PROGRAM
Fernando Sor (1778–1839)
Grande Sonata, Op. 25
- Andante Largo
- Allegro non troppo
- [Theme and Variations]
- Minuetto: Allegro
Grande Sonata, Op. 22
- Allegro
- Adagio
- Menuetto: Allegro
- Rondo: Allegretto
Intermission
Fernando Sor
Sonata, Op. 15[B]
Leo Brouwer (b. 1939)
Sonata del Pensador, no. 4 (Dedicated to Ricardo Gallén)
- Recuperación de la Memoria
- Iluminaciones
- Elogio de la Meditación
- Celebración de la Memoria
Ricardo Gallen performs this afternoon's concert on a copy of a Johann Georg Stauffer romantic guitar by Bernhard Kresse, Germany, courtesy John Dana and Guitars International, USA, and a modern concert guitar by Paco Santiago Marin, Spain.
NOTES
The word “sonata” is one that all musicians
know. Ask them to define it, however, and you may get a momentary blank stare.
The reason isn’t that musicians don’t know what to say. Rather, it’s that the
definition hops about so capriciously that it’s hard to pin down. “Sonata” is a
catch-all term, its precise definition depending on context. Its loosest
meaning—derived from the Latin word “sonare” (to make sound)—refers to music
that’s intended for instruments other than the voice. That covers a lot of
ground, comprising everything from Giovanni Gabrieli’s (1557-1612) majestic
sonatas for brass to Domenico Scarlatti’s (1685-1757) intimate sonatas for
harpsichord. But by the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, this generic term
had morphed into something more specific. Although still confined to
instrumental music, it now referred to an imposing multi-movement work in which
the composer creates a dramatic narrative. Its finest models were first worked
out by Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. (They, of course, were inspired by
composers better known today to musicologists than the general public.) To
distinguish it from the more generic meaning of sonata, we currently often refer to
it as the classical sonata.
It’s not far off the mark to say that the
classical sonata is the musical equivalent of literature. In it, the composer
approximates the ebb and flow of a play or novel. As does literature, the sonata
introduces distinctive tunes or motives that suggest the characters in a play
or novel. And as in literature, these characters are run through dramatic
conflict. But one shouldn’t carry the parallel between sonata and literature
too far. The story told in the classical sonata is shorn of overt literary
meaning. The narrative we sense in the classical sonata isn’t about anything
other than music. More accurately, it’s music about music—its logic and flow
are inexorably musical. The essential irony of the classical sonata is that it
takes literary conventions, effaces their linguistic meanings, and repurposes
them to a solely musical end.
This makes the classical sonata one of the most
abstract of musical forms. That can limit its surface appeal. For example, in
the classical sonata, a tune is seldom intended to be immediately likable on
its own terms. Instead, it’s created with an eye toward its musical potential
as it unfolds. Indeed, a classical sonata tune may be deliberately banal.
Sometimes a simple rhythmic pattern is sufficient, and the pitches themselves
aren’t so important. Consider, for example, the theme in the second movement of
Beethoven’s 7th symphony. The first twelve notes cling sullenly to one pitch.
But then Beethoven gradually envelopes this plodding tune with such beauty that
it counterintuitively becomes the most memorable part of the entire symphony.
(At its premiere in 1813, the audience spontaneously demanded an encore of the
second movement.) Still, it takes a keen mind and ear to respond to the cool
logic of the classical sonata. This is music aimed at the aficionado rather
than the dabbler.
For those who can respond, however, the rewards
are great. Unmoored to extra musical conventions, the classical sonata can soar
far beyond its more constrained musical brethren. Sonata marches under no
particular flag and advances no particular agenda. So while we’ll often find
snippets of opera and dance throughout a sonata, we seldom hear a sonata beyond
the opening movement of an opera or ballet. Opera shuns anything that doesn’t
serve a literary plot, and ballet cleaves to dance. Sonata is a cheerfully
indifferent mongrel, and that’s its creative strength.
*
* *
For the guitar, the classical sonata proved a
tough nut to crack. That’s because modulation—changing from one key to
another—is an integral part of the sonata. The sonata generates much of its
narrative flow by beginning in one key, leaving it, and then coming back to it.
Indeed, the typical first movement of a sonata is pretty much that above all
else. Some instruments are better suited than others for modulation. On the keyboard,
for example, modulation is easy. (A piano joke: How do you modulate on the
piano? Sit in one spot and repeatedly play the same passage while two burly men
shove the piano from side to side.) For guitarists playing polyphonic music,
modulation is a dicier proposition. It requires a fearless player and a
flexible left hand to do the key hopping in a sonata. So, while the classical
sonata thrived among composers for other instruments, guitar composers tended
to work the other side of the street, where music obligingly stayed put
key-wise.
The Spanish guitarist and composer Fernando
Sor (1778-1839), however, was a hardier breed. A thoroughly trained
composer, singer, and pianist, he was well versed in the musical trends of his
day. He set himself toward raising the standard of music written for the
guitar. His 1830 Méthode pour la Guitare is less a method on how to play
the guitar and more a manifesto on how to compose for it. In it, he often
complains about guitar music that falls easily under the hands but flouts the
rules of good composing. It’s not surprising, then, that he confronted the
thorny problem of writing a classical sonata for the guitar.
Sor’s Op. 15[B] is an early work, probably composed when Sor was in his early twenties.
It’s a single movement that self-consciously follows popular Italian models.
Soon after this, Sor would begin a careful study of the string quartets of
Haydn. But in this early work he’d yet to fully master the rigorous sonata
compositional style. By the way, the Op.
15[B] curious designation reflects a confusion sown by Sor’s early
publications—there’s also an Op. 15a
and Op. 15c, and all three are
completely different works.
His first four movement sonata for the guitar
was his Op. 22, Grande Sonata, published in 1825. This too is a
relatively early work. Here Sor tries to meet Haydn and Mozart on their own
turf. (Not so much Beethoven, as Sor apparently found him a bit too pungent.)
One might argue that Sor was a bit too respectful of his models—his Op. 22,
Grande Sonata seems a bit diffident in how it ticks off all the boxes for a
proper four movement sonata. Nonetheless, it’s a delightful work, even if it
doesn’t quite scale the heights of Sor’s models.
With his later Op. 25, Grande Sonata, Sor
is more his own man. Here he looks forward to Chopin rather than to the past.
(Which reminds us that Sor spent his final years in Paris and almost certainly heard Chopin
himself.) Here also he’s more fluid in his handling of modulation, often
drifting through keys unfamiliar to the average guitarist. Indeed, Op. 25
begins in C minor—not a comfortable key for the guitar. And finally, Sor is
more adventurous in his choice of movements, unconventionally ending the sonata
with a graceful little minuet. Curiously, Beethoven ended his famous Diabelli
Variations with a minuet. Maybe Sor was warming to Beethoven’s example.
*
* *
By the early twentieth century, the sonata was
practically a museum piece. Claude Debussy had declared the symphony a dead
form, and he might well have included the sonata in his eulogy. But as the
century drew to a close, composers seemed to reawaken to the sonata’s
old-fashioned gravitas. No guitar composer more ingeniously poured new wine
into old bottles than the Cuban guitarist and composer Leo Brouwer (b. 1939).
Although an early champion of the avantegarde, Brouwer gradually drifted
toward a simpler, more direct musical language. Along with this “new
simplicity” as he called it, he also embraced the older forms, including the
venerable sonata. Indeed in a 1997 interview Brouwer seemed almost nostalgic
toward the era that spawned the classical sonata:
“In the past the function of music was very
clear: the audience met together, understood the themes, the structural details
and the interpretation. There wasn’t a gap between the cultivated and the
popular: Bach and Mozart composed popular music. The guitarist-composers like
Tárrega, Mertz, Giuliani were very close to the manifestations of popular music
which at that time didn’t have divisions. What has happened is that with the
brutal development of the 19th century and above all of the 20th century,
everything has changed.”
Sonata del Pensador, was written in 2013
and dedicated to Ricardo Gallén. Thus, in today’s program we have the pleasure
of hearing Brouwer’s latest sonata performed by its dedicatee. It seems
fitting, then, to step aside and allow the artist and his performance to speak
for themselves.
- Tom Poore
Learn more about this article's author
here.