One magical summer, I was privileged to study in a master class with Emilio Pujol (1886-1980) in the charming hilltop agricultural town of Cervera, Spain. The class proved to be a life-changing musical experience. I'll never forget how the first student to play for Maestro Pujol was stopped after the first three notes of Llobet's arrangement of "El Testament d'Amelia". Maestro Pujol said, "While it's true that these first three notes are the same note and have the same value, you must say something with them!" That statement altered every note I played from then on.

Emilio Pujol was a revered maestro in every respect. When I met him at his annual master class in Cervera, Spain around 1974, he was no longer able to play due to fairly advanced Parkinson's disease. Not surprisingly, to demonstrate a musical point for his students, he would sing in solfeo [solfeggio] syllables. This was done with absolute accuracy and musicality; in retrospect, I realized that this skill enabled him to remain effective as a teacher practically to the end of his life.

Maestro Pujol wore hearing aides in both ears, the type with fine braided wires running from the earpieces to a battery box and amplifier with a volume control wheel. While he was teaching one-on-one during the master class, the Maestro's assistant, Hector Garcia, would sit beside him and control the volume level on the battery/amplifier box, keeping the annoying hearing aide whistle or feedback under close control. Sr. Garcia also acted as a Spanish-English translator when necessary, and personally coached the less accomplished students in the class. At the gala closing concert for the master class, Hector again sat at the Maestro's side and monitored his hearing aide volume. When a student played Pujol's arrangement of a charming Catalonian folk tune in a note-perfect rendition, the Maestro unexpectedly instigated a standing ovation, ripping both hearing aides from his ears as he rose from his seat.

Maestro Pujol must have been in his mid-80s then. During the class in Cervera, fellow student guitarist Frederick Cook rented a bicycle for the month. Frederick was an accomplished guitarist and one of Pujol's last regular private students in Barcelona; it was also Frederick who first told me about the master class in Cervera. One evening, Frederick was riding his bike when he came across Pujol and his wife Maria on their way to supper. As a joke, Frederick asked Maestro Pujol if he would like to ride his bicycle and Pujol took him seriously! He begged Maria to let him ride it saying, "It will be fine, Frederico will run along right beside me." Señora Pujol would have none of it! She flatly refused to allow the diminutive Maestro to get on the bike. It was a good thing too; her stubborn resistance may have been responsible for our beloved Maestro being around to teach the class the following year.

You may know that Emilio Pujol advocated playing without nails on the right hand as his teacher, the great Francísco Tárrega, had for the last seven years of his life. In fact, Pujol wrote a comprehensive book called The Dilemma of the Sound of the Guitar [Ricordi 1960] which discussed the nails vs. no nails question in detail. During the Cerverea master class, equal numbers of students decided to go in opposing directions with this important detail; i.e.- a few who normally played with nails decided to cut them off, and some who played without nails decided to grow them back! It seemed to me that either course of action was a drastic and counterproductive measure to take during the class itself. I have such large hands and proportionately-sized fingertips that I can't play without nails, so I never considered the option.

Pujol would bring his own vijuela, the one he had constructed after an extant 16th century instrument exhibited in the Musée Jacquemart-André in Paris [see http://perso.wanadoo.es/jcayala2/page4.htm] and would loan it to gifted students at the master class for practice and performance. I was fortunate in being able to photograph this instrument as I shared a pensión with a young woman to whom it had been entrusted.

Regrettably, I did not return to Cervera. Instead, the next summer I took my Catalan fiancé to the U.S. to meet my parents, and then the following summer, now married, I went to the José Tomás Master class in Alicante, Spain. I saw Maestro Pujol once again at a gathering in Barcelona where he was honored in a concert of his works that was broadcast live on the radio. He died in November of 1980 but will live on in the memory and musicality of scores of his students.