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Maria Full of Grace inspired by the Etude No. 1 for guitar by Heitor Villa-Lobos by Karl Wolff Publication's Style: Soft Cover Level of Difficulty: Intermediate General Description: for Flute and Guitar (guitar part not included) Retail Price: $4.95 withguitar CNPFlute Other Publications & Recordings by Karl Wolff

MP3 ExcerptMP3 Audio I have, since I first played the work, suspected that the Etude No. 1 by Heitor Villa-Lobos owed much to Johann Sebastian Bach's first prelude from The Well Tempered Clavier. It is well known that Villa-Lobos was fond of Bach and the similarities between the two pieces are striking. The first few bars are fundamentally the same chord progression, the Bach in C-major, and the Villa-Lobos in E-minor, they are nearly the same length with only one measure difference. And of course, there's the highly repetitive arpeggios in both works. Further inspired by Charles François Gounod's composition Ave Maria I wrote some melodies that could be accompanied by the Villa-Lobo's etude. After some experimentation I settled on one I wrote for flute. In this melody I made it a point to emulate Villa-Lobo's style of writing, even to exaggerate his dotted rhythms and chromaticism. The piece has turned out to be a popular ensemble number. One that guitarists find rewarding because it brings new challenges to interpreting a familiar classic. The audio sample above is a simple MIDI based recording of the piece. Due to copyright restrictions and because the piece is such a familiar one, the guitar part is not included in this publication. PREVIEW