The Role of the Guitar in Selected Albanian Art-Music Repertoire: Guitar Techniques, Form, and Folklore

This research analyzes the role of the guitar in the Albanian art music repertoire by integrating three aspects that have usually been studied separately in previous scholarship: the evolution of the instrument within the European tradition, its assimilation into Albanian musical culture, and its use in composition. Rather than attempting to trace a complete and continuous history of the guitar across all Albanian-speaking territories, this article focuses on a limited corpus of four works: Rafet Rudi’s Petite Suite pour Guitare, Redi Marku’s Albanian Dance and El Castillo, and Vasil S. Tole’s Variation VII: Vals Arbëresh, in Denis Bizhga’s arrangement for guitar duo. The methodology combines historical-comparative analysis with performance-informed score analysis. All four works are examined using the same analytical categories, including formal organization, motivic development, rhythm and accentuation, tonal and modal organization, texture, idiomatic guitar techniques, timbre, and folkloric, cultural, and historical elements. The results demonstrate that there are four compositional models: timbral modernism and economy of motifs in the case of Rudi; rhythmic, percussive, and technical reinterpretation of the dance material in Albanian Dance; programmatic dramaturgy and historical memory in El Castillo; and the local adaptation of the European waltz model through Arbëresh lyricism in Tole’s work. In the chosen repertoire, the guitar serves not only as a carrier of melody but as a versatile compositional medium that combines melodic, harmonic, rhythmic, percussive-timbral, programmatic, pedagogical, and identity-forming functions. The main contribution of the research is the establishment of a link between musical form, the language of the instrument, and the transformation of cultural material. Such an approach provides a model of analysis for other studies of the guitar repertoire in the context of contemporary art music.