Six Lute Pieces from the Renaissance (trans. Oscar Chilesotti)
Modern guitarists take it for granted that the music of the lute, vihuela, and other early plucked instruments is theirs for the taking. But this was not always the case. By the 18th century, these repertoires had been largely forgotten, and it was only in the early decades of the last century that guitarists began to rediscover the wonders of the Renaissance. One of the first to recognize the worth of Renaissance lute music was Italian musicologist Oscar Chilesotti, who began transcribing lute tablature into modern notation at the end of the 19th century. These transcriptions eventually caught the attention of Andrés Segovia, who would often begin his concerts with the six lute pieces performed here today.
JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH
Born in Eisenach, Germany 1685
Died in Leipzig, Germany, 1750
Lute Suite No. 3 in A Minor, BWV 995
J.S. Bach composed for the baroque lute throughout his career, a testament to the instrument’s enduring popularity in the Germany of his age. BWV 995, however, began life as a suite for cello in C minor, composed around 1720. Bach later arranged the work for lute (now in G minor) for a book publisher in Leipzig, and most guitar transcriptions are in yet another key, A minor, to take advantage of the modern instrument’s turning. The suite begins in grand fashion with a prelude in the French overture style, that is, with a slow and regal introduction and a quicker, fugal second half. Throughout this opening piece and the wonderfully intricate dances that follow, a constant challenge for the performer will be to ensure that each contrapuntal voice maintains its integrity and musical coherence. For despite their superficial similarities, the baroque lute and guitar are very different instruments, and the narrower range of the guitar necessitates many alterations to the original score.
FERNANDO SOR
Born in Barcelona, 1778
Died in Paris, 1839
Grand Solo, Op. 14 (arr. D. Aguado)
The leading classical guitarist of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Fernando Sor composed music for rank amateurs and professional virtuosos alike. His one-movement Grand Solo, Op. 14, falls squarely onto the virtuosic side of his compositional output. This is a self-consciously “grand” and extravagant piece whose technical requirements challenge even the most accomplished guitarists, especially when taken at the quick tempo the music seems to demand. But here it is not a case of empty showboating (and it rarely is with Sor.) His natural gift for melody shines throughout, while surprising shifts in harmony and modulation propel the music forward through to the bombastic coda. The guitar Sor performed on and composed for was distinct from the modern instrument: smaller and slimmer bodied, it produced a more hushed and intimate sound. Sor also performed with the flesh of his fingers (rather than the nail), so his original performances would have sounded quite different from today’s rendition.
LOU HARRISON
Born in Portland, Oregon, 1917
Died in Lafayette, Indiana, 2003
Serenado por gitaro
American composer, painter, and inventor of musical instruments Lou Harrison spent much of his youth in and around San Francisco, where he encountered music from around the world and several luminaries of the burgeoning American modernist movement, including Henry Cowell and John Cage. He soon distinguished himself through his own eclectic compositions, which combine an abiding interest in percussion with unusual tunings, new instrument construction, and non-Western musical styles. Today, he is considered one of the founders of world music, in part for his role in popularizing the Javanese gamelan ensemble in the United States. The Serenado por gitaro dates from 1952. (In addition to modern music, Harrison was also a proponent of Esperanto, the language in which he titled the piece.) This was Harrison’s first work for guitar in just intonation, an ancient tuning system frequently heard in Indian and Chinese music but less often in the Western tradition. Unlike the equal temperament system in use for modern keyboards and fretted instruments like the guitar, the intervals in the just intonation system are based on whole number ratios. Of course, just intonation on the guitar would require a total refitting of the instrument’s frets (an impractical proposition for most!), and this beautiful work is no less effective when played in the standard tuning.
Music for Bill and Me
For 33 years, Harrison lived and worked with his partner William Colvig, an electrician and amateur musician whom he met in San Francisco in 1967. Together they designed and built musical instruments (including the American gamelan) and collaborated on musical projects. Music for Bill and Me dates from the year of their meeting. A kind of musical love letter, the monodic piece exudes peace and comfort, in large part because of its eschewal of Western tonality in favor of pentatonicism.
Sonata in Ishartum
A Babylonian cuneiform tablet from the 18th century BC describes a tuning system called “Ishartum.” Early scholarship on the tablet, which Harrison must have read, equated Ishartum with the Phrygian mode. (Recent scholarship now equates the Babylonian system with the Ionian mode, broadly equivalent to the modern major scale.) Whatever the case, it is in the Phrygian mode that Harrison composed the brief Sonata in Ishartum. Most often heard in flamenco music, the Phrygian mode is characterized by a half-step between the first and second note of its scale. Indeed, Harrison’s piece has a vaguely Iberian character about it, though the texture is more Renaissance counterpoint than flamenco dance.
Air
Round
Harrison once stated that music is, at heart, “a song and dance.” The Air and Round from his Serenade for Guitar and Percussion are exactly that: a singing melody (the air) and a rousing gambol (the round). Harrison composed the serenade in 1978 for classical guitar and optional percussion, including a medium tam-tam, two medium drums, and finger cymbals. Of the two movements on today’s program, only the air calls for optional percussion (the tam-tam), which would be heard at the beginning of each statement of the hypnotic melody. Marked in the score as “fast [and] strongly accented,” the round playfully shifts between duple and triple meter. The guitar’s open fourth and sixth strings, meanwhile, lay down a sonorous drone above which the spiky melody scampers up and down the instrument’s neck.
FRANCISCO TÁRREGA
Born in Villarreal, Spain, 1852
Died in Barcelona, 1909
Capricho árabe
Capricho árabe is among Francisco Tárrega’s most popular and performed works. He composed it in 1892 following a tour of Andalusia and North Africa. The entrancing opening — with its stark harmonics and serpentine melody — evokes the exoticism of distant lands and people, at least as European ears would have heard it at the end of the 19th century. This alien atmosphere also shrouds the unforgettable main theme, whose glissandi, ornamentation, chromaticism, and prominent falling third (C to A) all serve to mark the music as excitingly different. The composition is subtitled “Serenata para guitarra,” and certainly its dark harmonies and melancholy mood bring to mind the twilight hours (for serenades are most often associated with night music). A major-mode middle section does, however, temporarily brighten the proceedings.
JOAQUÍN TURINA
Born in Seville, 1882
Died in Madrid, 1949
Sonata, Op. 61
Alongside fellow Spaniards Joaquín Rodrigo and Federico. Moreno Torroba, Joaquín Turina helped to reinvent Spanish classical music at the turn of the century. The guitar makes up only a small part of his large compositional output, which includes works for the stage, piano, and chamber ensembles. But he is nonetheless beloved by guitarists the world over for the small handful of beautiful pieces he did bequeath to the instrument. Between 1923 and 1932 he composed five works for solo guitar: Sevillana, Fandanguillo, Ráfaga, Homenaje a Tárrega (dedicated to Francisco Tárrega), and the Sonata, Op. 61 (composed in 1931). This latter work is the only one not to announce its Spanish nature in the title; instead, the generic “sonata” serves to situate the piece within the neoclassical movement then popular in European intellectual circles. Which is not to say that Turina’s sonata shies away from its Spanish origin in favor of 18th-century anachronisms; far from it. Rather, Turina here produces a remarkable blend of thematic and structural clarity with the vigor and harmonic color of Spanish folk music. The first movement is the most classical in aspect, featuring both an assertive first theme (dominated by triplets in the guitar’s lower register) and a contrasting one of wistful beauty. The striking middle movement finds Turina at his most impressionistic, as vague harmonies envelope a mysterious wandering melody. Then, like many sonatas, Op. 61 concludes with a dance, but here it is a matter of flamenco. As though unleashed from its classical chains, the guitar finally indulges in the dramatic rasguedao strumming so characteristic of Spanish dance. An unexpected remembrance of the first movement’s wistful melody briefly connects the sonata’s end to its beginning before the dance resumes and the composition concludes with breathless excitement.
© 2024 Michael Bane