Fernando Sor: The “BHM” Theme and Variations (TECLA 0348) as a printed item

This present set of variations, apart from a work in a manuscript in a private collection which is not available for consultation, is as far as I know the only previously unknown work of stature by Sor for guitar that has surfaced in the forty-nine years that have passed since I published the catalogue of Sor’s works in my book Fernando Sor Composer and Guitarist in 1977 and since I published the Complete Works for Guitar of Sor in facsimile in 1977 and 1982 and the New Complete Works for Guitar of Sor in re-engraved form in 2004. The variations are found in their original form only in one currently known source, namely the manuscript Mus 722-24 of the Biblioteca Histórica Municipal of Madrid (BHM), in which they are item 11 and in which they are anonymous and without title. Although the work is anonymous in the BHM manuscript, we can nevertheless attribute it firmly to Sor because it also exists in an arrangement called Etudes et Variations Espagnolles par Sors made by the French publisher Pierre-Jean Porro and published by him in one of the issues of his Journal de Guitare.

So, to be very clear, we have this work in two versions: first the version of the BHM manuscript which we have no reason to suppose is not a faithful copy of a genuine work by Sor; and we also have an arrangement of the work made by Porro probably in about 1805. This present edition presents the work in what is as far as we know its original form, that is to say solely from the BHM manuscript, here re-engraved for the first time as far as I know.

Owners of my edition of the New Complete Works for Guitar of Sor in eleven volumes (TECLA 1200) may wish to purchase this new printed edition of these BHM Variations (or purchase it in digital form and print it out) and add it to their copy of Volume 2 of the New Complete Works for Guitar to be placed among the works without opus number.

Alternatively they may wish to purchase the Supplement 2025 of the New Complete Works for Guitar which contains these same BHM Variations and five other previously unknown works by Sor or associated with Sor, thus bringing their set of the New Complete Works for Guitar of Sor up to date.