Ferdinando Carulli: Chamber Music for Two Guitars

Description

The eighteenth-century Neapolitan school was an extremely lively artistic workshop: one which could extend its influence well beyond the historical moment of its greatest development, reaching the following centuries. Many composers, through the years, earned it its fame. To cite but a few, the names of Nicola Porpora (1686-1766), of his nearly-contemporaneous fellow musician Domenico Scarlatti (1685-1757) and of the later Domenico Cimarosa (1749-1801) should be listed. Within this framework a high number of composers received their education so that they would eventually disseminate the so-called opera buffa in the best European theatres. Even though opera dominates their output, they did not neglect instrumental music, developing harmonic and formal structures independent of the foreign models. This was the musical and cultural climate in which Ferdinando Carulli (Naples 1770 – Paris 1841) had his first musical experiences, even though he cannot be numbered strictly as a member of that school: indeed, he was a self-taught musician who had studied privately the cello before focusing on the guitar. As had happened to other Italian musicians, he found abroad the fortune and success which Italy would probably not have granted him. In his early thirties, and also due to family reasons (he had married a French woman), he moved to Paris at the beginning of the nineteenth century; he would spend his remaining years there. In the French capital, Carulli established his fame as a professional musician. On the one hand, he had an intense activity as a teacher for the most exclusive and prestigious families; on the other, he was interested in guitar making: in 1826, in cooperation with luthier Pierre René Lacot, he patented a twelve-stringed guitar, with unfretted basses, for which he would also write a treatise. Thanks to the publisher Carli, he also managed to realize a wide-ranging editorial project, printing a very high number of works. His frenzied compositional activity is demonstrated by a catalogue with some 366 known works and almost a hundred compositions which are hitherto unavailable. His public affirmation came with the success, still continuing to present-day, of his op. 27: a rational and innovative method which, responding to the taste of the educated French audience, became a valid instrument for the education of every young guitarist. If the numbers of his output are huge, the aesthetic and musical level is however not always homogeneous. Frequently, the solo pieces of larger dimensions suffer from a certain verbosity, with a redundancy of predictable technical formulae. By contrast, in some of his chamber music works such as op. 9 (Three Grand Trios for flute, violin and guitar), op. 103 (Trois trios concertants pour violon, alto et guitare), in the pieces for guitar and fortepiano, or in the numerous pedagogical works, many little gems are found, in which the exploration of the strictly technical aspects of his instrument leaves room for a felicitous musical invention. The structure of the programme presented here describes three fundamental aspects of the composer’s style and artistic output. A first tribute is paid to Carulli the pedagogue, with nine lessons excerpted from the Vingt-quatre Leçons à deux guitars. They are made of a generally monodic line to be played by the pupil and of an accompaniment realized by the teacher and prevailingly characterized by thin arpeggios or agile scales; however, they are not always easy to play. They can be interpreted almost as a workshop in which the composer experiments with tunes which will be reused in other works. They are miniatures of an absolute elegance, without repetitive arpeggios or stereotyped chordal formulae: album leaves with a true poetry (Leçon n. 3), short examples of an efficacious polyphonic writing (Leçon n. 14), but also refined minuets (Leçon n. 10). A second aspect is devoted to the brilliant style, well-represented by the Nocturne op. 118, where, poignantly, elegant nineteenth-century virtuoso passages are found, culminating in a “Rossinian” finale worthy of the most important concert halls. Finally, the most developed section is dedicated to his classical style, with the refined op. 62. This is made of three splendid Sonatas, formed each by four movements: this genre is rather unusual in the repertoire for the guitar. Here Carulli, as had already happened in the Three Sonatas op. 21, seems to aim at leaving his signature, organizing the Sonata’s keys by fourths (D major, G major and C major). Even though not all of the pieces reach the same qualitative level, in this collection the composer achieves the acme of his musical thought, and occasionally demonstrates a highly original language. Thus, along with pages with a refined irony, such as the Rondeau of Sonata no. 3, there are the three enchanting Minutes with Trios, where the atmosphere of Haydn’s chamber music can be breathed. Then, we find the broad but intense cantabile of the Largo (Sonata no. 2), whereby the momentum of the two initial intervals of fourth is followed by a tune imbued with pathos – which belies the idea of Carulli as a “frivolous” composer. In the first movements, moreover, Carulli develops a Sonata form sometimes lacking the reprise of the first theme: this aspect can be understood within the framework of the various sonata forms in use at the time. The use of a light, never thick texture, made of inspired melodic lines sustained by monodic basses or thirds in the accompaniment contribute to making op. 62 a true unicum in its genre, able to stand comparison with more celebrated works in the repertoire for two guitars of the early nineteenth century.
Album Notes by Alfonso Baschiera e Alberto Gerard
(Translation by Chiara Bertoglio)