Fugues Volume 1 by Felix Mendelssohn for Guitar Quartet
Written as exercises for learning style and music form by the young composer, these pieces make excellent study materials for guitar quartet or guitar orchestra. They are of a modest level of difficulty for their originally intended group, and while several passages can only be played on the utmost reaches of the guitar fingerboard, they are nonetheless quite playable. Some transpositions of key are necessary to bring the pieces within range and a few passages, carefully selected, have also been transposed to fit. No harmonies were harmed during transcribing. The end results are musical and engaging.
The pieces have particular didactic value, demonstrating polyphony and fugal form while simultaneously presenting some reasonable technical challenges. And, I think it's safe to say, are lovely music and really quite listenable. After I worked through the scores a couple of times, I set about fingering the more challenging passages, initially thinking I would add them to the final manuscript. After some consideration I remembered that Mendelssohn himself wrote these as studies and it seemed inappropriate to suggest solutions to any technical challenges the pieces present. Aside from making sure they are all playable I'm presenting them without annotation. Just as with the originals, they display no fingerings, phrase markings, dynamics, coloration or tempi, leaving all such choices to your discretion and temperament.
