Giacomo Copiello, an Italian classical guitarist, has spent nearly ten years exploring the eight-string Brahms Guitar through performances, transcriptions, and research. In 2016, guitarist Paul Galbraith gave him a 1995 David Rubio Brahms Guitar, which has since become central to his musical work. The album Lieder, which he released in 2023 on the Stradivarius label, includes arrangements of Schubert’s songs for solo Brahms Guitar and Mendelssohn’s Songs without Words for guitar duo performed with Michele Tedesco. These arrangements, published by Bergmann Edition, form part of Copiello’s wider initiative to extend the instrument’s repertoire.

Giacomo Copiello

Copiello’s introduction to the guitar came almost by chance. After experimenting with drums and piano, he learned his first guitar chords from his mother. Drawn to rock music, he began writing simple songs with MIDI interfaces and staging imaginary concerts with friends. “At that age, music was a wonderfully unruly game,” he recalled. What fascinated him most about the guitar was its immediacy, the physical pleasure of touching the strings and making sound.

His knowledge of the guitar deepened while he studied at the Conservatory in Vicenza, where he encountered polyphony and was introduced to different methods of making music. As a result, his musical outlook broadened, and, as he put it, he found “a different instrument inside the instrument which he had already thought he knew.”

When Copiello first encountered the Brahms Guitar, he was immediately attracted by its distinctive sound. With eight strings instead of the usual six, the instrument offers an extended range and new tonal possibilities. He vividly recalls his first impression: “If I close my eyes, I remember its smell, the feel of thicker strings beneath my fingers, and a sound that was both velvety and remarkably dense.”

What fascinated him most was the instrument’s transparency. “The sound seems to open around the instrument, not simply come from it,” he explained. He links this quality to the image of the “loggia di Delft,” referenced by guitarist Laura Mondiello on her album La guitare et l’organiste. For Copiello, it evokes “looking through an imaginary window towards sounds that do not strictly belong to the instrument,” capturing his fascination with the guitar’s sound world.

Yet adapting to the instrument took time. “My attraction to that sound was immediate. My connection with the instrument itself was not,” he recalled. Despite the challenges, the sound kept inspiring him. “Whenever I struggled, the sound seemed to take me by the hand.” His study of historical guitars has also shaped his conception of sound. With encouragement from his teacher Stefano Grondona, he examined nineteenth- and early twentieth-century instruments, such as those made by Enrique García and Santos Hernández. From this, he learned that different instruments demand different ways of listening and that the notion of a beautiful sound is deeply personal. He cites Paco de Lucía, Andrés Segovia, and Jimi Hendrix, whose varied approaches to sound are equally convincing.

Schubert’s Der Wanderer (arranged for guitar by Copiello)

Copiello’s transcription method has increasingly been shaped by the human voice, particularly by the natural rhythms of speaking, breathing, and intonation. This concern is at the heart of Lieder, a work that combines Schubert’s songs, originally composed for voice and piano, with Mendelssohn’s Songs without Words, written for solo piano.

“For me, the voice is perhaps the most human instrument of all, and possibly the root of musical expression itself,” Copiello explained. His interest extends beyond a singing tone to the natural rhythms of speech, breathing, and even the delivery of a line recited on stage.

This fascination is central to Lieder. When arranging Schubert’s songs, Copiello sought to preserve the original texts’ expression. Although the words are no longer heard, they continue to shape the breathing, rhythm, and direction of each phrase. Mendelssohn’s Songs without Words approaches vocal expression differently, using the piano to suggest singing without words. In his arrangements for guitar duo, Copiello explores how to express this quality on the guitar.

The album ends with the second movement of Schubert’s Death and the Maiden string quartet, based on his earlier song of the same name. Copiello views this as another instance of the music being transformed, from the song to the string quartet and then to the version for two guitars.

For Copiello, transcription is not only about transferring music from one instrument to another. It involves rethinking how the music works on the guitar, from key choice and line distribution to the instrument’s expressive possibilities. He aims to create an arrangement that feels natural on the guitar, as though it had been written for the instrument.

Rafael Marino Arcaro’s Meditations on Colours no. 2 – cor-de-rosa-boto, op. 16 (2025)

This method became the core of Copiello’s practice-based doctoral research at the University of Surrey, where he worked with composer Stephen Goss. At first, he was interested in what the eight-string Brahms Guitar could offer beyond the ordinary six-string guitar. Still, he soon began to explore how an instrument’s design shapes musical interpretation. One of his key realisations was that “transcription is not something that I do after I have understood a piece; it is one of the ways through which I come to understand it”. He discovered that the extra strings affect not only the notes available but also the way listeners perceive musical gestures and relationships.

Copiello continues to explore these possibilities through new arrangements and collaborations. At the moment, he is working on Frank Martin’s Quatre pièces brèves and has prepared an arrangement of Bach’s Harpsichord Concerto in D minor, BWV 1052, for Brahms Guitar and string orchestra. He is also interested in expanding the instrument’s role in chamber music, collaborating with composers, and supporting the growing number of Brahms Guitar players through teaching.

After nearly a decade with the instrument, Copiello’s interests have moved beyond adapting existing repertoire to imagining new music written specifically for it. As he puts it, the question is “no longer only which existing works can be adapted to the Brahms Guitar, but what music might be imagined because this instrument exists.”

To learn more about Giacomo Copiello, visit giacomocopiello.com.

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