DESCRIPTION:
John Doan performs live from his "Homage to Fernando Sor" Concert on an original 1815 lyre guitar. In this part one of Homage to Fernando Sor No. 3 John Doan provides a back story to why Fernando Sor's approach to composing for the guitar was so revolutionary as he will contrast in Part Two with Sor's own version of the same piece.

Early guitar music was often quite simple and a popular version of the guitar starting in the 1780's was the Lyre Guitar which set an early standard for six single strings versus the five pairs of strings that the guitar commonly had up to 1800.

It is thought that women mainly played the instrument but men also played them as well.

A common practice since the 17th century was to improvise over a popular series of chords that became known as La Folias meaning literally "folly" or "madness". It became a popular framework to melodically improvise over not unlike the 12 bar chord blues.

Here are variations based on this theme for guitar or lyre guitar from around 1800.

You can find more John Doan music as well as the new album, "Homage to Fernando Sor" and "The Lost Music of Fernando Sor" at http://johndoan.com/