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TECLA EDITIONS |
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Federico Moretti: Doce Canciones The complete introduction by Brian Jeffery (1977) These twelve songs by Federico Moretti (c. 1765-1838) form one of the finest works by this composer: a work which is finished, carefully polished, and planned as a unity. They are twelve love-songs arranged in the form of a song-cycle, all of them with similar accompaniments, an instrumental introduction and ending, a carefully worked-out musical form, and a close attention to detail. It is clear that this collection is not merely an assembly of twelve separate songs, but a planned unity; not merely a divertissement, but a work of art planned on a relatively large scale. Their composer, Federico Moretti, was an Italian from Naples, who came to Spain probably in the early 1790s, became an officer in the Spanish army and rose to the rank of brigadier. He died in Madrid in 1838, having combined throughout his life a military career with a love of music and in particular of the guitar. He played an important part in the development of the instrument, perfected his own style of composition, and had an influence on his younger contemporary Fernando Sor. In his Méthode pour la Guitare (Paris, 1830), p. 3, Sor writes: J'entendis un de ses accompagnements exécuté par un de ses amis; et la marche de la basse, ainsi que les parties d'harmonie que j'y distinguai, me donnèrent une haute idée de son mérite; je le regardai comme le flambeau qui devait servir à éclairer la marche égarée des guitaristes. ('I heard one of his accompaniments played by one of his friends; and the shape of the bass line, as well as the harmony which I could distinguish, gave me a high regard for his merit; I regarded him as the torch which should serve to illuminate the faltering steps of guitarists.') These Doce Canciones are the first work by Moretti to be published in modern times, for until now his music has been much neglected. But Moretti was a prolific composer: he wrote guitar solos, pieces for guitar with other instruments, guitar concertos, many songs, a method for guitar, and several books on musical theory - and as an army officer, he also published a Spanish-French dictionary of military vocabulary. Many of these works still remain not only unpublished in modern times but as yet unlocated. The present publication will serve to present for the first time a composer of some stature in the history of music in this period. The Doce Canciones were published not in Spain but in England, almost certainly because of the upheaval caused by Napoleon's invasion of Spain in 1808 and the Peninsular War which lasted until 1813. They were printed by the London firm of Clementi, Banger, Collard, Davis & Collard, which existed only from about 1810 to about 1818.(1) Moretti dedicated them to the Englishman James Duff, fourth Earl Fife, who like Moretti became an officer in the Spanish army.(2) Fife left Spain for England in 1811,(3) and it seems a likely conjecture that when he left Spain he took with him the manuscript of the Doce Canciones, to have them printed in London. The date of composition of these songs, then, seems to be 1811 or shortly before; and their date of publication about 1812, and certainly between 1811 and 1818. The title-page calls Moretti 'Colonel of the Legion of Foreign Volunteers', and in this context Moretti's friendship with Lord Fife falls into place. Both of them soldiers and officers, both of them foreigners in Spain, they shared an enthusiasm for Spanish music and dance: Moretti for example composed some songs in the native Spanish seguidilla form, while it was Fife who discovered the dancer Maria Mercandotti in Spain while she was still a child, brought her to England, and launched her on a career in ballet which was to make her famous throughout Europe.(4) The Doce Canciones are printed entirely in Spanish except for the words on the title-page 'London, Printed by Clementi, Banger, Collard, Davis, & Collard. 26, Cheapside', and the price is not in English currency but in Spanish reales. Therefore it seems that they were destined for the Spanish market, and probably the plates or the printed copies or both were shipped from London to Spain. No more is known of their printing history; they bear no plate-number, and today only two copies are known to survive, one in the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid and the other in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich. The present edition is a photographic facsimile of the Munich copy, by kind permission of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek. The original has been slightly reduced in size. A second issue of the Doce Canciones exists, in which the words 'London, Printed by Clementi, Banger, Collard, Davis, & Collard. 26, Cheapside' are omitted and replaced by 'Madrid. Se hallara en los Almacenes de musica de Mintegui, y Hermoso'. The price is seventy reales instead of the original eighty. The headings to the songs have been altered so that the songs could be sold individually. A copy of this second issue is in the collection of Robert Spencer, London. The circumstances of its printing are not known. The headings to the individual songs in this second issue describe the book as 'Primera Colección'; and later two further books were published in Spain, called 'Segunda Colección' and 'Tercera Colección', including songs not only by Moretti but also by various other composers. Copies of the 'Segunda Colección' are in London, collections of Robert Spencer and Brian Jeffery; and of the 'Tercera Colección' and some separate songs in London, collection of Robert Spencer. The songs in the Doce Canciones are found also in other sources. All twelve are in London, British Library, MS Egerton 3288, ff 3v-27v; ten (all except nos. 1 and 8) are in London, collection of Robert Spencer, 'Clive' MS; three (nos. 5, 8 and 10) are in London, collection of Brian Jeffery, 'Clive' MS; and one (no. 1), called 'Tyrana, Composée par F. Moretti' and arranged by Salvador Castro de Gistau, is in Castro's Journal de Musique Etrangère (Paris, c. 1810) (copies of this are in Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, and elsewhere). Each of the twelve songs has a guitar accompaniment by Moretti and an alternative piano accompaniment not by Moretti but by Manuel Rücker, which is merely a translation of the guitar part into the idiom of the piano, with no significant changes. The guitar accompaniments frequently consist of arpeggios, something which is characteristic also of certain of Moretti's guitar solos, and these arpeggios support the voice with a continuous web of sound rather than with frequent block chords or with separate melodic lines. They show a strong command of harmony and the guitar fingerboard. Moretti uses the instrument with confidence and precision, almost as though it had no harmonic limitations. One can understand why his approach appealed to Sor. The vocal lines are confident, sometimes operatic and ltalianate in style. The twelve anonymous poems which Moretti has set to music are not isolated but are linked in a specific order to form a song-cycle about love. Nor is it a conventional cycle, but rather takes the firm view that in the end liberty is preferable to love. It gives the overall impression of cynicism rather than of passion. All of the poems take the man's point of view, except for nos. 7 and 10 which take the woman's and no. 8 which is unspecific. In the first song, 'La Irresolución', the lover wants to leave, but his passion is too strong for that _ but he is reluctant to show his love, so that in the end he remains silent. The second song is also about declarations of love, but here the opposite view is expressed, that it is better to be bold in love than to remain silent. No. 3, 'La Insinuación', is a conventional statement characteristic of traditional Spanish love poetry: since the lover first saw the girl's eyes, he has remained captivated. No. 4 once again gives a blunter view, 'Que mi sistema es sí o no' - this lover wants a firm yes or no. Nos. 5 and 6 are both narrative poems. In no. 5, the lover finds his beloved asleep and talking aloud about the unhappiness of love; she wakes and they are reconciled; and no. 6 is more flirtatious. A woman speaks in the next song, no. 7, 'El Descuido'; she would like to be free of love, but Cupid caught her unawares. There follows a song about dreams of love. Then with the next two songs begins the final message of the cycle, for the first of them, 'El Desengaño', takes a cynical view of women, while the next, 'Consejo al Bello Sexo', is all about the lies that men tell. If anything, the second is the stronger of the two, with its refrain: 'Jesús, qué mentira!' Finally, the last two songs both proclaim that liberty is preferable to love. Each of the twelve poems has a different form. No. 7 has fourteen lines and appears to be a sonnet, while all the others are stanzaic, but with stanzas of different shapes and some with refrains and some without. This fact contrasts with Moretti's settings of them, which are much more alike in musical form than are the poems as literature. The original Spanish text contains some older forms of spelling which are not found in modern Spanish. Moreover, perhaps because the edition was printed in England rather than Spain, the original text contains some errors. The reader is advised to consult the full texts below, which are given in modern Spanish, with modern punctuation, and with an English prose translation. The music, too, contains a few errors. [In the printed Tecla edition, a list of suggested emendations to the music is given here.] No fingering or other marks have been added to this edition. My thanks are due to Jack Sage of King's College, London, and to Walter Doehner, for their help with the texts, and to the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich, for permission to reproduce their copy of the Doce Canciones. BRIAN JEFFERY (1) Charles Humphries & William C. Smith, Music Publishing in the British Isles, 2nd edn. (Oxford, 1970), p. 107. (2) James Duff's father Alexander became the 3rd Earl Fife (an Irish peerage) in 1809, but died only two years later and was succeeded in 1811 by his son James, who thereupon became the 4th Earl Fife. This is presumably the title that is translated into Spanish on the title-page of the Doce Canciones as 'el Conde de Fife'. In 1827 he was created Baron Fife (a peerage of the United Kingdom). (Debrett, under Dukedom of Fife). (3) Dictionary of National Biography. (4) See Brian Jeffery, Fernando Sor, Composer and Guitarist (London, Tecla Editions, 1977), pp. 16 and 46.
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