Sor’s Harpolyre Music Transcribed for Guitar | John Doan – Master of Harp Guitar, Composer, Storyteller

Lost Music of Fernando Sor CD Cover The sheet music from John Doan’s “,” Sor’s Compositions for Harpolyre transcribed for the six-string guitar, is available for purchase as a complete set or individual downloadable PDF files.

This is a collection of ten transcriptions for the six string guitar of Sor’s own music for the 21 string harpolyre. It comes in both standard notation and separate tablature with special accommodation for 8 and 10 string guitarists. These are amazing pieces that fit the guitar beautifully.

There are six shorter works and 4 major works that are played and recorded for first time on “The Lost Music of Fernando Sor“.

In this music Sor is creating beginning literature for the harpolyre that is basically guitar music with extended range in the bass or with special harp-like effects from the Diatonic neck. Once the bass range has been brought up an octave and the harp effects are placed onto the conventional six strings of the guitar, you basically have the forgotten music that Sor would have written for the guitar if he hadn’t done so for the harpolyre.

Now the guitar world, after nearly 200 years, has ten more works by Fernando Sor, some of which may measure up to his finest and most celebrated!

Six Petite Pieces Progressives

1. Andante
2. Andantino
3. Andante
4. Cantabile
5. Andante
6. Moderato

Marche Funebre

Trois Pieces Pour La Harpolyre

1. Andante Largo
2. Andante Cantabile
3. Andantino

“The Lost Music of Fernando Sor” Complete Sheet Music Collection PDF files $45.00

All the music appears in standard notation with separate tablature provided. Each piece is accompanied by general remarks, a listing of Harpolyre effects used in the original pieces, a musical analysis and transcription footnotes.

Individual Selections from “The Lost Music of Fernando Sor”

The following individual sheet music selections are available from “The Lost Music of Fernando Sor” by John Doan.

Six Petite Pieces Progressives: Number 1 – Andante

Listen to “Six Petite Pieces Progressives: Number 1 – Andante” on YouTube.

“Andante” is the first of six short pieces Fernando Sor composed for the 21 string, three necked harpolyre. It appears here complete in a transcription for six-string guitar by John Doan. Each piece in this collection will be accompanied by general remarks, reference to the original Harpolyre effects Sor intended, a musical analysis and transcription footnotes.

Sor opens this collection of “Six Petites Pieces” with a short subject in C major. This is the perfect key to explore writing for the harpolyre as the diatonic neck is comprised of eight pitches arranged in a C major scale. Always concerned with writing music that follows the rules of harmony and counterpoint he is true to bring us formal and elegant music but not necessarily easy music to play. He covers the entire range of the guitar and in the process experiments with several interesting moments of interweaving the guitar with the expanded and overlapping pitches of the diatonic neck and with an occasional punctuating sub bass.

Direct Emailing: $10 PDF file Standard notation and separate Tablature along with general remarks, a listing of Harpolyre effects used in the original piece, a musical analysis and transcription footnotes.

Sheet Music PDF: will normally be emailed to you within 24 hours (Please allow 2 to 3 days if John Doan is away on tour).

Six Petite Pieces Progressives: Number 2 – Andantino

Listen to “Six Petite Pieces Progressives: Number 2 – Andantino” on YouTube.

“Andantino” is the second of six short pieces Fernando Sor composed for the 21 string, three necked harpolyre. It appears here complete in a transcription for six-string guitar by John Doan. Each piece in this collection will be accompanied by general remarks, reference to the original Harpolyre effects Sor intended, a musical analysis and transcription footnotes.

After having explored the use of the novel Diatonic scale of the harpolyre in the previous piece Sor now turns his attention to employing the sub basses of the Chromatic neck. The music here generally displays a hopeful spirit.

Sheet Music PDF: will normally be emailed to you within 24 hours (Please allow 2 to 3 days if John Doan is away on tour).

Six Petite Pieces Progressives: Number 3 – Andante

Listen to “Six Petite Pieces Progressives: Number 3 – Andante.”

View Doan’s live performance of Andante on an original harpolyre from 1830 (currently over 3,000,000 views!).

“Andante” is the third of six short pieces Fernando Sor composed for the 21 string, three necked harpolyre. It appears here complete in a transcription for six-string guitar by John Doan. Each piece in this collection will be accompanied by general remarks, reference to the original Harpolyre effects Sor intended, a musical analysis and transcription footnotes.

“Andante” is a true masterpiece in miniature and proudly stands along side Sor’s finest works of the short musical form. This Andante moves well beyond the surface moods of elegant formality and hopefulness of the previous two short works and delves into the private world of the soul struggling while wrestling unresolved. It is a haunting soliloquy filled with pensive and despairing emotion and absolutely remarkable for a composition of 27 measures! Perhaps we find here the humanity of Sor raw from the loss of his father, country, two wives, and diminishing career opportunities that have accumulated in him toward the end of his life. Given its musical beauty and haunting character this little piece may become standard repertoire for the guitar in the near future.

Sheet Music PDF: will be emailed to you within 24 hours.

Six Petite Pieces Progressives: Number 4 – Cantabile

Listen to “Six Petite Pieces Progressives: Number 4 – Cantabile” on YouTube.

“Cantabile” is the fourth of six short pieces Fernando Sor composed for the 21 string, three necked harpolyre. It appears here complete in a transcription for six-string guitar by John Doan. Each piece in this collection will be accompanied by general remarks, reference to the original Harpolyre effects Sor intended, a musical analysis and transcription footnotes.

This work is a nice contrast to the others as it offers a more virtuosic flare. Several arpeggios spanning two and a half octaves speak to the range of the guitar augmented by numerous low B sub-basses throughout. Some of the passages could have employed the harpolyre’s diatonic neck if a capo were added at the fourth fret as was suggested by the harpolyre’s inventor as a way to accommodate other keys in his manual for playing the instrument. There is no indication that Sor ever explored this possibility as we find primarily a guitar piece with punctuating sub-bass notes with one very outstanding chromatic bass run across six strings! Overall, this is a very smart piece.

Sheet Music PDF: will normally be emailed to you within 24 hours (Please allow 2 to 3 days if John Doan is away on tour).

Six Petite Pieces Progressives: Number 5 – Andante

Listen to “Six Petite Pieces Progressives: Number 5 – Andante” on YouTube.

View Doan’s live performance on YouTube of Andante on an original harpolyre from 1830.

“Andante” is the fifth of six short pieces Fernando Sor composed for the 21 string, three necked harpolyre. It appears here complete in a transcription for six-string guitar by John Doan. Each piece in this collection will be accompanied by general remarks, reference to the original Harpolyre effects Sor intended, a musical analysis and transcription footnotes.

Assuming that Sor wrote these short pieces first and the more larger harpolyre pieces afterward we may be seeing with this fifth short piece Sor beginning to understand the possibilities of the instrument and stretching out. It is the longest of the collection of “short” pieces and is remarkable for its use of the harpolyre’s additional strings on both the Chromatic bass and Diatonic neck. Reducing the work to be played on a single neck with six strings in this transcription is still very workable rendering quite an elegant, thoughtful and melodic piece.

In the original harpolyre music M9-16 is remarkable for its heavy use of the Diatonic neck providing accompaniment to the melody that is played on the guitar (M9-10) followed by providing both the accompaniment and melody on the Diatonic neck. The highest string on the Diatonic neck, called the “Chanterelle” or “singing string”, has an extended chromatic passage (M10) fingering every fret up to the seventh fret. Played on the piano it would be pleasant music but to watch the harpolyre player switch necks mid melody and move up that neck would have been a sensation!

Beyond its length and technical aspects of utilizing the additional necks of the harpolyre this is a very musical and even personal Sor composition touching upon some of the melancholia underlying some of his work.

Sheet Music PDF: will normally be emailed to you within 24 hours (Please allow 2 to 3 days if John Doan is away on tour).

Six Petite Pieces Progressives: Number 6 – Moderato

Listen to “Six Petite Pieces Progressives: Number 6 – Moderato” on YouTube.

“Moderato” is the sixth of six short pieces Fernando Sor composed for the 21 string, three necked harpolyre. It appears here complete in a transcription for six-string guitar by John Doan. Each piece in this collection will be accompanied by general remarks, reference to the original Harpolyre effects Sor intended, a musical analysis and transcription footnotes.

With this last short piece of the collection Sor explores writing for the harpolyre in the key of D. A drop D tuning is used in this transcription because the original harpolyre work uses sub-basses in every measure, either as a lower bass pedal tone alternating with a bass on the guitar or as a bass that actually exerts gravity on the direction the upper harmonies will follow.

This Moderato is well organized in its melodic, harmonic and rhythmic structures and maintains a noble and elegant character throughout. It brings a fitting and contrasting end to the collection.

Sheet Music PDF: will normally be emailed to you within 24 hours (Please allow 2 to 3 days if John Doan is away on tour).

Marche Funebre

Listen to “Marche Funebre” on YouTube.

“Marche Funebre” is truly one of Sor’s finest works for guitar. Although it exceeds all other harpolyre works of Sor in utilizing the expanded range and harp-like colors of the harpolyre it is at its core a guitar composition. With some creative problem solving this transcription offers the music world another example of the musical genius of Fernando Sor. It is not a work full of idle virtuosic displays, which would be quite unlike Sor, but instead a composition skillfully crafted rich in musical insight and rarified emotion.

The piece is highly programmatic giving the listener a moment-by-moment narrative of the tragedy of loss. Every detail is attended to from the mood of the gathering at graveside, the remembrance of the decease at her prime, the continually shifting emotions of sadness followed by the struggle to maintain a strong face, the lowering of the casket, and the deeply soulful cries of separation and finality of loss that Sor grippingly captures in the closing. It is at once like a dramatic scene in an opera, a deeply personal account in Sor’s life of a loss of a friend, and a universal statement of our mortality and the preciousness of life.

This piece has been all but forgotten and unplayed for nearly two centuries is here reintroduced as an outstanding example of the quality of work from the hand and heart of a master musician and guitarist Fernando Sor.

Trois Pieces Pour La Harpolyre: Number 1 – Andante Largo

Listen to “Trois Pieces Pour La Harpolyre: Number 1 – Andante Largo” on YouTube.

“Andante Largo” is the first of three large works in the collection of concert pieces titled “Trois Pieces”. As mentioned earlier, Sor’s original harpolyre works are centrally guitar compositions and all “Trois Pieces” are of exceptionally high merit. Sor adventurously explores more in this piece than in the other two of this collection the harpolyre’s additional strings to either side of the guitar neck. His application of harpolyre effects is nearly comparable to his tour de force effort in Marche Funebre. Just over 30 measures make use of this expanded range and harp-like sonority as Sor demonstrates some of the remarkable effects the harpolyre was capable of.

This strong and dazzling opening is very dramatic and remarkably operatic. Oddly, its theme bares a strong resemblance to Verdi’s “La donna è mobile” which was first performed in 1851 (21 years after Sor composed Andante Largo!). This piece is charged with emotion and strong contrasts revealing Sor moving beyond the stereotypically reserved and reasoned classical style and placing himself squarely into the middle of the early romantic era.

Sheet Music PDF: will normally be emailed to you within 24 hours (Please allow 2 to 3 days if John Doan is away on tour).

Trois Pieces Pour La Harpolyre: Number 2 – Andante Cantabile

Listen to “Trois Pieces Pour La Harpolyre: Number 2 – Andante Cantabile” on YouTube.

“Andante Cantabile” is the second of three large works in the collection of concert pieces titled “Trois Pieces”. As with all the other harpolyre works this is centrally a guitar composition. In fact, there are only a few occasional uses (ten) of the harpolyre’s bass notes and not one note was used on the instruments diatonic neck. Most of the bass notes were easily moved up an octave for this transcription, It is truly amazing how this work was overlooked by the guitar world until now!

Overall, this is Sor with his powers of lyric line and harmonic/bass support in full maturity. This piece serves as a calming pause between the fiery opening and closing movements of “Trois Pieces”.

Sheet Music PDF: will normally be emailed to you within 24 hours (Please allow 2 to 3 days if John Doan is away on tour).

Trois Pieces Pour La Harpolyre: Number 3 – Andantino

Listen to “Trois Pieces Pour La Harpolyre: Number 3 – Andantino” on YouTube.

“Andantino” is the third of three large works in the collection of concert pieces titled “Trois Pieces”. It can not be stressed enough how this and the other works for harpolyre are basically guitar compositions. One could effectively play this work on the guitar directly from the score as it falls aptly under the fingers as a guitar composition and only employs four brief isolated applications of the additional strings/necks of the harpolyre. This is a masterpiece of the Mazurka style and is one of the most interesting and adventurous compositions of “Trois Pieces”.

Sheet Music PDF: will normally be emailed to you within 24 hours (Please allow 2 to 3 days if John Doan is away on tour).