As one of most famous composers of all time for classical guitar, Fernando Carulli’s influence stretches into the world of modern musicians. He wrote the first complete classical guitar method and this composition is still used by guitar students today. Writing over 400 musical works for the guitar in a time frame of only 12 short years, Carulli was a highly prolific and influential guitar composer.

Like his contemporary Mauro Giulian, Carulli first learned to play the cello as a child. However, he quickly found the guitar and was entranced by its musical flexibility and versatility. Living in Naples at the time, Carulli did not have any professional guitar teachers at his disposal and thus taught himself how to play and developed his own unique style with the instrument. After his very successful concerts in Naples, Carulli initiated a European tour and after finding great success in Paris, decided to move there permanently. Since Paris was the music capital of the world at that time, he was in good company and remained there for the rest of his life.

It was the goal of Carulli to make the guitar fashionable and popular among the upper class echelon of Paris society and he worked hard to achieve his goal. He published most of his musical works in Paris and would eventually become a publisher himself in order to control the production of his works. Since many of his original masterpieces were turned down by publishers for being too difficult to play, Carulli decided that becoming a publisher himself was the only way to guarantee that his work would become known.

Carulli was a hard teacher and was influential in Paris society. He counted many Paris nobility among his students and thus attained a level of respectability in his society. He wrote wonderful pieces for his students, including the famous “Harmony Applied to the Guitar” and the “Study in G Major” which are both used today to help students with their classical guitar instruction. His most influential work was the “Method, op. 27” which he published in 1810 and is still a popular choice for guitar teachers to give their students while mastering the classical guitar.

Carulli is most widely recognized for his influence with bringing the classical guitar into popular Parisian society and also for helping experts to perfect specific techniques on the instrument. His prolific music writing and exceptional teaching skills combined to make one of the greatest classical guitar players and composers of the nineteenth century, and whose influence is still felt by students and teachers today.

With the help of other famous guitars like Antonio de Torres Jurado and Lacote, Carulli helped to make the guitar evolve into the more robust instrument that we know it as today versus the more lute-like instrument it was when he first picked up the instrument as a child. Carulli’s music is the ideal choice for students looking for compositions to help them better understand how to master finger picking while using the instrument.