Word: fingerboard
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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DIED. NARCISCO YEPES, 69, classical Spanish guitarist who redesigned his beloved instrument, adding four strings, to accommodate his technical prowess; of cancer; in Murcia, Spain. Fans took to Yepes' theme song to Rene Clement's Forbidden Games (1951), but his peers never accepted his 10-stringed fingerboard--despite the enhanced resonance under his deft touch...
...proponent of new music, Fisk brought works ranging from Scarlatti to Rochberg to his program. In doing so, he demonstrated the guitar's unique position as a middle ground between the harpsichord and the violin; the guitar's strings are plucked like the harpsichord's, but it has a fingerboard like a violin. As a result, classical guitarists can create a wide variety of effects culled from the repertoires of both instruments...
Throughout four Scarlatti keyboard sonatas (in D Major, G Major, E minor and A Major), Fisk's concentration on the fingerboard and frets never lapsed. He did take some liberty with the first two sonatas by allowing for dynamic contrasts and a ringing bass line that would be impossible on a harpsichord. Fisk might have expanded these liberties to include a thinning of the sonatas' ornamentation, whose technical difficulty sometimes weighed down his otherwise ebullient accounts. In the E minor sonata, Fisk allowed himself to be tossed easily between its simple lines with more delicacy than one would expect from...