Alexandre Lagoya

Alexandre Lagoya

born on 29/6/1929 in Alexandria, Egypt

died on 24/8/1999 in Parigi, France

Alexandre Lagoya

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Alexandre Lagoya (21 June 1929 – 24 August 1999) was a classical guitarist and composer. His early career included boxing and guitar, and as he cites on the sleeve of a 1981 Columbia album, his parents hoped he would outgrow his predilection for both.

Life and career

Lagoya was born in Alexandria, Egypt, to a Greek father and an Italian mother. By 1955, when he married the French guitarist Ida Presti, his career had already begun. On the sleeve of his 1981 record with Columbia, Lagoya pays deep tribute to Presti and admits that after her premature death he was unable to play for years. He returned to the guitar as a teacher, tutoring among other famous guitarists the Canadian virtuoso Liona Boyd (who claims in her autobiography that she was also his lover). In the early 1980s, at the advanced age of 52, he burst back on the international scene with a record for Columbia and an international tour.

Lagoya played a variety of works for guitar, performing concerts and recording albums, often collaborating with Presti and also with other musicians. Lagoya was also a successful teacher. He taught at the Paris Conservatory and, in Canada, and developed a new method of hand positioning which he believed helped people learn to play the guitar better. He also added the use of the little finger to plucking and claimed to have invented a method for maximizing the sound coming from the classical guitar.

Concerning the right hand, Alexandre Lagoya preferred the technique of plucking from the right side of the nail, and he believed it gave a more powerful sound.[1]

In 1962 Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco wrote Les Guitares bien tempérées for two guitars, a set of 24 preludes and fugues in all 24 major and minor keys, for Lagoya and Ida Presti. This was inspired by The Well-Tempered Clavier by Johann Sebastian Bach, a composer Castelnuovo-Tedesco revered.

Selected compositions

Guitar solo

  • Six Études (Paris: Max Eschig, 1958)
  • Caprice (Paris: Ricordi, 1959)
  • Rêverie (Paris: Ricordi, 1959)

Transcriptions

  • Johann Sebastian Bach: Gavotte et musette (from BWV 808) (Paris: Ricordi, 1959), for 2 guitars
  • Johann Sebastian Bach: Gavotte (from BWV 1012) (Paris: Ricordi, 1959), for solo guitar
  • Georg Friedrich Händel: Sarabande (Paris: Ricordi, 1959), for solo guitar
  • Domenico Scarlatti: Sonata (Paris: Ricordi, 1959), for 2 guitars

Recordings

Articles

Other

References

External links

This page was last modified 30.06.2016 17:45:17

This article uses material from the article Alexandre Lagoya from the free encyclopedia Wikipedia and it is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.