Pascual Roch - A modern method for the guitar (School of Tarrega)

We beg leave to introduce to the student the man who, during his lifetime, was known as Francisco Tarrega—the gifted guitarist without superior or rival; the admirable composer whose studies, pieces and preludes, to the number of several hundreds, are the heritage of those among us who were so fortunate as to know him and to enjoy the advantage of his instruction; the man who, more than any other, won favor and high esteem for his instrument, endowing it with life and warmth, as none before him, for the reproduction of the conceptions of authors considered classical— Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Chopin, Schumann, Mendelssohn, etc. Who can have heard the floods of harmony that issued from the mysterious depths of his guitar—no longer swept by the master's hand-listening spellbound to a fugue by Bach, a Beethoven sonata, a minuet by Mozart, or a nocturne by Chopin, without a feeling of profound admiration for him who is no more? Who has not been penetrated by keenest delight while hearkening to the lovely strains of his delicate mazurkas Adelita and Alarieta, his Capricho Arabe, his Danza Mora,1 and many another creation that exhales the spirit of this unique temperament, gifted with so extraordinary a sensibility? And what might we not say of his popular music, whose melodies, now gay, now wistful or even melancholy, and again thrilling and virile like those of his celebrated Jota Arago-nesa, are tone-pictures photographed, as it were, by the guitar! Of his marvellous method, whose creation was so peculiarly original with himself, being, in our humble opinion, his most meritorious work, we shall not speak; let it suffice to say, that in it there is marked out the sole path which leads to a command of the mechanism of the instrument, and that without it the veritable miracles which he bequeathed us in writing, beautiful pages that perpetuate his memory, would have died with their author.