Sor Study, No.9, Op.60
Demonstration of Study No.9, 25 progressive studies by Fernando Sor
Fernando Sor found fame as a virtuoso performer and composer. It was because of this that he created music for instructional purposes, organising them into Opus' which move through levels of musical complexity and technical difficulty. Whilst the studies are mainly looked at for pedagogical reasons, many of them do stand alone as useful repertoire pieces.
The 25 studies that make up Op.60 form part of one of the most famous etude collections. Each study covers a different learning concept. It's a very musical collection, especially when compared to other composers for the guitar from around the same time.
Many guitarists pick and choose only a handful of studies and use them as performance pieces. I do understand that as it can be hard to initially see the intent that Fernando Sor had behind each etude. The primary goal of the collection as a whole though is, I believe, to promote clean legato technique whilst playing through various harmonies/textures.
The studies range from grade 1 to grade 7. However the majority of the pieces are around the grade 4 to 5 level.
Study No.9 in C Major
If you have worked through study No.8 then you have done a lot of the work for this study as they are very similar harmonically. Fernando Sor's intention in this study seems to be to encourage the holding of open position chords for their full value creating a nice legato feel. The chords are arpeggiated more aggressively here and so the piece has more texture than previously. Balance in volume and tone between thumb and fingers is key here as is clean left hand work, pay attention to left hand thumb position and the effect this has on wrist position and then fingertip placement. I would stick with free stroke throughout again as rest stroke is not really possible in some passages.
I would say that study No.9 is around Grade 3 level.
The edition of the sheet music I'm using is very comprehensive and handles left and right hand fingering well : https://www.spanishguitar.com/Product...
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