Italian
guitarist Mauro Giuliani
(1781-1829) found his greatest success as a stranger in a strange land. He
lived in Vienna
for thirteen years, establishing himself as a foremost virtuoso in that
illustrious musical city. At one point he was chamber virtuoso to Empress
Marie-Louise, wife of Napoleon Bonaparte, herself an amateur guitarist.
(Recently an ornate guitar Giuliani gave her was discovered in a London bank
storage room, along with a florid note written in his own hand.) He apparently enjoyed himself
immensely in Vienna,
siring three illegitimate daughters during his stay. But his time there also
had less salacious results. Though he was a master of flashy musical
potboilers—something every virtuoso of this era was expected to churn out—he
also was intrigued by the distinctly Viennese approach to music. So he set
himself to assimilate this more sober and architecturally rigorous style. His Grand Overture is one such piece.
Brilliant though it is (Giuliani could hardly be otherwise), it also cleaves to
a musical recipe that anyone familiar with Haydn, Mozart, or early Beethoven
would recognize.
Though a staunch Lutheran, Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
was catholic in his aesthetic taste. He tried his hand at almost everything to
do with music, save opera. (Some claim, with good cause, that works like his Saint Matthew Passion are
actually liturgical operas.) Indeed, it seems he set out to create definitive
works in every genre and for every major instrument. His output is astonishing.
Nowadays a complete set of his music can easily fill 155 CDs—with collectors
kvetching that stuff was left out—and we also know that much else was lost. So
it’s not surprising that the guitar benefited from his industry, albeit
indirectly with transcriptions of his so called lute music.
His BWV 996 is something of an enigma. It’s Bach’s earliest work for
lute, but we’ve no idea why he wrote it. Composers of his time almost always
wrote on commission, either for their employer or a wealthy patron. So an early
eighteenth century work with no clear financial impetus is an unlikely oddity.
Further, lutenists themselves say that much of this suite falls ungratefully on
the instrument. Guitarists must tinker with this suite to make it playable.
(Julian Bream even offered a version of the the opening movement in which one
must retune between the Präludium and
its ensuing Presto.) For all its
mystery and difficulty, however, this suite’s attractiveness remains undimmed.
The Bourrée in particular is wildly
popular, and it inspired Paul McCartney’s 1968 song “Blackbird.”
Before his great success with his Iberia
published in 1906-08, Isaac Manuel
Francisco Albéniz y Pascual (1860-1909) penned collections of small but
colorful piano pieces evocative of his native Spain. But his apparent nationalism
blurs on closer inspection. He spent much of his adult life living outside of Spain. He also
had little patience for jingoism, writing in his diary, “the idea of Fatherland
can be considered an excusable egotistical sentiment, but never as a virtue.”
Further, his popular image often skews from reality. For example, his role as a
composer of small works doesn’t entirely jibe with his grander ambitions: he
wrote three full scale operas and seven piano sonatas. But perhaps Albéniz would be unperturbed by his
reputation as a miniaturist; as he once said: “There is no need to worry about
mere size. Sir Isaac Newton was very much smaller than a hippopotamus, but we
do not on that account value him less.”
Brazilian guitarist and composer Paulo Bellinati (b. 1950) is also
an industrious scholar. He uncovered and recorded the music of Brazilian
composer Garoto, and edited a publication of Antonio Jobim’s music arranged for
the classical guitar. His infectious piece Jongo won first prize in the 1988
“Carrefour Mondial de la Guitare” in Martinique.
Its popularity was sealed when John Williams and Timothy Kain recorded it on
their album “The Mantis and the Moon.” A Brazilian dance, the jongo originated
as a dance performed by
slaves who worked on coffee plantations.
Of Argentine composer Alberto Ginastera (1916-1983),
one might say the guitar was in his blood. Indeed, two of his early piano
works, Danzas Argentinas, Op. 2 and Malambo for Piano, Op. 7, explicitly
quote the six open strings of the guitar, as if tuning up for what was to
follow. Yet despite his affinity for the guitar, he never actually wrote
anything for it until late in life. Doubtless he was wary of the guitar’s
notorious difficulty for non-players. “Although I had been encouraged to
compose for the guitar from the time I was a student, the complexity of the
task delayed my creative impulse, even though the guitar is the national
instrument of my homeland.”
In 1976, however, Ginastera decided he
had delayed long enough. A joint commission arrived from guitarist Carlos
Barbosa-Lima and Robert Bialek, owner of Discount Record and Book Shop, who
wanted to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of his store. Noting that much
of the guitar repertoire consisted of little pieces, Ginastera set himself to
write a four movement tour de force. It was premiered on November 27 in Washington, D.C.,
by Barbosa-Lima. Although Ginastera later revised the piece in 1981, it was to
remain his only work for guitar.
The composer wrote of his guitar
sonata: “The first movement is a solemn Prelude, followed by a song which was
inspired by Kecua music (Ginastera’s own curious term for 'Quechua,' an
indigenous tribe of northwestern Argentina) and which finds its
conclusion in an abbreviated repetition of these two elements. Scherzo, which has to be played ‘il piú
presto possible,’ is an interplay of shadow and light, nocturnal and magical
ambiance, of dynamic contrasts, distant dances, of surrealistic impressions. Canto is lyrical and rhapsodic,
expressive and breathless like a love poem. Finale is a quick spirited rondeau
which recalls the strong bold rhythms of the music of the pampas.”
Sometimes called “the Gershwin of
Brazil,” Antônio Carlos Brasileiro
de Almeida Jobim (1927–1994) at first saw his future as an architect. But
immersed in American jazz records during the 1950s, he soon gravitated to
nightclubs and recording studios. Indeed, throughout his life he preferred the
recording studio to the rigors of touring. (A Youtube search turns up historic
studio performances; his classic Águas de Março with Elis Regina is a delightful example.)
Jobim’s distinctive, almost bland and vibratoless voice became the emblem of
Brazilian cool. A Felicidade,
written in 1959 and originally a gentle ballade, takes on a new urgency in
Roland Dyens ingenious arrangement.
Raised in Washington, D.C.,
by solidly middle-class parents, Edward
Kennedy Ellington (1899-1974) was groomed to succeed in a land that offered
small opportunity for African-Americans. He cultivated a smooth and regal style
in both speech and behavior, something that inspired a childhood friend to dub
him “Duke.” The nickname stuck. In spite of the odds stacked against him,
Ellington rose to become a giant of American jazz. Through it all, he was an
enigmatic man. Interviews revealed him as articulate and brilliant, one who
spoke perceptively on any subject. Yet he could be prickly, hoarded credit from
his musical collaborators, and was a recurrent womanizer. These flaws Ellington
meticulously veiled, doubtless knowing his success could easily slip away. He maintained this aura to the end,
even when changing musical taste passed him by and left him in financial want.
When he died of pneumonia, he owed more than half a million dollars in back
taxes. Biographer Terry
Teachout described Ellington as “a riddle without an answer, an unknowable man
who hid behind a high wall of ornate utterances and flowery compliments that
grew higher as he grew older."
- Tom Poore*
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