DA VINCI PUBLISHINGStrings, not Stripes: The Guitar in the Early 20th Century

Additional information

Artist(s)	Alessandro Giunta
Composer(s)	Alexandre Tansman, Federico Moreno Torroba, Francis Poulenc, Heitor Villa-Lobos, Joaquín Rodrigo, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco
EAN Code	7.46160918310
Edition	Da Vinci Classics
Format	1 Cd
Genre	Instrumental
Instrumentation	Guitar
Period	Contemporary
Publication year	2025

Description

This Da Vinci Classics album is a polyphony of voices gathering some of the most important composers of guitar works in the twentieth century. They came from very different backgrounds: from Brazil to Spain – the guitar’s homeland –, from France to Poland and Italy. Their styles are also very varied, although all of them are exquisite representatives of the current of composers who chose to maintain a bond with tonality and harmony, while innovating the tonal language from the inside.
But perhaps the main unifying element which keeps together most composers featured here and the works recorded and performed here is the concept underlying the choice just mentioned. The leading principle for these musicians was that of a “renaissance” of the guitar founded on the idea of Neoclassicism. For these composers, the guitar was an “expressive instrument”, in both meanings of these words: an instrument for expressing their soul, and a musical instrument with a great potential for expressiveness.
The guitar, being a plucked-string instrument, was also an ideal bridge connecting modernity with antiquity, since plucked-string instruments (such as the lyra or the cithara) are among the oldest instruments in human history, and other plucked-string instruments (such as the lute) are iconic symbols for other past (though more recent) eras.
Employed by modern composers and in the hands of contemporary musicians, thus, the guitar becomes a vehicle for accessing, with a critical and inspired eye, a past world and its music. This is the case, for example, with Tiento antiguo, with Poulenc’s Sarabande, which is inspired by tunes whose roots delve deep (to the point that strains of Gregorian melodies are found here), with Tansman’s Cavatina.
No less important is the connection with other kinds of roots: not just those of the “classical” repertoire and early European music, but also the roots of a nation’s own music. This is the case with the music by Torroba, and with Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s Capriccio diabolico. This last piece is deeply influenced by the aesthetics and by the principles of what is known in Italy as “generazione dell’Ottanta”, i.e. the group of great Italian composers who were born in the 1880s and who contributed highly to the rebirth and renaissance of Italian instrumental music in the first part of the twentieth century. This rebirth, in turn, required a greater awareness of one’s past; to that “generation” is due, in fact, the rediscovery of the instrumental tradition of baroque Italy (Corelli, Scarlatti, Vivaldi, to name but the most important of these musicians).
Thanks to the flexibility of the guitar as an instrument, and to its proximity to timbres typical for early music (such as the lute’s), but also to its universal dissemination, the guitar was the ideal instrument for enacting these multiple rediscoveries in a creative, artistic fashion. All over the world, composers in the first half of the twentieth century found in this instrument a great resource. It was needed at the dawn of the century, with its explosion of novelties, its enthusiasm, but also the crumbling of many deeply-held convictions; it was even more needed after the disasters and tragedies of World War I – when the essential, bare sound of the guitar was perhaps best suited to express the naked reality of the post-war period; it was needed when the burgeoning musicological disciplines brought a novel awareness about the “history” of music, its past, its value, and the principles of older works.
Finally, another red thread of this album is represented by the figure of Andrés Segovia. The role of Segovia in the “guitar Renaissance” of the twentieth century is unparalleled. An astonishing virtuoso and a musician of extraordinary refinement, Segovia commissioned countless guitar works to a plethora of composers, including some of the greatest; he premiered many of them; he inspired and motivated artists who were thrilled by the exceptional traits of his performances and of his understanding of music. With him, the guitar left behind its former status as a niche instrument, as an instrument suited mainly for exotic evocations of Iberia, and became a concert instrument proper, a true protagonist of the concert life.
Segovia was the dedicatee of Heitor Villa Lobos’ Cinq Préludes. Written in 1940, they represent Villa Lobos’ swan song as concerns guitar music. Although Villa Lobos is unanimously acknowledged as a great composer of guitar music, at the time of the Préludes’ composition he had been leaving the guitar aside for years. The merit for bringing Villa Lobos back to guitar music is to be ascribed to Segovia, whom Villa Lobos had met a few years before.
The Preludes were dedicated to “Mindinha”, Villa Lobos’ wife. But in a written document, Segovia speaks of six Preludes instead of the five we now have. There has been much dispute on this. There are witnesses (Turibio Santos and José Vieira Brandão) who claim to have seen the missing sixth prelude; indeed, reportedly, Vieira Brandão considered it “the best of all”, “o mais bonito de todos”. However, there is some skepticism among musicologists as to whether this sixth Prelude ever existed.
There are still other mysteries connected with this collection. The titles, all “homages” paid to someone, by which the several movements are referred to have no known source. They probably originate from Villa-Lobos’ circle, if not directly from him, but their origin remains a matter of speculation. The first is known as a “Homage to the dwellers of the Brazilian sertão”, the vast, semi-arid region in the interior of the country, characterized by its rugged terrain, thorny vegetation (caatinga), and periodic droughts.
The second is a homage to the “Marauder of Rio de Janeiro”; here we also hear a capoeira melody. Capoeira is a traditional dance of the Brazilian Africans, which resembles a martial art in its graceful yet energetic moves. There is also a suggestive imitation of the berimbau, an African instrument with just one metal string. The third is a homage to Bach, a favourite composer of both Villa Lobos and Segovia himself. It will be recalled that Villa Lobos had authored several Bachianas Brasileiras, in which he attempted to combine the rigour and balance of the German Baroque composer with the vivacity and liveliness of Brazilian music.
Brazil is the protagonist of the fourth Prelude, in which Villa Lobos’ constant interest in the natives’ culture is displayed, whilst the fifth Prelude returns to urban contexts. It is a “Homage to social life”, and in particular it is dedicated to “the fresh young boys and girls who go to concerts and to the theatre in Rio”.
Similar to Villa Lobos, also Joaquín Rodrigo was enamoured of the guitar but had quit composing for it for some years; and here too the piece recorded in this album, Tiento Antiguo, is the composer’s return to the instrument. Written in 1947 and dedicated to a German guitarist, Siegfried Behrend, it seemingly should evoke the sound and style of the vihuela; however, on close scrutiny this does not appear clearly; rather, the musical imagery seems to derive more directly from flamenco music.
The two pieces by Moreno Torroba recorded here are among the best known in his guitar output: Burgalésa (1928) is a homage to the Castilian city of Burgos, evoked as from afar in time and space. Madroños is more colourful and folklike, with numerous effects of spatialization.
Francis Poulenc’s Sarabande is yet another evocation of distant times and places, fittingly corresponding to Poulenc’s interest in Neoclassicism. Written in 1960, it reflects Poulenc’s characteristic style, blending elegance with emotional depth. Although traditionally Sarabandes are in a 3/4 metre, this one wavers between 3, 4, and even 5 beats per bar, but the result is very harmonious due to Poulenc’s masterful handling of the musical material. It is dedicated to Ida Presti, a phenomenal guitarist who was widely regarded as one of the greatest players of her time and had an influential presence in classical guitar circles.
Other dances come next, including another Sarabande, in the bizarrely-titled Suite Cavatina by the Polish-born composer Alexandre Tansman. This work earned him the first prize in the Accademia Chigiana’s International Competition for works for solo guitar in 1951, and was a particular favourite of Segovia. Its premiere took place in 1952 at the Chigiana in Siena.
The work’s name, as has been said, is somewhat incongruous, since Cavatina technically is a major character’s debut aria in Italian operas. Originally conceived in four movements, it was later expanded to include the Danza Pomposa, written by Tansman on Segovia’s explicit request. The allusion to Italy found in the title is mirrored by particular traits found in the entire composition. For instance, the Barcarolle is an evocation of Venice and of the gondola songs. At the same time, it is also a homage to Frédéric Chopin, who composed a very famous Barcarolle for the piano, and who shared with Tansman both the Polish roots and the French acquired culture. Recurring elements in the entire Suite are the “key” of E (intended as closer to modality than to tonality) and the use of dactylic rhythms, which were frequently adopted in the music of the past to signify energy and liveliness. Tansman’s work is a notable example of guitar composition which does not reference Spanish music or topoi.
Another homage to Italy, or at least to an Italian musician, comes from the Italian composer whose work closes this album. Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco was an Italian Jew who had to flee Italy in consideration of the racial persecutions of the Fascist regime, finding his new homeland in the States, where he would become an appreciated composer of film music. He wrote extensively for the guitar; his impressive series of 24 Preludes and Fugues, Les guitares bien tempérées, was dedicated to Ida Presti, along with Alexandre Lagoya.
His Capriccio diabolico – which also exists in an unpublished version for guitar with orchestral accompaniment – is a homage in the same vein as those by Villa Lobos. In this case, the homage’s recipient is none other than Niccolò Paganini, who wrote extensively for the guitar even though his first instrument was, obviously, the violin.
Capriccio diabolico composed in 1935 at Segovia’s prompting, is performed here in a manner close to its original form, omitting the opening-bar quotations of Paganini’s famous La Campanella theme. A variety of techniques is explored in it; thus, the homage to Paganini extends well beyond the initial quotation, becoming a symbol of the performer’s mastery across a broad range of technical demands. Taken together, these pieces form a mosaic whose collective examination offers a panorama of the main trends in twentieth-century guitar music.
Chiara Bertoglio © 2024

Artist(s)

Alessandro Giunta
Alessandro Giunta, from Verona, honed his skills under the guidance of Giovanni Puddu at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena and the Accademia Internazionale “Incontri col Maestro” di Imola, where he completed the Master’s Degree Courses in Guitar with top honors (110/110 cum laude) and an academic mention. He also benefited from the mentorship of esteemed musicians such as Marcin Dylla, Matteo Mela, Arturo Tallini, and Giulio Tampalini, as well as Alain Meunier and Marco Zuccarini for chamber music.
In addition to his musical training, Alessandro earned a degree in International Cooperation and Development from La Sapienza University in Rome. He also completed his Academic Bachelor in Guitar with the highest distinction at the Conservatory of Santa Cecilia in Rome. A performer with wide-ranging cultural interests, Alessandro has dedicated himself to refining the methodological aspects of instrumental teaching while cultivating a vibrant concert career.
As both a soloist and a member of chamber ensembles, Alessandro has performed at numerous prestigious festivals and events across Italy, including the Imola Summer Festival, Chigiana International Festival, Settimana di Teodorico, Chianti Classico Experience, Festiv’Alba, Festival delle Due Città and Passione in Musica. His performances have taken place in renowned venues such as Teatro Mazzacorati 1763 in Bologna, Palazzo Chigi-Saracini in Siena, Palazzo Monsignani-Sassatelli in Imola, Mausoleo di Teodorico Ravenna, Castello La Leccia in Siena, Rocca Sforzesca in Imola, Museo di Santa Caterina in Treviso and the Abbazia di Santa Lucia in L’Aquila.

In 2024, Alessandro achieved remarkable success in international music competitions, winning 1st Prize at the Città di Belluno international music competition, the overall 1st Prize (with a perfect score of 100/100) and the Sante Vannini special prize at the Jan Langosz - Giuseppe Fricelli music competition, and the overall 1st Prize at the Lutzemberger competition in Treviso. He was also selected for the Giovani Talenti Musicali Italiani nel Mondo project, an initiative supported by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation in collaboration with CIDIM (Comitato Nazionale Italiano Musica).
A musician of exceptional versatility, Alessandro Giunta seamlessly combines rigorous philological research on guitar repertoire with dazzling virtuosity and a deeply charismatic artistic expressiveness, captivating audiences with his performances. His performances span a wide range of styles, from interpreting the works of Mauro Giuliani, the foremost guitarist-composer of the First Viennese School, to presenting modern masterpieces such as Bruno Maderna’s Serenata per un satellite.

Composer(s)

Alexandre [Aleksander] Tansman
(b Łódź, 12 June 1897; d Paris, 15 Nov 1986). French composer and pianist of Polish birth. Following studies at the Łódź Conservatory (1908–14) with Wojciech Gawronski and others, he moved to Warsaw where he completed the doctorate in law at the University of Warsaw (1918). He continued his piano studies with Piotr Rytel and took composition lessons with Henryk Melcer-Szczawiński. Although he won three prizes in the Polish National Music Competition of 1919 (for Impression, Preludium in B Major and Romance), critics considered his distinctive chromaticism and polytonality too bold. Disappointed with his reception in Poland, he moved to Paris, giving a début recital in February 1920. Soon after his arrival, he became friendly with Stravinsky and Ravel, both of whom encouraged and advised him. Stravinsky's repetitive, rhythmic patterns and Ravel's chords of the 11th and 13th influenced much of his inter-war music. Acquainted with many leading musical figures in Paris during these years, Tansman was part of the circle of foreign musicians, known as the Ecole de Paris, that included Martinů, Alexander Tcherepnin, Conrad Beck and Marcel Mihalovici. While his music retained many distinctively Polish features, such as Mazurka rhythms and Polish folk melodies, and while he wrote collections of Polonaises, Nocturnes, Impromptus, Waltzes and other Chopinesque miniatures, neo-classical traits appear in works such as the Sonata rustica (1925), the Sonatine for flute and piano (1925), the Symphony no.2 (1926) and the Second Piano Concerto (1927). A more romantic approach to neo-classicism is evident in his fairy tale ballet Le jardin du paradis (1922) and the first of his seven operas, La nuit kurde (1927). Although he never completely abandoned a diatonic framework, critics of the 1920s and 30s described his harmony at times as Scriabinesque and atonal. His Hebraic background provided compositional stimulus for works including Rapsodie hébraïque (1933) and The Genesis (1944), although this influence became more prominent in his postwar music.

Federico Moreno Torroba (b Madrid, 3 March 1891; d Madrid, 12 Sept 1982). Spanish composer, conductor and critic. He first studied music with his father, José Moreno Ballesteros, an organist and teacher at the Madrid Conservatory, and with whom he collaborated on his first zarzuela, Las decididas (1912). He later studied composition with Conrado del Campo at the Royal Conservatory, where his tone poem La ajorca de oro was first performed in 1918. In 1924 he married Pilar Larregla, the daughter of a Navarrese composer; the folk music of Navarra along with that of Castile was to serve as a major source of inspiration in his music. Although not a guitarist himself, in the 1920s his growing friendship with Segovia inspired him to begin writing for the guitar, and the resulting compositions such as Sonatina (1924) and Piezas características (1931) are among his finest works. He also established himself as a composer for the stage, and his zarzuela La mesonera de Tordesillas was first performed to critical acclaim in 1925, while his most famous zarzuela, Luisa Fernanda (1932), is a representative of the last flowering of the zarzuela grande. Between 1925 and 1935 he was active as a music critic for Madrid periodicals, especially Informaciones, and used this position and his brief term in the Second Republic's five-member Junta Nacional de Música to promote greater government support for music.

With the outbreak of the Civil War in 1936, Moreno Torroba retreated to Navarra with his family, avoiding involvement in the conflict. With the ascendancy of Franco he became one of the dominant figures in Spanish music, along with Turina and Rodrigo. Rejecting the European avant garde, they embraced a conservative nationalist aesthetic that was accepted in the new political environment. In 1946 he formed a zarzuela company that toured the Americas for two seasons (he had directed productions of his zarzuelas in Buenos Aires annually since 1934). In the 1950s Moreno Torroba's satirical zarzuela Bienvenido, Mister Dolar (1954) reflected the growing political and military cooperation between the USA and Spain along with the influx of American capital and culture, while María Manuela (1957) became his most popular zarzuela of the decade.

His output diminished as the public appeal of the zarzuela waned in the 1960s and his own work became increasingly seen as dated. Consequently, he devoted more time to conducting and recording, returning several times to Latin America to conduct performances of his own works. He continued to compose for the guitar, however, writing the Concierto de Castilla (1960) for Segovia, Homenaje a la seguidilla (1962) and Diálogos entre guitarra y orquesta (1977), among the best of his concertos. The two books of Castillos de España (1970 and 1978) for solo guitar are among his most notable successes in that genre. Among his last works is his second opera El poeta, first performed in 1980 with Plácido Domingo.

Moreno Torroba was a major figure in Spanish music of the 20th century who flourished despite the political and social upheavals that surrounded him. His music has often been described as ‘castizo’, employing elements of folk and art music which are of distinctly Spanish ‘pure cast’. A nationalist, he believed that fidelity to Spain's heritage, rather than imitation of foreign models, would lead to the universality of Spanish music. His musical palette was not limited to strict folklorism, and he acknowledged a wider musical influence through the works of Debussy, Ravel, Franck, Wagner and, in later years, Bartók. His accessible, lyrical style maintains a strong sense of tonality through the use of conventional forms while judiciously employing extended triadic harmonies, modality, remote modulations and colourful orchestration. His zarzuelas also draw upon expressly regional motifs and references to traditional and contemporary urban culture.

Moreno Torroba held many prominent positions including Comisario del Teatro Zarzuela, director of the Compañía Lírica and, from 1974, president of the Sociedad General de Autores de España, through which he served as a cultural diplomat. He was elected as the director of the Academia de Bellas Artes de S Fernando in 1978, and died four years later at the age of 91.

Francis Poulenc: (b Paris, 7 Jan 1899; d Paris, 30 Jan 1963). French composer and pianist. During the first half of his career the simplicity and directness of his writing led many critics away from thinking of him as a serious composer. Gradually, since World War II, it has become clear that the absence from his music of linguistic complexity in no way argues a corresponding absence of feeling or technique; and that while, in the field of French religious music, he disputes supremacy with Messiaen, in that of the mélodie he is the most distinguished composer since the death of Fauré.

Heitor Villa-Lobos (b Rio de Janeiro, 5 March 1887; d Rio de Janeiro, 17 Nov 1959). Brazilian composer. Heitor Villa-Lobos stands as the single most significant creative figure in 20th-century Brazilian art music. This significance stems not only from his international recognition, but from his achievement in creating unique compositional styles in which contemporary European techniques and reinterpreted elements of national music are combined. His highly successful career stood as a model for subsequent generations of Brazilian composers.

Joaquin Rodrigo: (b Sagunto, 22 Nov 1901; d Madrid, 6 July 1999). Spanish composer. Blind from the age of three, he began his musical education at an early age and took lessons in composition with Francisco Antich in Valencia. In 1927 he moved to Paris as a pupil of Dukas at the Ecole Normale. After his marriage in Valencia in 1933 to the Turkish pianist Victoria Kamhi, he returned to Paris for further study at the Conservatoire and the Sorbonne. He lived and worked in France and Germany during the Spanish Civil War, and returned finally to Madrid in 1939. Soon after the première in 1940 of his first concerto, the Concierto de Aranjuez for guitar, he began to be recognized as one of the leading composers in Spain. Apart from writing a great deal of music during the following years, he was active as an academic and music critic, writing for several newspapers and publishing articles on a wide range of topics. He also worked in the music department of Radio Nacional and for the Spanish National Organization for the Blind (ONCE). In 1947 he was appointed to the Manuel de Falla Chair of Music at Complutense University, Madrid, created especially for him, and in 1950 he was elected to the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de S Fernando.

During these and subsequent years he made several tours throughout Spain, Europe, the Americas and Japan, teaching, giving piano recitals and lectures, and attending concerts and festivals of his own music. Amongst the most important of these were Argentina (1949), Turkey (1953 and 1972), Japan (1973), Mexico (1975) and London (1986). Distinctions awarded to Rodrigo included the Gran Cruz de Alfonso X el Sabio (1953), the Légion d’Honneur (1963), election as a member of the Académie Royale des Sciences, des Lettres et des Beaux-Arts of Belgium (1978) to the place left vacant on the death of Benjamin Britten, and honorary doctorates from the University of Salamanca (1964), the University of Southern California (1982), the Universidad Politécnica de Valencia (1988), and the Universities of Alicante, Madrid (both 1989) and Exeter (1990). A series of concerts and recitals to celebrate his 90th birthday took place throughout the world during 1991 and 1992. Two significant distinctions of Rodrigo’s old age were the conferment of the hereditary titles ‘Marqueses de los Jardines de Aranjuez’ on the composer and his wife Victoria by King Juan Carlos I in 1992, and the award of the Premio Príncipe de Asturias de las Artes in 1996.

During the second half of the 20th century Rodrigo came to occupy a position in Spanish musical life close to that of Manuel de Falla in the first. Like his mentor, he cultivated a style far removed from the major currents of European musical development and, as with Falla, his music needs to be judged in the context of Spain’s classical and traditional music, art and literature. His compositions number around 170, including 11 concertos, numerous orchestral and choral works, 60 songs, some two dozen pieces each for piano and guitar, and music for the ballet, theatre and cinema. His published writings (1999) also demonstrate a remarkable breadth of knowledge of music and the arts. Rodrigo’s music attracted favourable attention from both critics and performers from the start of his career, first in Valencia and Paris and subsequently worldwide. His first two guitar concertos, Concierto de Aranjuez and Fantasía para un gentilhombre, also achieved remarkable popularity. From the late 1970s onwards, however, appreciation of his music began to broaden. Wider knowledge of his music demonstrated that the charge that Rodrigo merely repeated the formula of his first concerto in later ones could no longer be substantiated, and recordings showed the quality of such works as the symphonic poem Ausencias de Dulcinea (1948), the Scarlatti-inspired piano suite Cinco sonatas de Castilla (1950–51), the Invocación y danza for solo guitar, written in homage to Falla (1961), the austere Himnos de los neófitos de Qumrán (1965), the brilliant Concierto madrigal for two guitars (1966), based on a Renaissance love-song, or the serenely beautiful Cántico de San Francisco de Asís (1982). Happily the composer’s 90th birthday was also the occasion for thoughtful and appreciative critical re-evaluations of Rodrigo’s music.

Rodrigo’s music was fundamentally conservative, ‘neocasticista’, or ‘faithful to a tradition’, to use the composer’s own words. His first works revealed the influence of composers such as Granados, Ravel and Stravinsky, but his individual musical voice was soon heard in the songs, piano works and orchestral pieces composed during the 1920s and 30s. As he matured, his wide knowledge of and sympathy with the music and culture of earlier times bore fruit. His forms were traditional, but appropriate for his purposes, and his musical language, drawn from both Classical and nationalist sources, underpinned a melodic gift of remarkable eloquence. He made many of the finest settings of classical Spanish poetry, his guitar pieces are in the central repertory, and his concertos are the most significant such works composed in Spain.

Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco (b Florence, 3 April 1895; d Beverly Hills, CA, 16 March 1968). Italian composer, pianist and writer on music.