The Tradition of Illusion: Guitar Arrangement as a Post-Canonical Patchwork

This paper proposes an underpinning terminology for scholarly discussions of contemporary arrangement practices in the field of classical guitar performance. The introduction provides some historical foundations for the topic, aiming to present the roots of different approaches and methods in the work of important guitar arrangers. The paper continues by contextualizing arrangement processes within linguistics and language philosophy, discussing the topic of translation, and giving an overview of relevant terminologies. The centre of the paper is the theoretical investigation of arrangement and the identification of translating acts related to musical space, instrumental choreography, texture, timbre, or a combination of those, demonstrated in various examples by contemporary guitar arrangers.