Francesco Molino: From Ivrea to the Parisian Salons, Sonatas and Duos for Flute and Guitar

Description

COMPOSER
Francesco Molino was an Italian guitarist, oboist, violist, and composer, born In Ivrea, Piedmont, on June 4, 1768.
His father Giuseppe Ignazio was an oboist in the service of the Piedmontese troop band. Francesco followed his father in choosing a military career, at the age of 15 years he joined the Piedmont Regiment as a volunteer, thereby also learning his father’s instrument, the oboe. He also undertook training on the viola, and by the age of 18 years he was active as a violist in the orchestra of the Royal Theater of Turin. He often travelled to Spain to give concerts. He was orchestral conductor during 1796–97.
In 1818, Francesco Molino made his way to Paris, where he presented himself as a string player, however he was also entering the world of the guitar.
Ferdinando Carulli and others had built a considerable culture of guitar playing in the French capital and it was into this established tradition that Molino began to work. He built a successful career for himself counting amongst his guitar students members from the highest strata of Parisian society.
In total Molino penned sixty guitar works in which musical quality is coupled with playability for the beginner or the more advanced amateur; the bulk of his guitar compositions were published during this “Paris” period from 1820 to 1835. Among the best-known are his Three Sonatas, 18 Preludes and Terpsichore, all for solo guitar, the Sonata, Op. 51, a series of chamber trios and nocturnes for guitar and flute duet, his Op. 56 Concerto for guitar and orchestra. He also wrote for other instruments in combination with the guitar, including flute and violin.
He died in Paris in 1847.
His works were largely neglected until the twentieth century, when many of them were republished.
Francesco Molino was undoubtedly one of the leading guitar players in the Paris of the 1820s, when the ‘guitaromanie’ was at its peak. Moreover, he recorded his thoughts on guitar playing in a number of elaborate Methods, which at the time received public as well as critical acclaim.
In 1828, the French guitarist Charles de Marescot published a small booklet, called La Guitaromanie, that contains, among other things, a caricature showing two bands of guitarists fighting savagely, using their instruments as weapons, titled “Discussion entre les Carulistes et les Molinistes”. Marescot had wanted to refer to a disagreement between the two best established and most infuential professors of the guitar in Paris. Some differences in their techniques may have been a reason for a dispute. He mentions as one of the most evident discrepancies the use of the lefthand thumb to stop notes on the sixth string. Carulli was an advocate of this technique; Molino, on the other hand, was one of the first guitarists to reject this technique in print, a view other important guitarists such as Sor and Aguado also held.
Another apparent difference between the two guitarists is how they defined the positions of the left hand on the fingerboard. Possibly due to his parallel training as a cellist, Carulli used in his first methods a system of positions similar to that employed by other string instruments such as the cello or violin. Conversely, Molino showed his predilection as early as 1813 for a system that associated a position to each fret, referring to twelve positions for the left hand, as we do today.
The fact that Carulli and Molino used different guitars may have been a relevant factor in the querelle. Molino used at first a standard guitar, but at least from the publication of his Grande Méthode, op.33 (1823), he began to promote an altogether different instrument, which he called nouvelle guitare. In order to obtain a greater volume of sound, the soundboard of the new guitar was slightly convex, thus making the instrument more resonant.
DESCRIPTION

The idea of a monographic work on Francesco Molino was born on the occasion of the 250th anniversary of his birth in Ivrea, the common birthplace that unites the composer with the interpreters.
The duo had previously performed some of Molino’s pieces in live concerts of various genres. “We were fascinated by the pleasantness of the sound and the elegance of the writing in a seemingly simple but exquisitely refined musical texture,” they said.
During Molino’s time in France, guitarists were mostly involved in accompanying songs as in playing solos; performing the various genres of guitar-accompanied song available, from the serious to the frivolous, highlighted unknown aspects of guitar song interpretation. These included the arrangement of Opera material for voice and guitar and a flexible use of tonality that contributed greatly to the characterization and refinement of the duo’s vocal or instrumental with guitar repertoire.
The examination of sources allows us to glimpse a set of performance practices at Molino’s time that where the heritage of French baroque music, the currents of interpretation from the Paris Conservatory and the new aesthetic popularized by Italian Opera.
The construction of the instrument used by French guitarists of the 18th and 19th centuries was very different from that of guitars today. Molino himself paid particular attention to the technical improvement of the instrument, proposing what his “nouvelle guitare”. The string length, now set at 65 cm, the way to anchor them to the bridge, the material they were made (animal gut instead of nilon), the number of strings, the shape and length of the guitar itself, the dimensions of the neck and its corollary, the distance between the strings, were different and the executive result, consequently, very different from the modern one.
Between 1800 and 1830, we observe an evolution in the conception of amenities and expression by French guitarists: their approach to ornamentation suggests a tension between the weight of French Baroque conventions and the attraction of novelty, largely symbolized by Italian vocal art and by an increasingly frequent use of expressive practices which characterize the romantic music, including tempo change, portamento and the increasing importance of using dynamics for expressive purposes. Carulli’s and Molino’s installation in Paris corresponds, in fact, to the systematization of the ornamentation practices of French guitarists, for example, the plurality of cadential approaches gives way to a harmonization of the technique and aesthetics of the trill, despite the survival of certain typically French practices, as the arpeggioment of chords and the use of line and vibrato.
From 1815, under Louis XVIII, Paris lived at the frenetic pace of the many social gatherings organized by the bourgeoisie in all forms; at this time institutions clustered in the 9th arrondissement of Paris to expand the market for music. During this period, music was performed both on the public stage and in private salons: in addition to the many sumptuous concert halls, private music salons were located next to the main theatres or the famous Conservatoire and, more often than not, directly in the reception room of the musicians’ apartments.
It is in this context that Francesco Molino’s sonatas and duos for flute and guitar must be placed, with a focus on listening.
The performers sought to recreate the spirit of the Parisian concert halls and musical salons in which the works on this CD would have been performed. The recording is as “natural” as possible, recreating the effect of a live performance and letting the imagination transport the listener to the salons of the 9th Arrondissement.
Maria Teresa Carlevato © 2024