What to Play After Lágrima: Five Pieces for Your Next Step
Tárrega's Lágrima is a rite of passage. At Level 5 in our grading, it asks for singing melody over a quiet bass, careful shifts up the neck, and restraint. If you have just brought it up to performance shape, congratulations. The question every player asks next is the same: what now?
Here are four pieces that build on what Lágrima taught you, plus one to keep on the horizon. Each links to our edition, and each has a recording so you can hear it before you commit.
Where you are: Lágrima (Level 5)
First, a reminder of why this piece earns its place: Pepe Romero performing Lágrima on an 1888 Torres, the kind of instrument Tárrega himself played.
Why our edition is a study score
Our Lágrima is not a plain reprint. It is a study score, prepared to make the music's inner workings visible. Four distinct voices run through this piece, and in our edition each one carries its own colour: the melody in green, countermelody one in blue, countermelody two in pink, and the cadential bass in orange. We also removed note stems where they interfered with the visual clarity of the voices, so each phrase reads as a line rather than a thicket of beams.
In the opening bars, the green melody sings above while the blue and pink countermelodies trace their own paths beneath it. Most editions stem all of this together and let the eye flatten it into chords. Here you can follow each voice the way a string quartet player follows a part.
By bar 7 the fourth voice arrives: the orange cadential bass, stepping in to close the phrase. Listen for it in the Romero recording above, then look for it on the page. Once you have seen it, you cannot unhear it.
Why go to that trouble for such a familiar piece? Because Lágrima has a clear, beloved upper-voice melody, and that is exactly the trap. It is easy to play the tune, let the rest blur into accompaniment, and settle for a surface reading. There are interesting things happening in the other voices, and the piece's familiarity should make us more motivated to explore its depth, not less. When you can see each countermelody as its own coloured line, you start to hear it as one, and your interpretation deepens with it. The edition is free to download, so if a friend is a step behind you, send them this one.
1. Blessings of the Years, William Beauvais (Level 5)
Stay at Level 5, but trade Tárrega's melancholy for groove. Beauvais wrote this piece for a student's 80th birthday, and he often opens his own concerts with it. The technical demands are close to Lágrima's; the rhythmic language is a different world, and learning to keep that recurring groove steady is the lesson. Get the score.
2. Two Polkas, Susan C. Domett (Level 6)
Your first step up. Domett was a British composer of the 1840s, and these polkas, her only known guitar works, were rediscovered and championed by Canadian guitarist Emma Rush. They are light, lively and musically direct, which makes them ideal Level 6 material: the notes will not frighten you, but keeping them dancing will keep you honest. Get the score.
3. Danza Desperata, Michalis Andronikou (Level 7)
The stretch piece. Written in 2021 by Calgary composer Michalis Andronikou as a dance against despair, it builds a meditative rhythm that gathers energy as it goes. At Level 7 it will likely take you a season rather than a month, and that is the point: this is the piece that moves your playing forward. Get the score.
The horizon: Recuerdos de la Alhambra (Level 9)
Every Lágrima player dreams of Tárrega's tremolo masterpiece, and you should too, just not yet. Goran Krivokapić's performance shows what is waiting at Level 9. Our edition is free to download, so there is no harm in printing it now and pinning it to the wall. The pieces above are how you get there.
Find your level
Every MusiCurate edition is graded on our ten-level system, so you always know what a piece will ask of you. Browse the full sheet music library or read the Level Guide to map your own path.