Sanz Canarios

[mandocaster]

One of my favorite peices to play on guitar is the familiar Canarios of Sanz. I started fooling around with it on mandolin last night, and it seemed to adapt very easily. You have to switch octaves occasionally, and reduce the number of voices in some chords. All in all, a pretty catchy tune. I did a search for an existing mandolin transcription (I didn't find one), and I saw that Marilyn Mair plays it on one of her discs. I don't have the CD - has anyone heard it? Is it solo or with guitar? I will transcribe it as a solo piece, I guess.

[Arto]

One of my favourite tunes, too! It would be lovely to have a solo mandolin arrangement for this. I once tried to adapt it to mandolin from a classical guitar book, but it didn´t come to much. My lack of experience, of course. It also seems that there are many different guitar arrangement to start from. Is there a (preferably freely ;-) downloadable original version available? This was for a 5-course guitar, wasn´t it?

thanks, Arto

[John Craton]

Is there a (preferably freely ;-) downloadable original version available?

I made a MIDI of this a few years ago when I was trying to figure out a new (at the time) MIDI program. You can go here, then click on "MIDIs of Real Music" and you'll find the Sanz near the bottom of the page. If you have a program like Sibelius or Finale, you should be able to open the MIDI as a readable score. If not let me know and I'll try to figure a way to get a copy for you. It is in public domain.

[margora]

Trekel (www.trekel.de) has an arrangement of Sanz's "Suite Espanola" for mandolin and guitar. Click on "Noten" then mandolin. It is possible that "Canarios" is one of the movements included, send them an email and I am sure they will find out for you.

[Eugene]

Yup, 5-course guitar indeed. #Interestingly, Sanz tuned his low A strings an octave high (i.e., a: typical for solo music in many places, although a little out of the ordinary in Spain). #There is some suggestion in Sanz's text that he also tuned both his d strings an octave high (d'). #If so, this would make g the lowest note on Sanz's guitar, also the lowest note of the mandolin!

Knock yerself out and have fun at it, but I personally tend to shy away from transcription unless it's expected by a bride who has commissioned me for a wedding. #There's just so much neglected music specifically intended for almost any instrument you'd care to take up.