[Steve DeRosa]

Most contemporary players are unaware that there was an entire school of "classical archtop" guitar that flourished from about 1925-1940, and upon which Mel Bay based his method; when I was learning in the early-60's the method books bore a statement that they were in fact designed and intended to place the plectrum-style guitar "in the same class as the violin, piano, and other 'legitimate' instruments" (and if you've never hung around in certain so-called "serious" music circles it's difficult to imagine the pejorative attitude directed toward the guitar, even in its "classical" incarnation)...

FYI, in its original form the classical archtop movement drew from the earlier American school of classical guitar exemplified by the likes of William Foden, Vahdah Olcott-Bickford, et al. (rather than that of Segovia and his Spanish contemporaries, which would become the accepted concert style and instrument), as well as the parlor, "light classical," and vaudeville music of late-19th/early 20th-century America. In addition to transcriptions of well-known classical repertoire (such as the Chopin adaptation presented here), a number of guitarists of the day produced original compositions in a late-Romantic style - music which, while largely out of fashion today, still retains its technical and artistic merit eighty or more years later. Bear in mind that the original L-5 archtop guitar was in fact envisioned as a "classical" instrument both tonally and visually, intended as a part of the mandolin orchestras of the late vaudeville era and designed for hall-filling acoustic projection in the days before electronic amplification; were it not for Segovia's sensational American debut in 1928 the plectrum-style archtop guitar, with its violin-family looks and construction, may well have become the accepted "classical" guitar - and I'd love to hear this piece on a nice old 18" non-cut Gibson Super 400/300, Epiphone Emperor/Super Deluxe, D'Angelico New Yorker, or Stromberg Master 400, with their broader dynamic range and superior string-to-string response...