Review Summary: Transcending the deficiencies of the fretboard.
The Classical Guitar No. 6
Classical music in the late 18th – early 19th centuries almost always followed a prescribed harmonic formula. For example, an archetypal Viennese sonata-form movement starts in the tonic, moves to the dominant, and then returns to the tonic. If you decided to set your piece in C-major, your prescribed macro formula would look like this: C-Major/G-major exposition, development in various keys, C-Major recapitulation. Of course, when you get down to the nitty-gritty theory, sonata-form is more complex than that, but the point is that high Classical music adhered to reasoned form and proportion rather than Romantic freedom and fantasia. Still, a musical era that’s indebted to frankly, very rudimentary theoretical practices, can only last so long. Over the decades, form and proportion turned into chains and fetters, and many pieces of the high Classical era began to feel indecipherable from the last. Whether you wrote for the solo piano or a full orchestra, no instrument or groups of instruments could escape the tonal asphyxiation.
If the music for a tonally complete instrument like the piano felt redundant, imagine the problems the classical era posed for the guitar, an instrument in which there are only seven easy keys out of a total of twenty-four to play in: C/Am, G/Em, D, A, and E. Necessarily, the chord progressions, macro-tonal formulas, and harmonic developments written for the guitar sounded even more troublingly similar. Therefore, in order for the classical guitar composer to transcend the harmonic yoke around his neck, he needed to be especially patient, persistent and creative. Most guitarists failed at their task, hence the robust number of petite etude and mechanical exercise collections rather than fully fledged sonatas, concertos, etc. But a few composers managed to stand out. Who were these men and how did they manage to separate themselves from pack？
A logical place to begin is with the father of the classical guitar, Fernando Sor. Young Fernando was born into a family of career soldiers in Barcelona in 1778. As was the custom in those days, Fernando was expected to follow in his father’s military footsteps, but when Sor’s father introduced him to the guitar his life changed forever. The boy must have become very good very quickly because the Barcelona Cathedral took notice of his talents and accepted him into their prestigious music school. Over the next decade, Sor so perfected his talents that during his two year stay in Paris beginning in 1813 he quickly made a reputation for himself as a virtuoso guitarist with an unsurpassable talent for improvisation. Sor would go on to make a name for himself across Europe, specifically in Paris, London, and Moscow, giving concerts and quickly fashioning himself into musician circles wherever he went. By the time Sor died in 1839, he had long been considered the greatest guitar player in the world.
So Sor was pretty good, but it’s his compositions and compositional style that so captured his contemporaries and earned him a place in posterity. (Sor was a musician first, a guitarist second. In fact, Sor composed an extensive amount of music that had nothing to do with the guitar. From Sor’s pen there are symphonies, string quartets, a substantial amount of both piano music and vocal music, nationalistic music, operas and ballets. His ballet score for Cinderella received over one hundred performances in his lifetime.) Sor above all, gives prominence to a singing, lyrical style. His emphasis is on three musical traits: melody, melody, and melody again. Whether in the fore or background, whether in a thick or sparse texture, whether in a sunny allegro or haunting adagio, the melody, for Sor, is the music; all the temporal, tonal, rhythmic and formal aspects of music Sor subordinates in service to the melody. In Sor one finds great clarity and ease, the melody and harmony always clearly delineated and fashioned in a graceful, elegant, and charming manner. That these are the facts of Sor’s style it might seem questionable that Sor was able to transcend the pitfalls of the high Classical era which itself can be graceful, elegant, and charming to the point of tediousness. Yet, for Sor, music is a process of aural storytelling, one with a full, rounded plot and thick syntax.
One piece that fixes Sor’s name in the history books is the “Gran Solo”, Sonata No. 1 in D Major, Op. 14. The “Gran Solo” does not stand out for its harmonic inventiveness, Op. 14 is almost as rule bound as it gets, but in the “Gran Solo” Sor features melodies seamless as the unconscious breath, fanciful imagination, and a complete mastery of sonata-form. We begin with a dark, foreboding d-minor introduction in 6/8 that acts as a counterweight to the sonata proper. There’s a gothic cathedral feel to it, the space between chords proportional to the heavy masonry of an 11th century church. Full of sickly diminished chords, the air is thick and damp, enough to make your skin bead with sweat on an August day. Our steps are heavy and we trudge no faster than a plodding walk, even up to the very end.
Where the introduction was sodden and ominous, the sonata proper is pulsing and confident. We begin by dashing out of the gates to a galloping rhythm in Dmaj, a rhythm that will surely catch your ear. Indeed, pay attention to all the rhythms for Sor uses them to tell different parts of his tonal story. But first take notice of the melody as it sinks from D to F#. It’s a very simple, straightforward melody, and it’s a microcosm of Sor as a whole who, as I said, preferences the melody above all. The reason to pay attention to the rhythms and the melodies is because Sor is not all that harmonically curious in Op. 14. In the exposition, as far as the macro-tonal plan is concerned, although there are a few flavorful harmonies here and there, we stay mostly in the safety of the tonic and the dominant (Dmaj-Amaj), as is customary.
Perhaps the best way to put it is that Sor’s idea of musical storytelling isn’t to paint through epic boldness and mangled pain, but through refinement, one that impressively isn’t stuffy but is gentle and direct. You must listen to Sor in the same way you listen to Mozart, paying close attention to every motive and theme rather than waiting for something fantastique. Where is the music going？What is the music saying？Has this motive been used before？How is it being treated now？Are we exposing or developing？Are we beginning or closing？Sor is a master Sonatist (if that’s a word), he always tells you what he’s doing. The galloping rhythm that I mentioned will return in different manners as the piece moves on, it’s your job to notice when and how, and when you do, you’ll have the sense that you’re reading an aural story. It’s pretty neat.
But don’t mistake refinement for superficiality. No, Sor is not deep like Beethoven, no one is, but that does not mean Sor never expresses the down side of life. He does. The development presents a contrast to the exposition, one that is searching, running. When I said that in Sor is not harmonically adventurous in Op. 14, I was right, but there is one exception. Six measures into the development Sor boldly modulates to the key of Db, five flats blackirding the stave. Db is a ridiculous key for the guitar; it’s very difficult to play in, often requiring a full bar on the sixth fret, but Sor pulls the key off superbly. Sor utilizes the key to not quite shock the listener, but to grab their attention; you will not have experienced anything close to the autumnal Db harmonies in the exposition.
After a modulation back to D-major and a series of pierced arpeggios, Sor presents us with a gnarled, mangled melody in D-minor. The melody is so strikingly different from what Sor presented in the exposition that it practically sounds Brouwerian in comparison. And yet, this melody is almost entirely diatonic (meaning it uses the notes of the scale). Sor treats this melody no differently than any other, with clarity and deference. After a seamless transition from the development to the recapitulation, except for the omission of the second theme and some extra flare here and there, Sor basically sticks to the script. The music is warm, big-hearted and lyrical. That’s Sor for you, and he’s a treat to have in your life.
Through his hardly paralleled musicianship and gorgeous style, Fernando Sor was the man who put the classical guitar on the map, the man who elevated the classical guitar from a purely accompaniment instrument to a solo one. Although some of Sor’s contemporaries like Giuliani and Carcassi may have surpassed him in technique, no one could replicate the beauty of Sor’s style, and every musician who picks up the classical guitar today owes Sor a debt of gratitude.
