G. P. Telemann's 12 Fantasies for Guitar

Georg Phillip Telemann (1681-1767) was one of the most prolific of the prominent late Baroque composers, but he did not compose for guitar or lute. His Twelve Fantasies for Flute Without Bass were composed some time before 1732. These flute fantasies make intriguing guitar transcriptions for guitar for two reasons. First, they are excellent concert repertoire that can be performed on the guitar in their original keys, sounding one octave lower on the guitar than on the flute. With the near continuous use of implied polyphony, these fantasies, despite being single line compositions,sound natural on the guitar. Second, in addition to having intrinsic value as performance pieces, Telemann's fantasies serve as wonderful pedagogical material. They require scale and arpeggio speed but they pose fewer left-hand technical challenges than most lute music of the time and give upper level students opportunities to experiment with articulation, dynamics, ornamentation, groupings of small motivic ideas, phrasing, and the effect of different fingerings and note durations on a passage. They provide excellentmusical preparation for learning the technically more difficult lute works of Bach and other composers. The fantasies appear here in notation only.Telemann, Georg Philipp is the author of 'G. P. Telemann's 12 Fantasies for Guitar', published 2002 under ISBN 9780786633920 and ISBN 0786633921.