Winterreise op. 89

The transcription work of the songs that make up of the cicles Die schöne Müllerin (20 songs) and Winterreise (24 songs)of Franz Schubert are based on two ideas that have always seemed unavoidable to me: on one hand to be faithful to the musical proposition of Schubert and, on the other hand, to achieve a functional guitaristic transcription.

In order to adjust the polyphony to the possibilities of the guitar, I often found myself forced to suppress some notes from the chords. In these cases, I always followed the criterion of respecting the most significant notes of each harmony to preserve its solidity, colour and tonal function.

The most frequent suppressions were the reinforcing octaves and occasionally some sixths or sevenths. In some points I had to modify the bass form or the design of some arpegios and in those «lieder» in which the pianistic notation clearly exceeded the possibility of the guitar (for example in the songs «Die böse Farbe» of Die schöne Müllerin or «Erstarrung» of Winterreise), I substituted certain textures with others that were possible for the guitar and which were as close as possible to the Schubertian ones in both design and musical result.

Likewise I avoided technical resources of a folk character (especially certain types of «rasgueados»), which are so frequent in guitar notation, but are completely alien to the aesthetic of this music.