Dr. Brian Jeffery graduated with First Class Honours in Modern Languages from Christ Church Oxford and a doctorate from St. Andrews, and he holds a postgraduate degree in musicology from Oxford. He taught at St. Andrews, at UC Berkeley, and at UC Santa Barbara. In 1997 he held the Curtis Mayes Orpheus Chair in Musicology at Florida State University, Tallahassee. He concentrates on textual analysis of early sources and the production of modern editions.
He is the director of Tecla Editions, the author of the book Fernando Sor, Composer and Guitarist, and has published a re-engraved eleven-volume edition of the New Complete Works for Guitar of Sor, the Complete Works of Giuliani, and many other authoritative editions of literature and music. In 2017 he published a new book España de la guerra: the Spanish political and military songs of the war in Spain 1808 to 1814, which catalogues and describes for the first time the anti-French songs of that period and their musical scores, and discusses their place in the politics and in the propaganda of that time.
He played lute and guitar in many concerts including a Wigmore Hall solo recital and is aware of the needs of performing musicians as well as those of researchers.
BOOKS BY BRIAN JEFFERY
Sor’s Grand Solo, from seven strings to six, a new book in December 2024 about Sor’s famous piece often called Grand Solo. The book explores the earliest currently known versions of the piece and discusses which version a player of today might wish to play and why.
España de la guerra: the Spanish political and military songs of the war in Spain 1808 to 1814
Fernando Sor, Composer and Guitarist
ITEMS EDITED BY BRIAN JEFFERY
English romantic songs and ballads
Sor: New Complete Works for Guitar
Renaissance popular music (lute music adapted for guitar)
Six Elizabethan Duets (lute music adapted for guitar)
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Here are recent articles by Brian Jeffery in reverse date order (newest first):
“Sor’s Grand Solo: from seven strings to six” published in Soundboard 49.4 for December 2023. This article demonstrates that the three earliest known sources of Sor’s Grand Solo are for seven-string guitar, and it goes on to show how that earliest known version was then adapted for six-string guitar in the versions of Pierre-Jean Porro and of Meissonnier. It also considers which version a player might wish to play.
“What, precisely, does it mean to say that an editor of music is a professional? And does it matter?” This article considers the activity of editing music and what its professional training and certification might be.
“The ancient and honorable profession of textual scholarship, and the place of music editions within that profession” published in Soundboard in March 2023. This is a view of the field of textual scholarship and within that field the making of music editions.
“Sor’s Allegro in the Spanish style, Natalie Houzé, and key dates in European cultural and political history” published in Soundboard in June 2022. This article considers how it came about that Sor in about 1830, the year of the July Revolution in France, composed this Allegro in the Spanish popular style as a movement in his duet op. 54 bis.
“The fiftieth anniversary of Tecla Editions” published in Soundboard in 2021 in which Brian Jeffery pays tribute to the wonderful people especially at Canterbury and Oxford from whom and with whom he learned how to analyse texts and make editions of them.
