with classical music. But he was up to the task.
"I'm taking a lot of things that I've learned from other areas of music that I've worked in and putting together this big sonic puzzle, really making it seem like one continuous recording all the way through," Hayes said.
At this point in the process, the team will continue mixing and smoothing out any inconsistencies between the live and studio recordings.
Aguayo said the target audience for the recording is classical music lovers who understand that sometimes musicians need to inject "a little bit more" of their own personalities into the pieces they perform.
"Anyone who appreciates and has a love for this kind of music, I think it will be enjoyable to that audience," he said. "Specifically, guitars. Especially guitars."
The Texas Guitar Society will release the final recording on a variety of digital platforms soon. They don't have a hard date for that yet: it all depends on how long it takes to get the piece exactly where it needs to be.
Got a tip? Email Andy Lusk at alusk@kera.org.
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