By Matanya Ophee

Note: This article was sent to the editors of Classical Guitar magzine. It was rejected for publication because, I was told, it was “too long.” The issues involved, it seems to me, are much too important to our discipline to be glossed over by the considerations of a magazine, howver they may be justified from their own editorial point of view.

A music publisher, just like an author, composer, performer or artist, lays himself wide-open for critical review any time he sends a review copy to a periodical. The list of reviews Editions Orphée was favored with when we started sending review copies out 15 years ago, is quite impressive. As you know, it is possible to elicit, quoting out of context, a complimentary sounding phrase or two, even from the most devastating review. I have, unashamedly, used such quotes in the listings of our editions in many promotional flyers and also in this homepage. Traditionally, it is this very nature of the process which prompts publishers to play the game. It is assumed that a “good” review is good for business, and a “bad” review is bad for business. I am not sure this is true. Some editions I published received raving reviews, only to end up on the back room storage shelves with no sales at all. Conversely, other editions which were maligned and denigrated by important and authoritative reviewers, or even worse, entirely ignored and not reviewed at all, became some of the hottest selling items in our catalogue. Other publishers may have different experiences. I for one, am not sure if there is any direct correlation between reviews and sales. The dynamics of the market are controlled by other factors over which neither the publisher and his critics or admirers have any control. We do continue with the charade for another reason altogether. After having spent a considerable amount of sweat and tears, not to mention a great deal of money, we are anxious to know the reaction of our colleagues and peers. It feels good to know that others agree that we did good. It also feels good to know that our shortcomings can be pointed out to us by knowledgeable people and we learn from the process. 

Over the years, I have had some really obtuse opinions expressed in regard to my editions. A learned professor once accused me of transposing Bach’s Sinfonia from the Cantata No. 29 to D Major. This is the same piece as Bach’s famous Prelude from the fourth lute suite, or the 3rd partita for violin solo, both in E Major. The reviewer was completely oblivious to the fact that the transposition was not made by me but by Bach himself. A not so learned reviewer, in a major magazine, not having anything bad to say about an edition, had to pick bones about my use of the op. cit. abbreviation in a footnote. Apparently, the style guide used in her high-school, frowns on it. Another criticized me for using the Uncial typeface in the title page of an edition of Irish music and the list goes on. Now that we have started the publication of a new magazine, where we propose to review the works of our colleagues, perhaps it would be useful present you with our reaction to one particularly vicious attack on us. I chose to discuss this matter at some length not so much as a means of blowing the individual reviewer off the face of the earth, something I wouldn’t mind doing anyway, but rather as demonstrating a particularly rabid case of irresponsible reviewing, which puts into question the credibility of the magazine itself, and particularly its current review editor. Perhaps we could learn from this ourselves, and avoid such corruption of the review forum.

On several occasions I said that reviewers are entitled to their point of view, whether I agree with them or not. I still hold to that opinion. I always felt that the reviewer’s main mission is to inform the reader as objectively as is humanly possible. Clearly, this is not always the case, and subjective influences do play a role in any writing. I do feel, however, that a reviewer should, regardless of his musical and philosophical proclivities, review the material under hand, for what it is, and not for what it is not and for what the reviewer thinks it ought to be. In my view, the reviewer is not entitled to misrepresent to the reader what it is being reviewed. I am particularly annoyed by reviewers who use the reviewer’s forum, and the authority implied by it, as a soap-box from which to preach a personal agenda which has nothing to do with the book being reviewed. I also feel strongly that a reviewer who uses material from the reviewed book, in his review, without clearly stating the source, is in effect presenting the material as his own—a clear case of plagiarism.

Reading the review pages of guitar magazines, is always an illuminating experience. An opinion printed, is just that—someone’s opinion. The authority implied by it is vested in the writing by the writer’s standing in our community. Some opinions are respected more than others, and not necessarily by the same factions in our small world. Reading various opinions, looking at the subject at which they are expressed, and, inevitably, comparing that to one’s own reaction to the same material, gives one a good measure how we form mythologies and prejudices. It is also a good way to judge if a particular periodical has any coherent review policy concurrent with its general point of view, if it has a general point of view, or if it prints anything which comes in the mail, however inane it may be, as long as the contents do not invite the wrath of libel attorneys. In June of 1992, Editions Orphée published an important work: the School of Guitar by Richard Pick.

I began working on the School of Guitar by Richard Pick already in 1978 when I just started planning this publishing venture. Pick was my teacher, and I had a long practical experience in using his didactical books, published by Forster Music Publishers of Chicago in 1952, in my own teaching activities. The Forster company was approaching senility in 1978. They no longer actively sold anything, no promotion whatsoever, and when any of Pick’s books went out of print, they were not reprinted, even though the demand for them, in the USA at least, was always healthy. It was then that Pick decided to take the sum total of his teaching experience, spanning a period of more than 50 years, and prepare a new book to be published by Editions Orphée. I received the manuscript in 1987 and began putting it together. Its actual preparation—musical and text typesetting, proof-reading, design, manual paste-up (This was one of the last items not to be engraved by computer,) took us the better part of five years. 

The book received, so far, a mixed bag of reviews in the international press. Some people found this or that bone of contention regarding some features of the book, but in general, most reviewers recognized the book’s usefulness to the practicing professional teacher. Donald Bousted’s review of Pick’s book (Classical Guitar magazine, August, 1993) is in an entirely different category. I am upset by the vicious tone of his insults towards one of the most important educators in the history of the guitar in America. Is it really necessary to use epithets such as cynicism and contempt to express the writer’s disagreement with the pedagogical concepts of a book?

Not having had any prior experience with Bousted, it occurred to me to go back and read some of his other reviews published in Classical Guitar magazine. An interesting picture emerges:

Donald Bousted, is, apparently, a composer who thinks highly of himself. Never having seen or heard music by Bousted, and never having heard of him at all, I guess I’ll have to reserve judgement on his compositional qualities. As a reviewer, Donald Bousted is not very well informed. Moreover, his writings suffer from a limited vocabulary. Practically every review written by him includes some of these words:innovatory, cynical, sustain and/or lack interest, challenging and/or unchallenging, pastiche. This cloying repetition of the same catch phrases in regard to many different compositions, suggests to me that Bousted is driven by a personal agenda, and he uses the review forum dishonestly in promoting it. 

Point: In his review of Eric Penicaud’s Deux Courtes Etudes (CG, May 1993), Bousted comments on the notation and says:

“. . . no one to my knowledge has ever bothered to try to notate these different sounds [right hand position, vibrato indications, length of pauses in seconds] in any comprehensive way . . .”

That is an amazing confession from a man who castigates others for not being up-to-date. Suffice it to mention Bruno Bartolozzi’s Serenata for violin and guitar, written in 1952 and published by Aldo Bruzzichelli in 1963, or Alvaro Company’s Las Seis Cuerdas published in 1965 by Suvini-Zerboni. These works employ a very detailed notation of the sound expected. Not only they deal with right hand positions, but also with the angle with which the nails should be applied to the string, etc. No, these works do not state the length of pauses in seconds. They recognize that the performer is more than just an automaton whose job is to transmit the composer’s indications without any added contribution of his own. If Mr. Bousted wishes to further his education on matters of contemporary guitar notation, I would strongly recommend that he reads Gardner Read’s books on the subject of contemporary notation, or John Schneider’s book The Contemporary Guitar (the chapters on Pitched Sounds and Unpitched Sounds in particular.) 

Point: In his review of Uros Dojcinovic’s Yugoslavian Fantasy Op. 14, Bousted displays an astonishing range of misinformation. I do not expect him to have the qualifications of an ethnomusicolgist, but at least he should have had enough sense to know that when dealing with a work so clearly based on indigenous musical material, one cannot judge it by reference to aesthetical yardsticks totally foreign to it. To say that an alternation of 2/4 and 3/4 “helps sustain interest,” is to ignore the fact that this alternation is not the product of the arranger’s muse, but rather an indigenous rhythmical form used by him. To say that the work is “fundamentally classical; there is nothing innovatory here” is to assign to this music the harmonic characteristics of Sor and Giuliani, as Bousted had done in another review of Dojcinovic’s music printed on the same page. It is also to ignore the fact that non-Western music rarely depends on the rules of traditional Western harmony. It is, particularly in the case of Slavic music, melodic in nature. Most offensive to me was the following paragraph:

“. . . Sano Duso is a dance in 7/8 time with a D Minor section followed by a D major section . . . The tune uses the sharpened fourth in the minor scale to produce an Arabian sound, but the harmonisation lacks interest. I couldn’t help thinking what a composer like Leo Brouwer might do with this tune . . . “

For background purposes: Sano Duso (pronounced SHA-noh DOO-shaw) is an old Serbian folk-song. It became part of the international folk-song repertoire in the late 50’s and early 60’s and taken over by many professional folk-singers (an oxymoron, if ever there was one!) in Europe and the USA. I myself, in the days when I was a handsome young hippie, sang that song with guitar accompaniment, in Serbian, in coffee-houses from Tel-Aviv to Lausanne to New York’s Greenwich Village and Chicago’s Near North. It was I who asked Uros to compose this particular piece, and it is dedicated to me. 

To state that the piece is in D minor just because it has one flat in the key signature, is to lay bare the reviewer’s unfamiliarity with the modal nature of South Slavic folk-music. To a West-European ear, the inherent beauty of the tune, is precisely its modal ambiguity. The tune’s scale (E, F-natural, G-sharp, A, B. . .) is used in such a way that no West-European label can be unequivocally applied to it. Regardless of the key signature, it can be treated as an a minor harmonic scale ending on E, or, as a d Dorian scale with a raised 4th ending on the second degree or, a modal organization with a central tone on E. Similarly, if the major section of the piece could accept any Western key designation at all, it would be A Major, not D Major as perceived by Bousted. To assign an “Arabian” character to this modal ambiguity would have been perfectly acceptable in the 19th century, when musicologists such as Raphael Kiesewetter and François-Joseph Fétis were first confronted with the musical richness of non-Western music. To European musicians at the time, the augmented second was an identifying mark of “oriental” music. Serbian music never had any direct Arabic influence, but rather is an amalgam of the complex Slavic-Turkish cauldron of the Balkans. The reviewer hasn’t the foggiest, if he assigns an “Arabian” character to it, today. He is simply unaware that today, we have a much clearer understanding of Arabic music and a much more complex approach to the “oriental” in music. The huge body of research in this field is completely outside his frame of reference. 

The final suggestion that the Cuban Leo Brouwer would be more qualified to arrange Serbian folk-music, than the Serbian Dojcinovic over-taxes one’s incredulity. Why Brouwer? and why not also/or Takemitsu, Duarte, Biberian, Dyens, Kleynjans, Domeniconi, Sierra, Rak, Koshkin, Myshkin, or . . . Stravinsky? Brouwer’s music is a known entity. At least, that part of it which is already composed and published. We have no idea how Brouwer will develop as a composer. He is still a fairly young man. If he decided to deal with Serbian folk-music, we shall judge the matter when it becomes available for inspection. 

Point: The same aspect of judgements expressed on the basis of insufficient information is exhibited in Bousted’s review of Paolo Bellinati’s Modinha. (CG, July, 1993.) Here is a clear case of a review which totally ignores what the music is, a traditional form of Brazilian folk-music, and criticizes it for what it is not. I do not share the misty-eyed fascination with what is now accepted as South-American music. Mainly, I feel that the regurgitation of the same data about Barrios by Dick Stover over the last 25 years, and Brian Hodel’s promotional writings about some minor figures in Brazilian music, is an over-simplification of the popular nature of this music and an attempt to justify its elevation to the rank of “serious” music, while at the same time, serious art music written by composers residing Central and South America is ignored. This is not doing the culture of the classical guitar any favors, and it does not help our cause in the struggle to regain our rightful place in the main stream of art music. Regardless of Stover’s obsessions, there is a wide gulf between Barrios and Guastavino, Ayala and Ginastera, Lauro and Ponce, Bonfá  and Villa-Lobos, Pixinguinha and Gnatalli. That is not to say that easy-listening Latin-American popular music does not have a right to exist. Far from it. I have been collecting Falú, Yupanqui and Bonfá  records years before Stover learned to say Hasta la proxima. I also cherish dearly my holdings of records by Los Chalchaleros, Los Fronterizos, Los Cantores de Quila Huasi, Jaime Torres, Mercedes Sosa and Carlos Gardel to mention a few. This is an entirely different level of musical gratification which I enjoy very much. I simply prefer my Osso Buco and Coquilles St. Jacques as the main course, and profiteroles, chocolate mousse andzabaglione at a different stage of the meal.

Bousted is a hapless victim of the abstruseness of current attitudes towards this music. He uses the review of a minor piece in the popular vein, by a composer whose significance is yet to be established, as if it was a major challenge to Britten’s Nocturnal! He uses the occasion as a vehicle to expound on his preferred theories about the role of tonality in today’s world. The tenor of the discussion seems to have been picked off the liner notes of a record without a clear understanding of the issues. In the process, Bousted commits such gaffs as insinuating that Ravel was a late 19th century composer, and other choice tidbits. Bousted, is, of course, entirely correct when he says that: “ . . . tonality must speak from the heart of our own culture if it is to convey new meaning . . .” Indeed. Only problem is that Bousted is unwilling to concede that Bellinati’s music, whether one likes it or not, speaks from the heart of Bellinati’s culture and its Brazilian fountainhead, and not fromBousted’s culture, whatever that might be and from whatever obscure mouse hole it crawled out.

I could spend another 20 pages discussing similar incongruities perpetrated by Bousted on the pages of Classical Guitar magazine. But my general impression, by now, is established; the authority which Bousted assumes in expressing opinions about the work of other composers is not based on knowledge and experience, but rather on an over-inflated sense of self-importance, and on a blissful obliviousness as to what really happens in contemporary music, compounded with a set of petty prejudices which he foists on his readers. I find it difficult to believe that the editors of Classical Guitar magazine would knowingly allow its pages to be soiled with unversed manifestos of this nature. Apparently, they do. Surely this reflects on the magazine’s credibility as a source of information. 

Let’s see how this unhappy man fares in respect to his latest—an unprovoked vicious attack on me, as a publisher, and on an author and educator who have earned the widest respect. (For a short biography of Richard Pick, see Maurice J. Summerfield’s The Classical Guitar etc…) The main premise of Richard Pick’s School of Guitar is that the teacher who would use it, is an intelligent being endowed with inspiration and good will, a person with enough pedagogical know-how to be able to use the material presented, without being spoon-fed by someone else. If the erudition and pedagogical professionalism of British guitar teachers are on the level of the vituperative twaddle expressed by Donald Bousted in his recent review, then I agree with him that the book is largely irrelevant to them. But I do know better. Some of my best friends are British guitar teachers. In a recent conversation with Gilbert Biberian, a leading British composer and educator, he assured me that in his opinion, Pick’s newest book is one of the most important didactical tools made available to the professional guitar teacher. 

As charitable as I wished to be towards Bousted, I cannot escape the notion that his attack is nothing more than heedless floccinaucinihilipilification. For example:

”. . . It is [Pick’s book] anachronistic, fails to take note of any recent studies about how real learning takes place . . .”

How does, pray tell, real learning, as opposed, I suppose, to unreal learning, take place? And how recent are those studies Bousted refers to, and by whom? 

The only study mentioned by Bousted is the work of Oliver Hunt. Bousted is convinced that Hunt “ . . . has put teachers on the right track in his Sight-Reading and Musicianship for Guitarists and in other articles in this magazine . . .” Well, if this is so, few guitar teachers in my country have heard of this. Originally published by the now defunct Musical News Services in 1977, 16 years ago, this book is not currently available in the US, surely a major market for Classical Guitar magazine and the opinions expressed by its editors and writers. After much searching around, including the American branch of Music Sales Corporation which took over the rights to this book when Clinton (George, not Bill) departed from the scene, I had to order a copy of it from an English dealer. Being one of the early readers and contributors to Classical Guitar magazine, I am certainly familiar with Mr. Hunt’s articles, since some of my own articles were printed in the very same issues 1983-84. The articles were rather interesting, to say the least. How useful would they be to practicing teachers in the course of plying their trade, is hard to predict. I am not sure that silly homilies to one’s milkman ability to recognize Bizet’s First Symphony, bundled with a thinly disguised undertone of anti-American chauvinism (“It is, [global hearing] to be sure, an American expression, but it is also very apt…”) is an effective way of teaching sight-reading. (CG, March/April 1984) Besides, I have not been able to find a single American specialist on music perception who have heard the term “global hearing.” I am assured by Dr. David Butler of the Ohio State University, a leading specialist in the field, that global hearing is not a current term in the professional vocabulary of American theory of music perception. May we have, 12 years after the fact, a precise bibliographical citation? In any case, magazine articles have a tendency to disappear from our collective memory. I should know—I have written a few myself. Hunt’s articles are there for anyone to look up. I doubt though they can be used today as practical reference. Then it is Hunt’s book which needs to be examined. As stated on the back cover of his book, Mr. Hunt’s pedagogical concepts are based on “ . . . such diverse elements as Yoga, the tone production of Julian Bream, and computer programming techniques . . .” This may be so. Reading the book itself, I cannot detect any hint of a relationship between the ideas expressed in it, to the “diverse elements” listed. For all I know, Hunt’s philosophies may also include other elements such as Zen Buddhism, General Semantics, Scientology, Rosicrucianism. chiropractic, ESP, and the belief in supply-side economics, UFO’s and metempsychosis. Whatever influences the author were subject to, it is still a good book, and I am sure some good ideas could be elicited from it by a knowledgeable teacher. One good idea can be elicited from any book. Is it the most recent of pedagogical philosophies? As Hunt himself says, his book is mainly a guitaristic extension of Paul Hindemith’s Elementary Training for Musicians, a book that has been around since 1946. The age of an idea does not diminish in any way from its validity. Some of the best ideas in guitar pedagogy were expressed by Dionisio Aguado and Fernando Sor, and to this day, have not been improved upon. The actual way of passing knowledge from teacher to student, is still the same interaction between two individuals in the intimate surrounding of the music studio. The effectiveness of the process,whatever inane dogmas, superstitions, pseudo scientific theories and other alchemies or any conglomerations of historical and aesthetical blather it is based on, cannot be measured in any objective way. If it were, all teachers would be paragons of wisdom and pedagogical inspiration and all the students will become internationally known virtuosi.

In spite of the inclusion of buzz-words such as “Musicianship” and “Sight-reading” in its title, Hunt’s book is a typical senza-maestro method. No better nor worse than many similar books in print at any given time. It is not as verbose as, for example, Aaron Shearer’s method. The musical examples contained in it are certainly on a far higher level. But in essence it lays claim to the same audience. It is written for students starting from Grade I and for inexperienced teachers who need a helping hand. The language is directed at an imaginary teacher, and tells him or her what to do at every stage of the game. It would be enough, to follow Bousted’s twisted logic, to be able to play the major items in today’s rent-a-programme and own a copy of Hunt’s book, to qualify as an English teacher of the guitar. (The American counterpart is quite happy with Shearer’s, thank you very much.) Richard Pick’s book exemplifies a totally different approach. It does not address beginner students. If all your teaching efforts are based on beginning customers, then of course Pick’s book will not do much for you. The book provides the teacher with suitable material for these purposes:

• (1) Knowledge of the fingerboard.
• (2) Knowledge of the key signatures and the handling of accidentals within them.
• (3) Knowledge of time signatures and rhythmic groups
• (4) The reading of both fingered and unfingered music.
• (5) The reading of chords and arpeggios.
• (6) The interpretation of expression marks.
• (7) Learning to read ahead.

You will notice that this is precisely the same list included by Oliver Hunt in the Introduction to his book. That is where I copied it from. Similar texts in various linguistic mutations, also appear in every single guitar method I know, from the 1758 Method of that strange Spanish Gentilhombre named DON***, through Merchi, Baillon, B.D.C., Moretti, Phillis, Doisy, Carulli, Aguado, Sor, Carcassi, Castellaci, all the way up to Roch, Sagreras and Pujol. So what else is new?

These seven elements are the basis of the profession and always have been recognized as such. As aims to achieve in the process, they do not change from one teacher to another, from one era to another, from one country to another.

Mr. Bousted’s main complaint is that Pick’s aim to present a logical, comprehensive and systematic approach to the guitar is nothing of the sort and amounts to teaching by rote, a bad thing. Is it? You don’t play scales anymore? And if you do, do you run your scales contorting your body in some strange asana written in Basic Cobol/Fortran Lisp, listening to Julian Bream records while mumbling silly tonic sol-fa derivatives counting from 1 to 4? 

Come off it. Cyber-punk is great stuff and I enjoy reading it as much as the next SF freak. But to use its musical equivalent in order to soak up the hard-earned money of your students, on some trumped-up pretenses that its very up-to-dateness is somehow a guarantee for its inevitable success, is tantamount to selling mink-oil on Hyde Park Corner. Teaching scales, by rote, instrumental harmony,by rote, musical dictation, by rote, solfeggio, by rote, phrasing and understanding of musical form by grasping similarities and differences in musical structures, by rote, is part and parcel of musical education in all instruments. Always was, always will be. There are no magical short-cuts. Check it out at your local conservatory. Richard Pick proposes a systematic presentation of fingerboard harmony in all keys. If you do not understand how this material can benefit you, then perhaps you should better be in the mink-oil business. 

To understand what Richard Pick’s School of Guitar is all about, let me quote here from my own introduction to the book. (You will be the judge of how much of this text was arrogated by Donald Bousted without giving me credit): 

“. . . Although the keys are presented according to the circle of fifths, the material could also be treated chromatically . . . The imaginative teacher may present the material to a given student either vertically, i.e., one key at a time from top to bottom, or horizontally across the book, dealing with a particular aspect of each key in a diatonic or chromatic sequence. The underlying principle is that it is the notation of guitar music, particularly in the more distant keys, which poses the main obstacle in translating the written or printed music into the physical movements that produce sound. Without using the open strings, the movements required for the execution of music in the keys of C-sharp or C-flat, are the same as those required for music in the key of C. The notation is more complex, hence the difficulty experienced by many in sight-reading music in these keys. Systematic drills leading to a proficient understanding of all possible chord forms and the context in which they are found, cannot fail to enhance the player’s recognition of these forms as they occur in a musical composition and enable him to instantaneously translate these written or printed sequences into the correct fingering required for their execution. Sight reading facility, a major weakness in the formation of most guitarists, is thus rendered an achievable skill well within the grasp of the assiduous student . . .” 

These words were not written by Richard Pick. They were written by me, and based on the years that I spent studying with him. Obviously, he agreed to this text and approved of the notions contained in it. I fail to see how, in principle, this idea differs from the philosophies espoused by Oliver Hunt. The difference lies in the presentations, it seems to me, in the musical nature of the examples, and any teacher’s ability to use the material to the benefit of his students. Bousted belittles the book’s covering of all 24 major and minor keys as an achievement of dubious worth. Who needs pieces and exercises in distant keys, when one can simply follow Oliver Hunt’s advise that “ . . .Familiarity with remote keys is best acquired by selective readings of music for other instruments, such as clarinet parts . . .” That is not such a bad idea, under any circumstances. But what can be so wrong in having guitar music in remote keys, without having to borrow from other instruments? Legnani, in his 36 Caprices, thought it was a good idea, so did a large number of composers since then, up to and included Castelnuovo-Tedesco. Moshe Levy’s 24 Guitar Pieces in all keys, published in 1975, was described once by George Warren as the other shoe not dropped by Legnani. Igor Rekhin’s 24 Preludes And Fugues which was recently published in Germany, is another example. There are literally dozens of similar musical compositions and treatises written for all instruments, from Bach’s Well Tempered Clavier to the 24 Preludes and Fugues for piano by Shostakovich. Even Oliver Hunt adds some original pieces in remote keys to his book, but only in the last couple of chapters, corresponding, according to his description of the book, to material to be used by the “fully fledged professional.” I understand the original music contained in Pick’s book is not to Mr. Bousted’s taste. This is his prerogative. Except that I am not sure if his characterization of the music as “mainly classical and romantic pastiches” is a true report to his readers about what the music is like, or, as we have seen in his reviews of other composers mentioned above, an expression of a rigid view of all music not written by Donald Bousted. To conclude his review with the statement that because the book does not come up to his own definition of what is a “creative approach,” it is necessarily “presented with an air of patronising high-mindedness” and therefore must be met with “cynicism and contempt,” is quite an ugly demonstration of jingoistic parochialism. 

This is not only an insult to my teacher, the man from whom I have learnt much and whose inspiration was one of the strongest forces in my development as a musician, it is also an insult to me personally as the publisher of this monumental work and to generations of Pick’s students all over this vast country. If the book is met by cynicism and contempt by Mr. Bousted and his ilk of self-appointed arbiters of musical excellence, so be it. On this side of the pond, where no one had ever heard of Mr. Bousted, the Richard Pick School of Guitar is one of Editions Orphée’s hottest selling items. American guitar teachers, not only those who teach classical guitar, fully understand the traditions of George van Epps, Johnny Smith and others, and know well how pedagogical concepts which first germinated among these masters of the jazz and studio guitar, can be applied to great effect to the classical guitar. Only one year after its appearance, the Richard Pick School of Guitar was re-published by Mel Bay Publications. Thought you’d like to know. 

Copyright © 1996 by Editions Orphée, Inc. All Rights Reserved.