A brief history of Tecla

Founded by Brian Jeffery in 1976, Tecla started with an edition of Sor’s then newly-discovered Seguidillas, still in print today, as catalogue number 01 (then 001, and now 0001). There are now more than 200 published items. For a time, Tecla was based in the USA, but it is now in England, but with sales worldwide and prices in euros and US dollars (as well as pounds).

Why Tecla? In Spanish, tecla means a key on a keyboard, both a musical keyboard and a typewriter keyboard. So when I chose the name for the firm, music and literature were both covered. Also, at that time it was the name of a tea-shop owned by friends of mine in Mexico City, where artists, writers and musicians met.

Early music players will be familiar with the word tecla from the 16th century vihuela books which spoke of “arpa, tecla o vihuela”, whereby they took the part (tecla, a key) for the whole (the keyboard, which today would usually be the teclado).

BJ