Lagrima Study Guide: How to Make Lagrima More Expressive

Why Lagrima is not a beginner piece

In this lesson we’ll show you how to transform Tarrega’s Lagrima from the right notes at the right time into a beautiful expressive piece of music. This lesson, along with the free Study Guide that accompanies it, will help you elevate this piece into music. Often teachers and students describe Lagrima as a beginner piece. But if you follow all the tips we offer below, you’ll see just how challenging this music is. But it’s music worth the challenge. Let’s dive in.

Get your free Lagrima Study Guide here.

Play the melody in isolation.

Take the top voice and play it as if you’re playing the top part of a string quartet. Play it as beautifully as you can, with whatever fingering is easiest, even if it’s a different fingering. Then you set this idea, the shaping the tone, in your ear with all the other notes together.

The middle voice, the open B’s, tend to get overplayed and are too loud. That means the melody gets confused in the listener’s ear. One way to do this is to exaggerate the softness of the middle voice. Brush the second string to create a very soft sound, like you’re not touching it at all. It’s supposed to be supporting the harmony, but shouldn’t be vying for attention.

The barre in measures 5-6 makes this challenge of voicing even more challenging. Playing each voice in isolation can really help smooth out the top line. One key is that we keep sustain on the top line by keeping the fourth finger down, even when shifting. You can practice it out of time to sustain the melody and keep the inner voice soft.

In measures 7-8 the melody is a bit syncopated and off the beat.

Is this piece rhythmic or lyrical?

Dance pieces are great examples of pieces that are rhythmic. And it’s really important to know where the natural stresses are in rhythmic music. For instance, in 3/4 we tend to give a slight accent to beat 1 in rhythmic music.

However, lyrical pieces may not have that same stress. They may exhibit something called tempo rubato instead. We’ll come to that in a moment. But, for now, it’s important to realize that you don’t always have to give an intentional stress to the first beat. Doing so leads to what I call “beaty” playing, which is predictable and not very musical.

But what if we instead follow the contour of the melody? For instance, here in Lagrima we can get louder as the music ascends in pitch, and get softer as it descends. This adds a musical shape to the line that is much more convincing. It will immediately transform the music into something more nuanced and with breath.

And in a lyrical piece we can accompany this dynamic shaping with tempo rubato. You can think of tempo rubato like this. The music moves in waves, speeding up and slowing down in an organic way. So as we get louder we might speed up a bit, and then as we get softer slow down a bit. Suddenly six beats become one idea. This is phrasing in a nutshell.

String squeaks

String noise is an inherent part of the instrument and is not necessarily a bad thing. It’s a bad thing when it takes away from the music. In this piece we have a line that ascends on the fourth string, and it’s really prone to string squeaks. How do we avoid that?

It involves lifting fingers as we shift and changing fingers. And you might think, if we lift then we cut the note short. True. But, we’re trying to draw attention to the melody, not the bass. And so we won’t really miss it.

Section 2

Non-chordal tones

At the beginning of the second section we have two non-chordal tones that can really help make the top line very expressive. A non-chordal tone is just a note that does not belong to a particular chord.

For example, we shift from the key of E Major in the first section to E minor here. And the first chord in bar 9 has all of the notes of E minor (E-G-B). In fact, all of the first four notes are from the E minor chord, except for the C on the first string. Likewise, the chord on beat 1 in bar 10 is a B7 chord, but the G that follows is a non-chordal tone. And if we work to bring out those non-chordal tones, it can really make that line more expressive.

So we might lean on those notes by playing them a little louder—perhaps with a rest stroke—to help us do so. We can apply some vibrato to the C. And we can even use tenuto (holding on to the notes a little longer than their written duration) for both notes. All of these techniques give those notes time and space to be special.

Voicing, round 2

In measure 10 we can remember our voicing again and make the inner voice of thirds softer. The melody is the high E that rings for the whole measure. So we can draw attention to that note and allow the inner notes to sound like an aside played by a different part of the string quartet. Play those thirds in isolation with dynamic shape. Doing so will add depth to the music.

And the syncopation too!

And in measure 11 we see the same offset or syncopated melody like we did in measures 7-8. These melody notes are played on the “and” of the beat, on the upbeat. To really draw attention both to the syncopation and the melody notes, do your best to sustain each note in as legato a way as possible.

Don’t forget to take care of the inner voices

Measure 12 again has an inner voice like measure 10. Just because the inner voice is moving does not mean they need to be banged out. Playing them softer and more subtly will add depth to the line.

In measure 13 we can allow the melody to crescendo, following the shape of the line like we talked about above. And in measure 14 we can bring out the non-chordal tone, which is the first note (D) of this A minor line. You might split the bass and treble notes by delaying the rest stroke on the D to really draw attention to it.

Creating variety on repeats

When I play material for the first time, I like to play this music fairly straight. Keep it nuanced. There is a lot of beauty inherent to the music as is.

But when we repeat material for a second time, we might play with the listener’s expectation a little bit. We may place emphasis on a particular note the second time, just like we do with speech. Use time, color, dynamics to change the phrasing slightly. The same is true when we return to the first section with the D.C. al Fine at the end. Make the very last iteration of the opening material to take your biggest liberties.

Conclusion

All of these elements really elevate this music from a beginner piece to a beautiful, expressive piece of music. This music has depth, and all of the things we have discussed here will allow you to play this music for years to come.

Don’t forget to download a free PDF of the Study Guide to Lagrima.