Recuerdos de la Alhambra

Recuerdos de la Alhambra ("translation: Memories of the Alhambra") is a classical guitar piece composed in 1896 by Spanish composer and guitarist Francisco Tárrega. He wrote it in Granada.

A virtuoso on his instrument, Tárrega was known as the "Sarasate of the guitar." His repertoire included many original compositions for the guitar ("Capricho Árabe," "Danza Mora," et al.) as well as guitar arrangements of works written for other instruments by composers such as Ludwig van Beethoven, Frédéric Chopin and Felix Mendelssohn. As with his friend Isaac Albéniz and many of their Spanish contemporaries, Tárrega had an interest in combining the prevailing Romantic trend in classical music with Spanish folk elements, which he did with "Recuerdos de la Alhambra" and his transcriptions for guitar of several of Albeniz's piano pieces (notably the fiery "Asturias (Leyenda)").

"Recuerdos de la Alhambra" shares a title with the Spanish language translation of Washington Irving's 1832 book "Tales of the Alhambra," written during the author's four-year stay in Spain.

The piece can be heard in Mike Oldfield's soundtrack for the film "The Killing Fields" and also in the film "Sideways".

Performance notes

The piece showcases the challenging guitar technique known as 'tremolo,' where a single melody note is plucked repeatedly by the ring, middle and index fingers in such rapid succession that the result is an illusion of one long sustained tone. In this piece, the thumb plays the bass in between melodic attacks. The change of key to A in the middle of the song is played at a faster tempo than at the beginning and at the conclusion of the piece. Many who hear this song initially in a non-live setting can mistake it for a duet rather than a challenging solo effort.

More information

* A page with the score and the composition date (http://www.sibeliusmusic.com/cgi-bin/show_score.pl?scoreid=122790&storeid=112913)