The Diary of Agustin Barrios

This beautiful publication is a full-color, celebratory production in the luxuriant A4 (8½ x 11½ inch) size, which reproduces photographic images of all 147 pages of the diary in its original size—of special interest to collectors.

It begins with a historical introduction illustrated with 37 full-color photographs from the guitarist’s career, and ends with 50 pages of indexed names and subjects. At the heart of the Diplomatic Edition is a Spanish transcription/English translation of every word of the cherished diary. Ironically, this important book containing the commentaries and signatures of 297 persons who witnessed Barrios live and in concert, lay forgotten in an anthropological museum in San Salvador before being discovered in 2005 by guitar maker and historian Frederick Sheppard who obtained authorization from the presidential cabinet of El Salvador to publish photographs of every page of the manuscript and then collaborated with the guitar musicologist Richard Pinnell to produce this extraordinary reference text.

Based on the personal comments of the guitarist’s audience, ranging from his pupil Julia Florida to the Papal Nuncio of the Americas, this publication also includes the comparative assessment of an eyewitness who saw both Barrios and Andrés Segovia in concert during the same year. The 440-page book also contains the earliest maps ever found of the Jesuit schools where Barrios received his early music education, color maps of the railroads traveled and the rivers traversed by Barrios during his career, and the finest known map of Paraquaria when it was the most expansive territory in South America.