ERNEST SHAND'S PREMIER CONCERTO POUR GUITARE, Op.

48:
Reconstruction of a Major Chamber Work of the Late Nineteenth Century

by Stanley Yates

© 1997 by Stanley Yates. All Rights Reserved.

Introduction

On February 7th, 1896, Ernest Shand was to perform Giuliani's Second Guitar Concerto with
string quartet at the Glasgow Arts Club. At the rehearsal for this performance, the concert's
organizer, Allan Macbeth, suggested Shand add his own concerto to the program—the Premier
Concerto pour Guitare, Op. 48. Thus was premiered not only a major chamber work by the
foremost English guitarist of the nineteenth century, and the first concertante guitar work to be
written by an English composer, but perhaps the most substantial guitar chamber work of the
romantic period.

Likely written in 1895, Shand's Op. 48 was conceived not as an orchestral concerto, but as a
chamber concerto scored for guitar with string quartet. Although unusual for the time, the work
was not without precedent. For example, Fernando Sor's Fantasia Concertante (now lost),
performed by Sor in London on several occasions between 1816 and 1817, was scored for guitar
with string trio. Similarly, the three concerti Opp. 30, 36 and 70 of Mauro Giuliani exist in
chamber as well as orchestral versions. However, Shand's 1896 performance, his only known
performance of the Concerto, took place with piano accompaniment only—the cellist haven fallen
ill before the concert—and it was in a version for guitar with piano accompaniment that the work
was published that same year by Schott & Co. The original string parts have not been recovered—
a circumstance which led to my reconstructing the string score.

Ernest Shand (1868-1924)1

As the preeminent guitarist of late nineteenth-century England, Shand followed such illustrious
figures as Fernando Sor and Giulio Regondi. Unlike his predecessors, however, he appears to
have been the first English-born guitar virtuoso, albeit active at a time when interest in guitar
concerts had all but vanished—in Victorian England the banjo enjoyed greater popularity than did
the guitar, and even the prodigious Regondi eventually relied upon the concertina for a living.
Shand, in fact, achieved celebrity not as a guitar virtuoso, but as one of the best-known "variety"
performers of the English music-halls. Nevertheless, he continued to perform and compose for
the guitar, his opus numbers eventually reaching 220.2

1
Biographical entries on Shand are found in Domingo Prat, Diccionario de Guitarristas (Buenos Aires, 1934), p. 294; Philip J. Bone,
Guitar and Mandolin (London: Schott, 1954), pp. 327-29; and A. P. Sharpe, The Story of the Spanish Guitar (London: Clifford Essex,
1963), pp. 55-6. The standard modern writings dealing with Shand are Stewart W. Button's The Guitar in England 1800-1924, Ph.D.
dissertation, University of Surrey, 1984 (published in the series Outstanding Dissertations in Music from British Universities, ed. John
Caldwell, New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1989), and "Ernest Shand: An Introduction to His Life and Music," Guitar Review
No. 106, Summer 1996.

2
Actually, Shand's opus numbers appear to break-off at Op. 130 Adieu, resuming at Op. 200 with Au coin de feu, and therefore comprise
around 150 works.
The Premier Concerto Pour Guitare Op. 48

In December of 1896, ten months after Shand's only known performance of the work, Schott &
Co. published a small subscription run of the Premier Concerto in a version for guitar with piano
accompaniment. The title page reads as follows:

à LADY CLAYTON/Ier CONCERTO/POUR GUITARE/avec Accompagnement

de/PIANO/ PAR /ERNEST SHAND./OP.48/Prix 10/6/Propriété pour tous
pays/LONDON/SCHOTT & Co. 157 &159, REGENT STREET, W.

The piano part is headed "PREMIER CONCERTO POUR GUITARE ET QUATOUR OU GUITARE ET
PIANO," while the guitar part has the slightly more detailed appellation "PREMIER CONCERTO
POUR GUITARE AVEC ACCOMPT. POUR (DEUX VIOLINS, VIOLE ET VIOLONCELLE.) OU PIANO."
Among the twenty-eight subscribers listed in the publication are the work's dedicatee Lady
Clayton, Allan Macbeth (organizer of the Glasgow Arts Club concerts), the guitarists A[lbert] F.
Cramer and Arthur Froane, and the publishing company Messrs. Barnes & Mullins.

Despite the extremely limited dissemination afforded by such a small run, the work did not
completely disappear from the repertoire—at least two performers presented the work with
piano accompaniment during the 1940's. The first was the American guitarist Vahdah Olcott
Bickford who gave a performance of the concerto for the American Guitar Society in Los Angeles
in 1947 accompanied by her husband Zarh Myron Bickford.3 The second guitarist was a young
Julian Bream, who on several occasions performed the concerto with piano accompaniment:
under the auspices of the Philharmonic Society of the Guitar at the Alliance Hall, London on July
17th 1947, at a Social and Athletic Club in Hampton, on March 31st, 1948, and as a student at the
Royal College of Music, London.4 A charming unattributed account of the first of Bream's
performances appeared transatlantically in Guitar Review in 1948:

An important guitar event of the summer took place in Westminster on July 17th, when
Julian Bream gave a special recital of guitar solos under the sponsorship of the P.S.G...The
"piece de resistance" of the evening, from a standpoint of novelty, was a twenty-five-
minute-long concerto by Ernest Shand, late British composer for the guitar. The work,
entitled "Premier Concerto pour Guitare," was originally written for guitar and strings, but
the manuscripts of the other instruments have been lost, according to Wilfred Appleby,
Editor of the P.S.G. Bulletin, and in 1896, was published by Schott and Co. Ltd., arranged
for guitar and piano. During the playing of the Shand concerto, an amplifying apparatus
was fixed to Bream's guitar. Mr. Appleby says it was described by the man who developed it
as "a form of contact microphone which picks up the sound direct, so preserving the
natural tone." Bream gave a brilliant performance. He was assisted at the piano by
Reginald Evans. Proceeds of the concert went into a fund to be used for the furthering of
Julian's career as a guitarist.

And of the 1948 Hampton performance, by Wilfred Appleby in the BMG journal:

3
Button, 1996, p.4.

4
Button, 1989., pp. 165-166. Button cites "May 1948" as the date of Bream's Hampton performance at the Coys Social and Atheletic Club;
Wilfred Appleby cites March 3 (see note 7, below).

YATES—Shand Concerto (page 2 of 9)

 I wonder how many times Ernest Shand's Concerto for guitar has been performed since its composer first played it
at the Glasgow Arts Club in February 1895? Last year it was played at Los Angeles, USA by Vahdah Olcott Bickford
with Zarh M. Bickford at the piano; I played the second movement at a Cheltenham Guitar Circle meeting.

At a concert on March 31, 1948, at Hampton the full Concerto was performed by Julian Bream, with Reginald
Evans at the piano. It evoked great applause and guitarists present told me that it held them spellbound. It is
certainly the finest music ever written for the guitar by a British composer. Unfortunately the manuscripts of the
orchestral parts have been lost. Owing to the expense of publication they were never printed—only a piano
accompaniment. The stringed instruments would be much kinder to the guitar than the piano and I hope that it
will possible to re-arrange the orchestral parts from the piano accompaniment.5

Style and Form

Stylistically, Shand's Op. 48 is unique as a guitar offering. In it we find not only the almost
inevitable influence of Giuliani (especially in passage work and cadenzas), together with a
chromatic harmonic style more reminiscent of Regondi (sequences of parallel diminished and
half diminished harmonies, distant and fleeting modulations, etc.), but also the hymn-like
"chorales" and popular melodies of the Victorian music hall. Although referring to the standard
formal design of the three-movement classic-romantic concerto, Shand was less interested in
rigorously-held formal design than with expressive melody and dramatic character—pathos,
nostalgia, sentimentality and, above all, melodrama. Shand's structures are therefore designed
around thematic statements which although defined by large cadential gestures, cadenzas, and
contrasting key areas do not strictly adhere to textbook formal design.

The opening movement, Largo, is a loosely-constructed sonata formin A-major which, after the
introduction, contrasts a chordal hymn-like sub-dominant first theme in D-major with a popular-
sounding two-part second theme group in A-major (with an interjection in Ab-major) (fig. 1):

Figure 1. Largo: a) Theme 1 (mm. 17-22); b) Theme 2b (mm. 47-50).

5
Wilfred M. Appleby, BMG, June 1948, p. 181.

YATES—Shand Concerto (page 3 of 9)

Developmental presentations of these themes are found in E-major, Eb-major, B-minor and A-
major before being combined in C-major—the opening theme in the strings and the second theme
in the guitar (m. 109) (fig. 2):

Figure 2. Largo: combination of themes 1 and 2b (mm. 109-111).

Lacking a forthright thematic recapitulation, the movement closes in the home key of A-major,
though not before a dolce reference to the pervasive second theme before the final measures.

The second movement Serenade is an ABA form prefaced with a chromatic chorale-style Adagio
introduction in E-minor. The opening gives way to a sentimental string melody, Andante
grazioso, in the parallel major key, accompanied by repeated guitar chords (fig. 3):

Figure 3. Serenade: string melody (mm. 35-38).

Shand takes a motive from this melody (at m. 45) to introduce the Meno mosso central section of
the movement, which itself is based upon the pitches of this same motive (fig. 4):

YATES—Shand Concerto (page 4 of 9)

Figure 4. Serenade: melodic motive (mm. 53-58).

In the da capo, the guitar accompanies with arpeggiated passage-work, eventually providing an
active counterpoint to the melody in the strings before taking the string melody to end the
movement.

At 224 measures in length (compared with the 125 measures of the first movement), the final
movement, Allegro ma non troppo, carries the main weight of the concerto. The movement
conforms quite well to a sonata-rondo form, despite an abundance of thematic material
(including a fugata which substitutes for a central development section). Following an
introduction, the first theme-group comprises two main themes in A-major, both of which refer
to the opening motive of the solo line from the introduction. Although the first theme is never
heard again, the second reappears in the tonic key marking two further important structural
points in the movement—at the end of the exposition and at the end of the recapitulation (fig. 5):

Figure 5. Allegro ma non troppo: Theme 1b (mm. 24-28).

The second theme-group begins in the sub-dominant key D-major with a popular-sounding
melody marked Più lento (fig 6):

YATES—Shand Concerto (page 5 of 9)

Figure 6. Allegro ma non troppo: Theme 2 Più lento (mm. 44-47).

The accompaniment motive of this melody forms the rhythmic shape of a third theme—a chordal
theme presented three times (in A-major, D-major, and E-major) with increasing interaction
from the strings at each appearance (fig. 7):

Figure 7. Allegro ma non troppo, Theme 3: a) A-major (mm. 56-59); b) D-major (mm. 69-72); c) E-major (mm. 85-88).

YATES—Shand Concerto (page 6 of 9)

Following a return to the movement's principal theme (see fig. 5, above), and a marked cadential
gesture and cadenza that signal the end of the exposition, the expected development section is
replaced by a four-voice fugata in the parallel-minor key, a-minor (fig. 8):

Figure 8. Allegro ma non troppo: fugata (mm. 116-120).

Following the initial fugal exposition, the subject appears in rhythmic augmentation and
sequence against which the guitar and then the viola (in my realization) supply passage-work in
sixteenth notes (fig. 9):

Figure 9. Allegro ma non troppo: fugata (mm. 136-139).

After a recapitulation comprising the literal restatement of the second principal theme (and in
the original keys—A-major, D-major and E-major), a chordal presentation of the fugue subject,
and final return to the principal theme in the tonic A-major, soloist and strings unite in a
concluding unison flourish and Presto to bring the Concerto to a close (fig. 10):

YATES—Shand Concerto (page 7 of 9)

Figure 10. Allegro ma non troppo: ending (mm. 215-224).

When accompanying, the strings generally are set piano or pianissimo in a simple homophonic
style at or below the sounding pitch of the guitar, though dialogue textures and textures in which
the guitar plays an accompaniment role to active material in the strings are also employed. The
guitar writing is of a relatively moderate technical level (somewhat below the level found in the
concerto writing of Giuliani for instance), combining chordal or intervallic texture with single-
line passage work (slower melodic lines are often reinforced in octaves). Shand employs no rapid
right-hand arpeggios or tremolos, and the moderate tempi employed ensure that all passage-
work is manageable—his invention generally relies upon melodic and harmonic detail rather than
sheer virtuosity. Short cadenzas, present in each movement, rely quite heavily on chromatic
scales and sequences of diminished-seventh formulae and are sometimes repeated literally
during the course of a movement (perhaps Shand intended to vary these in performance) (fig.
11):

Figure 11. a) Largo: cadenza (m. 15); b) Allegro ma non troppo: cadenza (mm. 67-68).

YATES—Shand Concerto (page 8 of 9)

Reconstruction

For the most part, the reconstruction of four string parts from the piano version is
straightforward, the assignment of thematic, motivic and accompanimental material being easily
determined through tessitura. However, since some concession to the pianistic idiom was made
in the original arrangement, the piano part does not always conform to a four-voice texture, nor
to the tessitura of a string quartet. The very opening measure of the work, for example, presents
pitches at a third below the lowest note possible on the cello—a situation resulting from the
idiomatic octave-doubling in the left-hand of the piano. At other times, even though a passage
could be literally realized in four strings parts, it has been necessary to deduce the string original
from what obviously is a pianistic equivalent. For example, passages in which strings would play
rapid repeated notes are often realized on the piano as a rapid alternation between pitches (fig.
12):

Figure 12. Largo mm. 78-80.

For the sake of objectivity, and since Shand's original (as represented by the piano score)
suggests utility rather than virtuosity, special string techniques such as harmonics, pizzicato, or
tremolando have generally been avoided in the reconstruction. Double-stops have sometimes
been employed for completion of the harmony or to render a powerful sonority, but only when
fully appropriate to the harmonic and textural context—not simply because of the number of
notes present in the piano score.

A substantial and stylistically unique guitar chamber work, melodically and harmonically
expressive, virtuosic yet playable, Ernest Shand's Premier Concerto pour Guitare is a neglected
monument of the late nineteenth-century guitar repertoire. With the forthcoming publication of
the Concerto in an Urtext edition of the original Schott publication for piano and guitar along
with the reconstructed string score, the work will perhaps at last occupy a position in the
repertoire it deserves.

YATES—Shand Concerto (page 9 of 9)