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of his solo guitar works as performed by Lawrence Johnson
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57
Soundboard, Vol. XXXVIII, No. 4
A
fter taking the air in a stiff North-east wind in January, we are feelingly persuaded that ours is not a serenading climate, at least not at all seasons of the year—and also that a lover who should be sufficiently ardent to hope to win his mistress by the sounds of his guitar at this season, would stand much the same chance as the unfortunate swain, who, according to one of our early poets,“Caught his death standing under a spout, Awaiting till midnight till Nan should come out.”16
Such considerations will help to account for the disrepute into which the guitar had fallen amongst us till of late, when it has been brought into notice by Mr. Sor’s extraordinary performance and Mr. Sola’s publications.17 We have indeed
heard the former artist play wonderfully—the chorusses in Haydn’s Creation for instance, in a manner so full and vivid as to induce us for the moment to believe the instrument itself far more capable than we could ever find it in other hands.18
About two centuries ago it was low enough, probably because it was easy and popular. Things must exist in a certain state of scarcity, as my Lord Lauderdale says in his book on National Wealth,19 and be difficult of attainment to continue in very
high vogue: for though fashion is “every thing by turns,” she is as surely “nothing long”.20 But still the guitar has many
recommendations. It is easily learned, easily played, easily transported from place to place. It may be managed gracefully; a white round arm may fall carelessly upon it; taper fingers may wanton among the strings—it relieves by variety and prevents the disturbance of an animated and intense circle, by the facility with which it can be introduced. See how delight- fully the author of “Bracebridge Hall” has employed it—he has brought it to harmonize with the warm bewitching tone of his conversation pieces.21 Nay, it is only just twelve months
ago since we ourselves felt the reality of his refinement, in hearing two highly-accomplished amateurs play national airs, responding to each other under the soft lights and floating draperies of the drawing-room, at — House, though it was January, in the country. The gods may have made us perhaps a little poetical, or it might remind us of the Eastern tales we read in our boyhood, or of our fonder dreams, when the “bosom was young”22—or it might be the mere novelty of the
whole scene, or the ladies—the reader is quite at liberty to
choose any one or to take all of these reasons. We are content to declare we have seldom been more sensibly affected. And if he be imbued with any of these sympathies, and can fall in with two such Syrens, he may repeat our experiment. We therefore recommend the guitar to young ladies—not as a substitute, but as an alternative amusement to relieve the graver parts of their musical studies. Now then for something of its history. “This instrument, according to Mersennus, (we quote Sir J. Hawkins) is but little used, and is held in great contempt in France, as indeed it has been till very lately in this country. The true English appellation for it is the Cittern, notwithstanding it is by the ignorant people called the guitar.” As a proof of the low estimation in which it was formerly held in England, the historian cites the fact, “that it was the common amusement of waiting customers in barbers’ shops.”23
It would appear, however, about fifty or sixty years ago to have risen in estimation, as the copies of the fashionable airs and ballads of that period contain an arrangement for one or two guitars. But these arrangements were little adapted to the genius of the instrument, for they contained merely the air itself, transposed into the most convenient key.24
The origin of the guitar is unknown—it is ascribed to the Spaniards,25 who probably derived it from the Moors. It is still
much in use amongst the Turks and Persians, who received it from Arabia, where it has been known from a remote period. The Negroes have also their guitar, formed of a gourd covered with wood, on which are stretched four or six strings, or of a piece of hollowed wood, covered with leather, with two or three strings of hair—and we have in our possession an East Indian cetar, of very singular shape and structure, which is now in use in Hindostan.
The guitar is the last branch of the numerous family of the ancient lutes. It has succeeded the lute, theorbo, sistre, angelica, mandora, pandora, chelis, mandoline,26 and lyre of
every species. It has of late years been much used in France; and the performance of the artists we have before mentioned has rendered it fashionable in England. Its introduction has, too, been aided by the cheapness and elegance of the instrument, by the romantic ideas usually attached to it, and by the very circumstance that formerly brought it into disregard—by the small degree of labour the practice of it demands. We mean of course that degree only which will suffice for the purposes of
A Collection of admired Italian, French, German, Spanish, and English Songs,
with a progressive accompaniment for the Spanish Guitar; by George Hervey Derwort. Nos. 1 to 13.
London. Gow and Son.
58
Soundboard, Vol. XXXVIII, No. 4accompaniment, for the powers of the guitar are little adapted to any thing beyond an accompaniment, and this too of the simplest kind. Upon this point we cannot do better than translate the opinions of a modern French author:27
Some musicians, who are certainly too severe, appear an- noyed that the guitar has continued to exist. I do not agree in their opinion; on the contrary, I think the guitar may not be despised. A cavatina, notturno, romance, or duettino, may be properly accompanied on this instrument. Its soft and low sounds give masses of harmony very favourable to the voice, which they sustain without extinguishing. A perfect knowledge of the inversions of chords is necessary, to give them regularity of progression, and to avoid the confusion but too often observable in compositions for the guitar.
This instrument differs from others in the circum- stance, that it gives a good deal of tone in accompanying, and is almost reduced to silence if it be made to perform a solo, or the single notes of a melody.28 The reason is, because its
force consists in the multiplied vibrations of several strings, struck either in succession or simultaneously. As soon as we quit arpeggios for unison, and pass from the sonorous base to the highest octave, which is composed of sounds produced from a thin string of few vibrations, the the [sic] feeble and languid air, deprived of the resources of harmony, becomes nothing more than a meagre and dry pizzicato.
It has of late been so much the fashion to tax voices and instruments with redundant execution,29 that we cannot won-
der the simple and unpretending guitar should have shared the same fate. However association and romance may raise the value of this instrument, we must allow that it is absolutely insignificant when compared with almost every other. This insignificance is reduced to positive meanness, when it is made to perform the difficulties—we might almost say the extravagancies—to which it is too often subjected. Even in the hands of Mr. Sor himself, the prevailing sensation his perfor- mance excited was wonder that he should have so overcome the natural imperfections of the instrument, and regret that such talent and industry should have been so misapplied; for the same quantity of labour would have given him great, per- haps unrivalled superiority upon an instrument in every way more worthy of his genius, and in him we might have hailed another Kiesewetter, Lindley, or Dragonetti. He has too been greatly mistaken in arranging such airs as Vedrai carino and Batti, Batti (the latter having a difficult violoncello obligato accompaniment,) for the guitar.30 On the contrary, in Deh
vieni alla finestra, he has, both in the style of this air and its accompaniment, consulted the intentions of the composer, and the character of the instrument, and manifested his own
power over it. We have not Mr. Sor’s Instruction Book before us at this moment, but if we recollect right, it gives the learner the means of overcoming the difficulties Mr. Sor has himself overleaped, rather than the useful processes leading to the end pointed at by the French author we have quoted above. Mr. Sola, on the contrary, has produced a book of instructions which will inculcate nearly all that is necessary for accompa- niment, and this has been done clearly and concisely. In fact the guitar is not worth more time than the attainment of such principles as those laid down by Mr. Sola will cost. When these are firmly fixed in the mind, a player may adapt any little air to his own accompaniment, for one of the best qualifications of the guitar is its portable nature, and thus (as is so often the case) in travelling any national air, romance, or chanson, may be immediately fixed on the memory, or committed to paper. Mr. Sola’s canzonets are of the same unpretending kind with his instructions; they are simple airs, with accompaniments as various as the nature of the arpeggio will permit.31 He has also
arranged the most favourite airs in the national melodies for the guitar, and some of them with very good effect. Amongst the many songs which have been composed during the last few years for the instrument, M. Begrez Guarda che bianca luna, and Tramezzani’s Che non me disse un di,32 are two
of the most elegant. The latter has as much character as any air we ever heard. But perhaps the best airs are those of Italy (particularly the Venetian), and Spain. Many of the French are very piquant, and excellently adapted to the instrument, but the English are in general of too sedate, too deeply sentimental a cast. The bolero, the barcarole, the canzonetta, and romance, have all the gaiety, softness, tenderness, and chivalry, which we associate with the troubadours, the gay squires, and sprightly dames, of the early ages of poetry and music.
Mr. Derwort’s collection contains a good many new airs; most of them are arranged with a different accompaniment for each verse, progressive in difficulty, chords and varied arpeggios being the forms chiefly employed. Some of the pieces are already popular, such as Partant pour la Syrie, Cest l’amour, The boatie rowes, and the Venetian barcarolle. The French romances predominate.
From the foregoing remarks it will be seen, that the writers for the guitar must limit their imagination to the capabilities of the instrument; that they degrade it when they would make it perform wonders, because they thus most effectually expose its insignificance; and players who really wish to excel may best do so by attending to the production of good tone, and neatness in the execution of those passages allotted to it by judicious composers. We need hardly say that the guitar
59
Soundboard, Vol. XXXVIII, No. 4
is almost useless, except in the hands of singers. The use of the Capo d’Astro, or moveable bridge, fitted to the strings, enables the performer to transpose at pleasure, and is a most convenient addition for singers of limited compass of voice.
Notes
1 I follow the common usage of eighteenth- and nineteenth-
century English writers and use the term “Spanish guitar” to mean the instrument with an octoform body, frets (generally passing from tied gut to fixed in the later eighteenth century), and strung with gut, or—by the closing decades of the eighteenth century—with gut and overspun silk.
2 See P. W. Cox, Classic Guitar Technique and Its Evolution as Reflected in the Method Books ca. 1770-1850 (Ph.D. diss., University
of Indiana, 1978); T. Heck, Mauro Giuliani: Virtuoso Guitarist and Composer (Columbus, Ohio, 1995); T. Hindricks, Zwischen “leerer klimperey” und “wirklicher Kunst”: Gitarrenmusik in Deutschland um 1800 (Münster, 2012); P. Pérez Díaz, “Los tratados de Dionisio
Aguado y Fernando Sor como fuentes para la interpretación del repertorio de la guitarra clásico-romántica”, Vº Congreso de la Socie- dad española de musicología (Barcelona, October 25-28, 2000), ed.
by B. Lolo Herranz (Madrid, 2002), 683-698; D. Ribouillault, La technique de la guitare en France dans la première moitié du 19e siècle
(Thèse de doctorat, Université de Paris-Sorbonne, 1981); R. Savino, “Essential issues in performance practices of the classical guitar, 1770-1850”, Performance on Lute, Guitar and Vihuela: Historical Practice and Modern Interpretation, ed. by V. Coelho (Cambridge,
1997), 195-219; E. Stenstadvold, An Annotated Bibliography of Guitar Methods, 1760–1860 (Hillsdale, New York, and London,
2010); P. Valois, Les guitaristes français entre 1770 et 1830: Pratiques d’exécution et catalogue des méthodes (Thèse présentée à la Faculté des
études supérieures de l’Université Laval, 2009). See also the Early Romantic Guitar Homepage http://www.earlyromanticguitar.com/.
For the instruments themselves see J. Tyler and P. Sparks, The Guitar and Its Music: From the Renaissance to the Classical Era (Oxford,
2002); D. Martin, “Innovation and the Development of the Modern Six-string Guitar”, GSJ, li (1998), 86-109; and J. Westbrook, The Century That Shaped the Guitar: From the Birth of the Six-string Guitar to the Death of Tárrega (Hove, 2005).
3 Stenstadvold, Annotated Bibliography, 1-2 and 9.
4 See S. W. Button, The Guitar in England, 1800-1924 (Guild-
ford, 1984), which was a pioneering study, and A. Britton, The Guitar in the Romantic Period: Its Musical and Social Development with Special Reference to Bristol and Bath (Ph.D. diss., University
of London, 2010). There is much valuable material in Kenneth Hartdegen, Fernando Sor’s Theory of Harmony Applied to the Guitar: History, Bibliography and Context, 3 vols., (Ph.D. diss., University
of Auckland, 2011). James Westbrook’s current work on the first London guitar makers promises to transform the historical picture. For the eighteenth century, see C. Page, “The Spanish Guitar in Eighteenth-century England: A Checklist of Material from News- papers, Novels, Drama, and Verse.” Forthcoming.
5 I refer especially to (1) three of the Gale (Cengage Learn-
60
Angel
Soundboard, Vol. XXXVIII, No. 4 Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Burney Collection, and (c)
Eighteenth Century Collections Online. (2) The British Newspaper Archive, under the auspices of the British Library. (3) Bath Chroni- cle Georgian Newspaper Project. (4) Google Books, chronologically filtered searches. (5) English Poetry 600-1900 (Chadwyck Healey). (6) Eighteenth Century Journals, and (7) the Retrospective Index to Music Periodicals.
6 At the time of writing, this volume is being catalogued,
together with the rest of the music collection of Lady Acland, and has no currently active shelfmark.
7 Royal Academy of Music Library, Robert Spencer Collection,
Rare Books XX(157344.1)
8 See the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography from the Earliest Times to the Year 2000, ed. by H. C. G. Matthew and B.
Harrison, 61 vols. (Oxford, 2004), “Bacon, Richard Makenzie.” The complete run of the magazine has now been lavishly indexed; see R. Kitson, The Quarterly Musical Magazine and Review, 1818- 1828: Répertoire international de la presse musicale, 2 vols. (Ann
Arbor, 1989). There is an important discussion of this periodical, with special reference to the guitar, in Britton, The Guitar in the Romantic Period, 89-92.
9 Most composers, as Berlioz recognized, could only hope to
bring into the sonority and narrative sense of an orchestral work under carefully controlled circumstances, if at all. See H. Berlioz,
Grand traité d’instrumentation et d’orchestration modernes. Nouvelle
edition (Paris, n.d.), 83-6, on the use of the guitar, especially p. 86.
10 Keats, describing cottages and landscape in Bonchurch, Isle
of Wight, imagines the cottages full of “romantic old maids fond of novels or soldiers. If I could play upon the guitar I might make my fortune with an old song and get two blessings at once: a Lady’s heart and rheumatism.” H. E. Rollins, ed., The Letters of John Keats, 1814-1821, 2 vols. (Cambridge, Mass., 1958), II, 125.
11 Ferdinand Pelzer, Instructions for the Spanish Guitar (London,
1830), 4. For this method, see Stenstadvold, Annotated Bibliography,
161-2.
12La Belle Assemblée; or, Bell’s Court and Fashionable Magazine
(London, June 1, 1811), 293.
13 Thus I believe we are licensed to use the term “early-romantic
guitar” for the instruments of 1800-1840, despite the fact that a romantic musical style is arguably not found in the repertory of the instrument until the close of that period.
14Hull Packet and Humber Mercury, December 7, 1830. 15 On this matter see C. Page, “New Light on the London Years
of Fernando Sor,” Early Music, forthcoming.
16 From Matthew Prior (d. 1721), On Hall’s Death, An Epi- gram, lines 1-2.
17 The publications of Charles Sola (d. 1857) include Instruc- tions for the Spanish Guitar (London, 1820), in addition to a
substantial number of songs, many for guitar. For the tutor, see E. Stenstadvold, Annotated Bibliography, 180-1. Sola was also known
as a flautist, a singer, and a teacher of singing. From a vantage point in 1827, a critic writing for the Quarterly Musical Magazine and Review, IX, 254-5, mentioned him in the same breath as “Messrs.
Sor, … Huerta, and other professors”, thanks to whom “the guitar
instead of remaining an almost unknown instrument, or at least Continued on page 75
considered only as proper to the romantic cavaliers of Spain, and Spanish serenades, has gradually made its way into the circles of fashion, and is now pretty generally to be found in the saloons of her fair votaries.”
18 See Sor’s Méthode pour la guitare, 68-75, with example 84. 19 James Maitland, 8th Earl of Lauderdale (1759-1839), Inquiry into the Nature and Origin of Public Wealth (1804 and 1819).
20 The phrase is from Lord Byron’s conversation as reported by
Marguerite, Countess Blessington. E. J. Lovell, Jr., ed., Conversations of Lord Byron (Princeton, 1969), 221.
21Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists, by Washington Irving
(d. 1859), under the pseudonym Goeffrey Crayon, is a collection of short stories and sketches published in London in two volumes in 1822. There are numerous references to the guitar in the story entitled “The Student of Salamanca”, I, 246-393.
22 A phrase found in numerous poems by minor poets of the
period 1800-1820, e.g., “The Soldier’s Dream” by Thomas Campbell
(d. 1844), published in The Poetical Commonplace Book (Edinburgh,
1822), 51.
23 Sir John Hawkins, A General History of the Science and Prac- tice of Music, 5 vols. (London, 1776), V, 113. Hawkins is referring
to the wire-strung “English” guittar, so popular in England (and America) during the second half of the eighteenth century, and not to the gut-strung guitar with a figure-of-eight body.
24 Many eighteenth-century printed copies of currently fash-
ionable songs, notably those in favor at the pleasure gardens of Vauxhall or Ranelagh, and usually scored for voice and piano forte, include (usually at the end of the print) a version “for the guit[t] ar” transposed into the instrument’s home key of C Major. Vast numbers of these prints were in circulation and it is no surprise that an author writing in 1824 has seen them, or that s/he regards