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Wolf Moser FERNANDO SOR The Unwritten Autobiography Including his Reflexions on the Guitar New enlarged Edition, thoroughly revised. English Translation: Isabelle Dolezalek and James Hughes Copyright of the English Edition: © Wolf Moser 2014 Title of the German Edition ICH, FERNANDO SOR - Versuch einer Autobiographie und gitarristische Schriften. Neuauflage, erweitert und völlig überarbeitet. Copyright of the Original Edition: © Wolf Moser 2005. Edition Saint - Georges. Lyon. All rights reserved. I.S.B.N.: 978-84-15928-45-4 Legal deposit: V-2284-2014 Design: Carolina Vallejo Martínez Printed by: PILES, Editorial de Música, S. A. Archena, 33 - 46014 VALENCIA (Spain) Tel. 96 370 40 27 - Fax: 96 370 49 64 www.pilesmusic.com Contents Page Preface7 Introduction11 PART ONE: IN SPAIN (1778 ─ 1813) Birth and Childhood School at Montserrat Starting a Military Career and first Reflections on the Guitar The first Opera, Meeting Aguado, “The Bolero”, Sor’s Emigration PART TWO: LIFE AS AN EMIGRANT (1813 ─ 1839) The Guitar in France Composer and Singing Teacher in London Paris, Berlin, Warsaw, Moscow and St. Petersburg The Last Years in Paris 17 19 23 37 55 73 75 83 93 101 PART THREE: THE GUITAR, AND HOW TO PLAY IT 139 The Instrument 141 Notation144 Right Hand 145 Left Hand 155 Summary: Twelve basic Rules for Practising and Playing 163 Timeline167 Catalogue of music composed by Fernando Sor 181 Notes201 Index of written sources 203 Illustrations205 Select bibliography 207 Index213 PREFACE Most of what we know about Fernando Sor’s life and ideas has been handed down to us by Sor himself. All accounts of his life rely on this simple fact, which, nevertheless, no author has expressly acknowledged. Its truth is confirmed, however, by all hitherto published biographies, as every one of them is, in essence, based on such self-testimonies. Hence, the founding thought of this book: for Sor to tell of his own life, to allow him to present his ideas in his own words. Instead of adopting this method, earlier works have keenly obscured the autobiographical contribution. In Fernando Sor (1778-1839), Ensayo biográfico, published in 1957, Manuel Rocamora summarizes what was known at that point in time: the entries that Sor wrote for the Encyclopédie pittoresque, Sor and Le Bolero, which Rocamora paraphrased and passed off as his own, have since been merely repeated. In addition to this, there is Sor’s baptism certificate from Barcelona cathedral and some articles taken out of Spanish newspapers regarding his first opera in Barcelona and his last days in Paris. The final touch is given to this biographical essay by the texts of some of Sor’s songs and a few passages lauding the composer, by the Spanish musicologists Emilio Pujol and Alfredo Romea The thesis entitled The guitar works of Fernando Sor, that William Sasser presented at the University of North Carolina in 1960, reproduces, in its section on Biography, what Rocamora had copied from the Encyclopédie pittoresque and transformed into a type of research paper. Sasser does not seem to have recognised the fact that his predecessor had chiefly been quoting from this work and thus using Sor’s own words. He is, nevertheless, the first to refer to Sor’s complete œuvre. Although the analysis of his guitar works forms the main body of Sasser’s thesis, Fernando Sor is also honoured as a composer of operas and ballets, Lieder and piano music. In its appendix, the thesis reproduces a long extract of Sor’s guitar method in its English translation from 1896 and a comprehensive and accurate bibliography. Both of these are missing from Brian Jeffery’s monograph Fernando Sor, Composer and Guitarist, published in 1977. Already, the title lays the emphasis on Sor as a composer, which corresponds entirely to his own ideas. Indeed, until his death, Sor considered his guitaristic impact as secondary. Jeffery’s book suffers from the fact that the author does not seem content with his actual achievement, the compilation of a Catalogue. This “catalogue” is at the heart of the work: it contains a list of Sor’s compositions, with the details of the location of their earliest editions. In the accompanying text, even Jeffery can only draw upon the above-mentioned sources, with few exceptions, and thus ultimately Sor’s own writing. He attributes Sor’s entries in the Encyclopédie pittoresque to the editor Ledhuy, despite the fact that he also suspected Sor as the author. The autobiographical content is merely documented by one of the footnotes, in which the literature Jeffery used also appears somewhat concealed. As already mentioned, both the bibliography and earlier research results are missing, so that Jeffery can variously present long published 7 information as newly discovered. What is more vexing are the accumulations of secondary facts and the ubiquitous speculations. The secondary material, brought together out of lack of primary sources or new findings, is so voluminous, that it entirely buries Sor as a person. The protagonist becomes a victim of his biographer, who unwantingly deprives his reader of an insight into the personality and versatility of this “reluctant guitarist”, instead of revealing it. All three works have been taken into account in the following autobiographical essay. As a consequence of calamitous developments, especially in the libraries of Paris, Madrid and Barcelona, Sor’s original writings have become irretrievable. Therefore, I have been obliged to employ off-prints from earlier publications. However, the most important source-material regarding Sor had been made available long before the publication of the above-mentioned works, largely through Felipe Pedrell, Hans Tempel, José Subira, Domingo Prat and Hans Radke. Given that previous descriptions of Sor’s life had already brought to light the musician and composer behind the guitarist, only Sor the writer still remains to be discovered. The first edition of my book, in 1984, was an autobiographical account of Sor’s life and ideas, assembled from texts such as his letters and other available writings, and completed by notions on the principles of the Guitar. The new edition has remained faithful to this approach. Again, elements of Sor’s considerations have been blended into the account of his life; the rest appears classified according to themes in the third chapter. There will surely be readers who believe it improbable that Sor could have composed as many coherent texts as are reproduced in these pages. For this reason, an appendix of primary sources documents all cuttings and isolated sentences, alterations and transitions. The latter are sentences that have been added so as to avoid stark contrasts. In order to keep the narration in the first person singular, as Sor preferred it, I have transcribed the preface and conclusion of the article Sor in the Encyclopédie pittoresque from the third person. Insertions have been highlighted through vignettes and the script. With these exceptions, the continuous text in all three parts is Sor’s own. The structure of the book has been dictated by the documented existence and the content of the selftestimonies of Sor, into which have been inserted articles and statements by his contemporaries. In this edition, more emphasis shall be laid on Dionisio Aguado than in the first; also, the slightly modified structure shall accentuate the collaboration of the two friends. Nevertheless, the lack of self-testimonies of Aguado means that the two guitarists cannot be treated equally in these pages, as had been the case in Sor’s first edition of Les deux amis, op. 41. In the new edition, I have reviewed both textual material and indexes. In copying, I also verified the wording and the order of texts with reference to their coherence. There are two reasons for these modifications in the translations from French or Spanish: firstly, my prolonged exposure to both languages has led me to new ways of understanding; and secondly, I am now able to better assess Sor’s limitations in his mastery of the French language. 8 Recent discoveries further expand the book by corroborating both dates and the existence of hitherto lost works. The most outstanding publication in this field is without doubt the work of Luis Gasser, who, as the editor of Estudios sobre Fernando Sor- Sor Studies, encouraged and published thirty essays, studies, overviews and catalogues. My changes and additions to the Timeline and Catalogue of Works are largely based on these writings. Nevertheless, many gaps remain, even in this comprehensive volume. On the one hand, publications in German – following a barely comprehensible tradition – have only been taken into account in a very few exceptional cases, so that, even now, only the 2nd edition of Sor’s didactic piano work op. 22, and not the original, has been included. On the other hand, some biographical finds shed light on Sor’s Spanish career, from which works have now been documented that were previously considered of dubious authorship, if not lost. Of course, even in new discoveries, there are disappointments. For example that, out of three “symphonies”, the two mentioned by Sor consist only of one movement each. Or, that the name »Sor« on the title-page of a Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in G-major, is the only evidence of a supposed involvement. Further proof of his authorship is lacking as much in the work itself, the character of the music and the handwriting, as in the sources. Nonetheless, with the volume, Sor Studies, the account of Sor’s early creative years gains in precision and the impression of an exceptional variety of his œuvre further emerges. Following this must be mentioned the detailed studies, evidenced by a series of theses on the subject of guitar music or the technique of the instrument before or after 1800. A third group is composed of smaller contributions within specialist periodicals, in which the dialogue between authors sometimes unexpectedly elucidates intricacies. A good example of this is Andrés Segovia’s edition of twenty selected studies by Sor, which, for decades after 1945, appreciably contributed to shaping the composer’s image within the world of the guitar. Three years after Brian Jeffery had drawn attention to the many mistakes and inconsistencies of this publication in 1981, Erik Stenstadtvold demonstrated that they were not based on Sor’s musical notations but, indeed, on those of Napoléon Coste’s adaptation of Sor’s method, which was still available to buy in 1980. An addendum to this conclusion has unwantingly been provided by one of Reginald Smith Brindle’s articles. Smith Brindle, although sceptical, was still inclined to believe in 1989 what Segovia had claimed in his presence, forty years earlier at a summer school in Siena, namely, that he had written this colourful miscellany of studies entirely from memory, because his sheet music had been lost during the chaos of the Spanish civil war! These articles are listed in the bibliography, together with all other mentioned publications. The rest of the structure follows that of the first edition. The chapter headings structuring the text remain, as do the mottos at the beginning of all three sections, and the majority of the pictures, all captions, newspaper articles or official documents. Explanatory pictures regarding playing technique and musical examples have mostly been taken from Sor’s works. To these have been added small vignettes in the margins, of Sor or Aguado, in order to better specify the author within the alternation of their texts. Vignettes of a guitar or of a few bars in Sor’s own handwriting have been provided as further aids. The small guitar denotes that the following text regards concerts, instrumental issues or playing technique; the miniature musical script indicates reviews of compositions and musical themes. 9 The images try to convey the impression of being illustrations, as the writer himself might have added them. This same aim is also pursued by the short image captions, but they are equally intended to give the reader additional knowledge, that they – as opposed to Sor – need in order to set the scene within a context. Criticisms and other specifications have been collected in the notes. A comprehensive timeline by date and keyword provides an introduction to Sor’s life and can help to orient oneself in his narrations. The bibliography and catalogue have been expanded and indexes as to the text, names and subjects complete the overview of Sor’s life and work. 10