Six Silver Moonbeams | The Life and Times of Agustin Barrios Mangore

To anyone who wants to look deep into Barrios' works and life, this is a must-read book. It contains numerous concert program lists from which you can see what Barrios' repertoire is and how his composing style was influenced and structured by them.

The most attractive and interesting part of this book is "Barrios and Segovia", at least it is my favorite part. It was like two epic heroes engaging for supremacy together when reading this particular section. By the way, it seems that Segovia was the aggressive one who ignored Barrios' compositions and talent, laughed, "Ah, Barrios. He never could compose. Always a little of this, a little of that." On the other hand, however, Barrios had said nothing about Segovia.

Rico Stover did a great job researching for Barrios' stuffs. Here is a list about what I think about the book.

Pros:
1. Very well printed in clean characters.
2. Fine lists of Barrios' concert repertoires.
3. Rico Stover wrote the book on an ApplePlus computer in the 1990s, how amazing is that!
4. More than 200 photos, drawings and eight poems.
5. Analyzing Barrios' techniques by putting some paragraphs of his works to explain for readers and guitar players.
6. The ink has some kind of good scent that I can smell each time I open the book.

Cons:
1. As this book was originally written on a old-way-back computer, Rico Stover didn't arrange the page numbers in a more common way. Page 1 starts from the very page second to the cover. It has no roman numerals for the contents page and prologue as we see in most books today, and the page numbers continue straight forward as Chapter 1 kicks in and so on. Also, the header on the right page is always "Richard D. Stover" and the left page is always "Six Silver Moonbeams - The Life and Times of Agustin Barrios Mangore".
2. Websites printed on the bottom of back cover cannot be accessed at this moment. They are www.barriosmangore.com and www.guitarsfromtheheart.com.

Just for your information, the book was printed in Paraguay and has no price tag on it, which makes the book rare and mysterious. Because we don't always get things from the country far away from ours.

As beautiful as Barrios' music is, it will be all the more appreciated upon reading what clearly was a labor of love for Rico Stover. Incredibly well researched - over decades and across two continents - Stover masterfully chronicles the evolution and maturation of Barrios' genius, which sadly went largely unappreciated during his lifetime by the classical guitar mainstream. Thank you, Mr. Stover, for all you've done to secure Barrios' proper place among the pantheon of world renowned classical guitar performers, composers and arrangers, and for recounting his often heartbreaking story so eloquently.

The book arrived in excellant condition.