Music CD Love Songs for Guitar, performed by Terrence Farrell

Featured Album

Love Songs for Guitar

Terrence Farrell * Guitarist

Listen to MP3 excerpts from Love Songs for Guitar:
	Danny Boy Irish Folk Song	Santa Lucia Neapolitan Song
	Song of India Nicholay Rimsky-Korsakov

	1.	Memory Andrew Lloyd Weber
	2.	Danny Boy Irish Folk Song
	3.	Somewhere My Love Maurice Jarre
	4.	Santa Lucia Neapolitan Song
	5.	Estrellita Manuel Ponce
	6.	Mattinata Ruggero Leoncavallo
	7.	Dolce Italia Terrence Farrell

8.	Liebestraum Franz Liszt
9.	Elegy Terrence Farrell
10.	Lullaby Alexsandr Ivanov-Kramskoi
11.	Song of Sheherezade Nicholay Rimsky-Korsakov
12.	Song of India Nicholay Rimsky-Korsakov
13.	Scarborough Faire English Folk Song
14.	Suite Espanola, no. 1 Isaac Albeniz

They say the Chinese have five different words to define various kinds of love. We in the Western world tend to modify with adjectives: romantic love, brotherly/sisterly love, love for our newborn, love of country. Gathered here are some of my favorite love songs. They come from a wide variety of backgrounds, from many nations and different cultures.

The most tender reflections of love are reserved for our infants as rendered in the seldom heard Lullaby by the Russian Aleksandr Ivanov-Kramskoi (1912-1973). When we love from afar we can often confuse love for an individual with love of place. Danny Boy and Scarborough Faire are good examples. In their sweet nostalgia is it the sense of place we miss as much as the individual? Often place can hardly be removed from the state of "being in love"; it is the whole effect that we love. Danny Boy has become an anthem of the overseas Irish for their homeland. Santa Lucia sets a mood, of place as much as anything else. Fairs have always been a magical place where many wondrous things are to be seen, smelled, sampled and experienced. With its expectancy, sights, sounds and smells, a fair is here today and gone tomorrow. It has no past and casts no shadow into the future ... fertile ground for falling in love in Scarborough or anywhere.

We are enthralled by things exotic. Nothing says that better than the two evocative songs by Rimsky-Korsakov. In the song The Prince and the Princess, from the opera Song of Scheherezade, one can sense a fabulous garden, fragrant with jasmine and with pools of shimmering liquid moonbeams. In the Song of India you can see the diaphanous flow of women in elegant saris. On a recent trip to the Taj Majal I was absolutely enchanted with the most feminine of woman's attire. Elegant, flowing drapes of cloth from women obviously poor (no shoes, weathered features), but looking beautiful with an inner radiance. I am reminded that beauty, fortunately, has no price.

Somewhere My Love (Lara's Theme from Doctor Zhivago) epitomizes the sentiment that yes, there is eternal love, yes we can find it, and yes, if we really believe we can attain it. It is important to remember, however, that it is a state of grace and we can be, and often are, our own worst enemy...

Although often played, possibly even overused, the song Memory remains a great work of today. As an instrumentalist, I find that words are not necessary for the work to create a tremendous mood. The two compositions that I wrote don't have words per se. They convey my mind's eye thought, thoughts that defy the precision of language. In Sweet Italy (Dolce Italia) I have semi-imitated the mandolin to convey that utterly charming place where the sun shines down on a land filled with song, where great food and drink are a birthright and where on a summer's day the word dolce (sweet) can gain a wondrous new meaning. In sharp contrast, the Elegy is my adieu to a great friend and musical guide. Son of an Italian tailor, he was a great flute player and connoisseur of life. Although he could be a real devil here on earth, he is now, I am certain, playing with the angels.

As a parting thought, it is only fitting to mention something about Love's Dream (Liebestraum), for dreaming is that ephemeral state where one's psyche creates its own version of that most personal and unique of all feelings ... love.

Terrence Farrell

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