Here are the complete detailed notes to all the pieces in Volume 5, taken from Volume 5.
OPUS 33. TROIS PIÈCES DE SOCIÉTÉ
With op. 33 a new genre enters
Sor’s work, one which he had not used before, and one which, indeed, is
still seldom approached by guitarists playing Sor’s music: the Pièce de
Société. In Sor’s hands, this
is an extended piece in two movements: and here, in op. 33, to the lyricism of
the shorter pieces is added the stature of sonatas.
The first is a Moderato cantabile followed by a catchy
Allegretto, a kind of rondo; the second an Andante followed by a waltz; and
the third breaks new ground in its combination of forms, being a Sicilienne
followed by a March with a trio entirely in harmonics. In each of the three pairs it is made
very clear that the first movement leads straight into the second, without a
break.
The dedicatee of op. 33 was Athenaïs Paulian, who was very
much a part of the guitar world at that time.
Aguado dedicated his Huit petites pièces, op. 3, to her in
1827; her brother Eugène Paulian was also a composer for the guitar, who
dedicated his op. 2, Variations on “Gentil housard”, to Sophie Vautrin,
who was later to become Madame François de Fossa; and she herself composed
several works for the guitar.
First published in Paris in 1828.
Another set of three Pièces de Société is Sor’s op. 36
(also included in this present edition).
* * * * *
In No. 1, in the Allegretto which is a rondo, small details
are different at the repetitions. They
have been left in place here, but players should feel free to alter them (that
is, to play them without the small differences) if they wish.
No. 2: the repeat mark at the end of the first section (bar
8) is editorial.
No. 2, Andante, bar 68, first note: the harmonic is very clearly printed as a 3 on the fourth string in the original edition, but that appears to be a mistake. I have guessed that the 3 was an error for 5 and have altered it accordingly. Another possibility is that it was the third fret which was intended but on the fifth string not the fourth.
OPUS 35. 24 VERY EASY EXERCISES
With his op. 31, Sor had
already composed instructional pieces which were a good deal easier than his
previous studies in op. 6 and op. 29. He had given the title “Leçons” to those easier
pieces. However, it seems that
these were not easy enough, for a preface to op. 35 says that certain people
had said to him that they required too rapid a progress and aimed too high. Therefore he composed his op. 35, a
set of extraordinarily easy pieces for beginners, which he called not studies,
and not lessons, but “Exercices”. The
original title was Vingt quatre exercices très faciles et soigneusement
doigtés (24 very easy exercises, carefully fingered). See the notes to
op. 31.
A preface to op. 35 in the original edition reads as
follows:
Plusieurs personnes ont trouvé
que mes vingt-quatre leçons pour les commençants exigeaient des progrès un
peu trop rapides, et qu’elles étaient disposés de manière à mettre l’écolier
à même d’acquérir un grand talent; que cette disposition n’était point
celle qui convient à ceux qui ne visent qu’à devenir d’une force médiocre,
et qui ne pouvant donner une grande assiduité à l’étude se contentent de
pouvoir s’accompagner et de jouer quelques morceaux agréables sans qu’ils
soient d’une grande difficulté. La
justesse de ces observations m’a décidé à composer ces Exercices qui
peuvent suffire à donner la facilité nécessaire pour s’accompagner et
mettre l’écolier en état de s’occuper des 24 leçons s’il désire
augmenter son talent; ces leçons lui paraîtront alors moins difficiles
puisqu’il aura déjà exécuté ce qui fait le fond de chacune.
Ces exercices seront très
utiles surtout aux personnes qui étudieront d’après la méthode que je
suis sur le point de publier, car mon but principal a été de mettre en
pratique la théorie qu’elle renferme.
(“Several people have found
that my 24 Lessons for beginners [op. 31] required a somewhat too rapid
progress, and that they were aimed at enabling the student to acquire a great
talent; and that such an aim was not suitable for those who aim only to
acquire a moderate ability, and who, unable to give great assiduity to
studying, are content to be able to accompany themselves and to play some
agreeable pieces which would not be of great difficulty. The correctness of these observations
has decided me to compose these present Exercises which can suffice to give
the necessary facility to accompany oneself and to put the student in a
position to be able to tackle the 24 Lessons if he wishes to increase his
talent; those Lessons will then seem to him to be less difficult, because he
will already have played that which is the basis of each of them.
These present Exercises will
be particularly useful to those people who will study following the method
which I am about to publish, because my principal aim has been to put into
practice the theory which it contains.”)
Exercise 20 resembles example 14 in Sor’s method, which he
gave as a “passage in the style of harp music”. He writes (Method, English version, page 18): “Lastly, to
imitate the harp (an instrument of similar tone), I construct the chord so as
to comprise a great distance, or interval, as in example the thirteenth, plate
I, and I touch the strings at one-half the distance from the twelfth fret to
the bridge, taking great care to have the fingers which play them depressed a
little between the strings, on order that the friction of the curve DE, fig.
18, may be more rapid, and produce more sound; it being understood that the
passage is in the style of harp-music, such as that of example the
fourteenth.” It could be considered appropriate, therefore, to play Exercise
20 in that way.
It was at this time, in 1828, that Sor broke with his
publisher Meissonnier and began to be his own publisher, in association with
Pacini. Op. 33 was the last work
published by Meissonnier, and op. 34 the first published by Sor and Pacini
(op. 34 is a duet and will be found in volumes 8-11 of this present edition). Op. 35 was the first solo work brought
out under the new arrangement.
Sor’s Complete Studies, Lessons, and Exercises (opp. 6, 29, 31, 35, and 60,
together with op. 44) are also published by Tecla in a modern re-engraved
edition in one book (Tecla 101).
__________
OPUS 36. TROIS PIÈCES DE SOCIÉTÉ
This is another set, like op.
33, of three Pièces de Société, each consisting of two linked pieces. The first is a minuet followed by an
allemande; the second, Lento cantabile and minuet; and the third, Andantino
and Chasse. The pairs of pieces
are not joined without a break, as they were in op. 33; nevertheless, it is
clear that each pair should be performed together, because of the contrasting
nature of the two pieces in each case.
The third pair has the scordatura of the sixth string to F,
a rather archaic practice at this date, suggesting, though it is only a
possibility, that this work may date in some form from Sor’s Spanish period.
*****
No. 1, 63: the first note in the original is on the sixth
string, but this appears to be an error for the fifth string and has here been
corrected.
No. 2 Lento cantabile: the repeat mark at the end of the
first section (bar 8) is editorial.
No. 3: from bar 64: in the original edition, some of the
numbers indicating the harmonics have lines above or below them supposedly
indicating whether the harmonic in question should be played slightly above or
below the fret, as a note in the original edition explains. However, the lines do not make good
sense and are here omitted. They
can be consulted in the Tecla facsimile edition.
No. 3: bars 46-47 are corrupt in the original and have here
been restored on the analogy of bars 14-15.
Bar 131: the natural is editorial.
Bars 170 and 172: the strange notes and rhythm appear twice, very
clearly, and have here been left unchanged.
Perhaps the rhythm should be as in 168.
The indication fr occurs here on the last page (it is
also found in op. 28 in variation 3, and in op. 37 in each of the two
allegrettos). This could perhaps
stand for French friser or frisé, friser here meaning to
brush, so it could be a brushing movement with the right hand fingers, like a
stroke of rasgueado.
First published in Paris in 1828.
__________
OPUS 37. SÉRÉNADE
First published in Paris in
1828 or 1829.
Bars 35 to 37 of this work are interesting and a puzzle. First at bars 29 to 34 comes a passage
which is evidently in campanelas, that is to say that an open string (here E)
sounds repeatedly through moving chords which here are played high up on the
fingerboard. But then comes a
harmonic at bars 35 to 37 whose interpretation is not clear. It is clearly notated in the original
three times thus:
[EXAMPLE from the original edition is here]
The problem lies in deciding how to play this harmonic. An A is notated which appears to mean
that it is on the fifth string. Also
an F sharp is notated, and a figure 4 with a curved line. However, F sharp is not available at all as a harmonic on
the fifth string. It is available
on the fourth string, but then the fourth string is occupied in playing the
campanelas, so it cannot be that. What
does the figure 4 mean? It can scarcely mean the fourth string because as we
saw that is not available, nor is it likely to mean the fourth fret because
that is impractical in this passage. So
perhaps it means the finger with which the harmonic is to be touched, even
though its notation with a curved line is unusual.
I suggest that what the composer intended was a C sharp
played by touching the fifth string at the ninth fret with the fourth finger,
and that is the solution which I have adopted in notating this passage. I hypothesize that Sor wrote a 4 in
his ms to mean that the harmonic should be played with the fourth finger
(which is indeed available at this point), and a small circle to indicate a
harmonic, but that the engraver misunderstood the small circle and notated it
as the round breve (whole note) on the F sharp.
Another possible solution would be to play this harmonic on
the fifth string at the twelfth fret, but that does not work well musically.
If any reader has any better idea, do please get in touch
with me.
Campanelas, by the way, are an ancient technique with a long
history but were generally used in guitar music rather less at the time of
this work. Do they mean that the Sérénade
has an older history, perhaps dating from Sor’s Spanish period? Or is it rather that Sor continued to
use this fine old technique even at the later date?
The indication fr occurs here in each of the two
allegrettos (it is also found in op. 28 in variation 3, and in op. 36 on the
last page). This could perhaps
stand for French friser or frisé, friser here meaning to
brush, so it could be a brushing movement with the right hand fingers, like a
stroke of rasgueado.
The son de trompette (trumpet sound) at bars 426ff.
is described in Sor’s method, pages 20-21 in the French version, page 16 in
the English translation.
The Sérénade was first published as op. 36, but it
appears correctly in a later issue and in contemporary catalogues as op. 37.
__________
OPUS 40. FANTASIA ON A FAVOURITE SCOTTISH AIR
(“YE BANKS AND BRAES O’ BONNIE DOON”)
These variations have caught
the imagination of the guitar world in recent years, and are well on their way
to becoming a standard part of the guitar repertory. They used to be little known, and my
performance of them on BBC Scotland in 1972 was probably the first for very
many years. In 1978, for the
bicentenary of Sor’s birth, I published them in my edition of Sor’s Complete
Works for Guitar, and John Williams played them in the celebratory
concert in February of that year at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London. Alice Artzt included the work in her
record Guitar Music by Fernando Sor and it was broadcast several times
from that record by the BBC, and since then, whenever it has been played, it
has immediately caught the audience’s imagination. In 1982 I published a separate edition
of this work with Tecla Editions. The
original edition was published by Sor himself in Paris and did not have wide
distribution, and only two copies of that original edition are known to
survive. The original title was Fantaisie
pour guitare seule sur un air favori écossais (Fantasia for solo guitar
on a favourite Scottish air).
I suggest that the piece not be played too fast. The melody is a strathspey, and
Burns’ words are sad. The
English version begins “Lost is my quiet”, and Burns’ words run “How
can ye chant, ye little birds, and I sae weary fu’ o’ care!” Yet at the
same time, the sorrow is dignified by the stately dance form, so that the pace
must be kept steady and unfaltering. The
“Scotch hop” of the theme is echoed at the end of the piece.
Sor dedicated these variations in about 1829 to his pupil
Miss Mary Jane Burdett, a young lady who, he said, was able to perform them
after only 28 lessons with him. He
attributed this rapid progress to the fact that she was not only a guitarist
but a general musician and specifically a pianist:
Un guitariste-harmoniste aura
toujours un avantage sur celui qui ne le sera pas. Un talent, même médiocre, sur le
piano (le premier des instruments d’harmonie), donne déjà des habitudes en
musique très utiles pour la guitare. Je
viens d’avoir une preuve de ce que je viens de dire, dans les progrès
rapides de mademoiselle Mary Jane Burdett, la fille de M. Arthur Burdett,
jeune personne qui touche très bien du piano. S’occupant à perfectionner
son éducation, elle se consacre à plusieurs sortes d’études à la fois,
tant de nécessité que d’agrément, et par conséquent elle ne peut
s’adonner exclusivement à l’étude de la guitare. Mes principes, et la direction que ses
idées ont prises par l’habitude acquise de la marche et de la contexture de
la musique de piano, l’ont mise en état de jouer en vingt-huit leçons la fantaisie
que je lui ai dédiée (oeuvre 40), ce que je n’ai jamais pu obtenir en si
peu de leçons d’autres écolières qui ne touchaient pas du piano, et qui,
avec la meilleure volonté, s’occupaient exclusivement de l’étude de la
guitare; il est vrai qu’elles avaient déjà contracté des habitudes qui
empêchent de jouer librement, et que malheureusement on leur avait appris à
ne voir que des notes où il faudrait voir de la musique.
(“A guitarist, who is a
harmonist, will always have an advantage over one who is not. Even a tolerable player on the
pianoforte (the first of instruments to produce harmony), has already acquired
very useful habits in regard to the guitar.
—I have recently had a proof of what I have just said, in the rapid
progress of Miss Mary Jane Burdett, (daughter of Mr. Arthur Burdett), a young
lady who plays well on the pianoforte. Engaged
in completing her education, she devotes herself to several kinds of study at
once, as well the necessary as the agreeable, and consequently cannot give up
her time exclusively to the study of the guitar. My principles, and the direction which
her ideas have taken, from being habituated to the progression and contexture
of pianoforte-music, have enabled her, in twenty-eight lessons, to play my Fantaisie,
opus 40, which I have dedicated to her, —a result which I have never been
able to obtain in so few lessons from other pupils, who did not play on the
pianoforte, and who, with the best inclination, devoted themselves exclusively
to the study of the guitar. It is certain that they had previously acquired habits
which prevented a free style of playing, and, unfortunately, they had been
taught to perceive only notes, where it was necessary to see music.”)
(Originally in French in
Sor’s Méthode pour la Guitare, Paris, 1830, pp. 74-5. English translation by Arnold Merrick
published as Method for the Spanish Guitar in London in 1832, p. 42,
available in reprint form from Tecla.)
Clearly she was one of his favourite pupils, and it has been
possible to find out a little about her.
From Burke’s Landed Gentry (1894 edition, p. 249) we learn
that she was of the Anglo-Irish landowning gentry, the daughter of Arthur
Burdett, Esq., of Ballymany and Ballywater. She
was in Paris with her father, finishing her education, a young lady of
reasonably high social standing and taking lessons with the principal guitar
teacher in Paris at the time, Fernando Sor.
Perhaps her origin may account for a certain Celtic connection: we may
imagine, perhaps, Miss Burdett singing or playing to Sor a favourite Scottish
air of hers, which Sor then set on the guitar.
She married later, but only in 1848, by which time she would have been
well into her thirties: and her husband was Lieut.-Col. Robert Brookes, of the
24th Regiment, who unfortunately died the very next year, in January 1849,
at the Battle of Chilianwallah in the Second Sikh War.
The melody on which the variations are based is an old one,
perhaps English in origin, to which Robert Burns wrote words which were
published in volume 4 of the Scots Musical Museum in 1792, and from
then on the melody was inextricably associated with Scotland. In setting such a melody, Sor played
his part in the fascination of his age with Scotland and with Scottish music. The melody incorporates a “Scotch
hop” or “Scotch snap” and is in strathspey rhythm: that is to say, it
should be dignified and not too fast. The
work is dedicated to Sor’s pupil Mary Jane Burdett, a young lady of the
Anglo-Irish gentry.
Burns’ version appeared in 1792, as no. 374 of volume 4 of
the Scots Musical Museum. Here
is a reproduction of the original edition:
[EXAMPLE
HERE]
The words are newly written by Burns, and the intention
which he gave them is clearly indicated by the direction of “Slow and
tender”. A girl looks at the
landscape, and feels a discrepancy between the gladness of nature and the
sadness which she herself knows. The
Scotch hop is there, for example in bars 3 and 4, but it is the hop of the
strathspey, that slow and stately dance which can accommodate equally well the
pomp of a clan gathering and the sadness of Burns’ poem.
The origin of the tune to which Burns wrote his words is in
dispute. The Scots Musical
Museum itself (volume 2, pages 346-8) attributes its composition to “Mr.
James Millar, Writer in Edinburgh”. But
a much more widely current attribution was to the famous Scots
fiddler-composer, Niel Gow. When
Gow came to publish in about 1794 a book of Scottish dances called A Second
Collection of Strathspey Reels (copy: New York Public Library), No. 1 was
this very tune, but under the title of “The Caledonian Hunt’s Delight”. Moreover, that collection as a whole
was dedicated to “The Noblemen and Gentlemen of the Caledonian Hunt”, a
fact which gave the tune especial prominence.
As “The Caledonian Hunt’s Delight”, and with the attribution to
Gow, it has survived to the present day.
Yet in fact Gow himself was probably not so much its composer, but
rather its arranger, and the source from which it originally came was perhaps
not even Scottish, but English. William
Chappell, in his Popular Music of the Olden Time, volume 2 (London,
1859), pp. 794-5, gives an eighteenth century English source for it, a version
in which there is no “Scotch hop”. According
to Chappell, the melody later universally known as “Ye banks and braes o’
bonnie Doon” was not originally Scottish at all, but English, naturalized
into Scotland and adopted by Burns and by Gow, and subsequently (its
birthplace by now thoroughly consigned to oblivion) taken over by the whole of
Europe as a Scottish tune.
The harmonics in Variation 3 and the Coda are indicated in
the original edition only by the word harmonique, without any
indication of the strings and frets at which they should be played. In particular it is not specified
whether those harmonics are intended to be natural or artificial harmonics. However, in his Méthode pour la
Guitare, which was written within one year, or at most two, of the time
when op. 40 was composed, Sor expresses a strong preference for natural
harmonics over artificial ones. He
discusses both, and describes two methods of producing artificial harmonics,
but concludes that natural ones are more sonorous and are to be preferred. Moreover, he gives in his Méthode
a whole piece written entirely in natural harmonics: like op. 40 it is in D
major, and like op. 40 it uses the scordatura of the sixth string to D. All the harmonic notes which are used
in op. 40 are to be found in that piece, together with the indication of the
precise strings and frets at which they are to be found in their natural form. It is evident, therefore, that the
harmonics in op. 40 are likewise intended to be natural harmonics rather than
artificial ones, and the frets and strings which I have indicated here for
those passages in variation 3 and the coda are the same frets and strings
which Sor indicates in his Méthode for the piece in harmonics which he
gives there. The piece in the Méthode
can be consulted in the edition of that book (in its English translation)
which is available from Tecla.
Here are my suggestions for how they might be played:
[EXAMPLES
HERE]
*****
In the Introduction, bar 4, slurs have been added to the
middle notes of the two chords. In
the theme, bar 3, the second half of the bar has dotted rhythm in the
original, and has here been altered on the analogy of bars 7, 15, and 19. In variation 3, bar 67, the repeat
sign in front of the double bar is omitted in the original edition, doubtless
in error, and has here been restored on the analogy of variations 1 and 2.
In performance, it may be considered desirable to omit the
repeats in the variations, because if all the repeats are played the piece
becomes rather long. That is,
however, a matter of taste.
__________
EXERCISES FROM THE METHOD
These exercises are taken from
Sor’s Méthode pour la guitare (Paris, 1830).
__________
OPUS 42. SIX PETITES PIÈCES
Another set of six short pieces, carefully arranged to form
a unified whole which could well be performed complete. Two pieces in the same key begin the set; then a longer one
in a different key; then a marvellously rhythmic piece which resembles nothing
so much as a Ländler; and finally, another waltz. First published in Paris in 1830-31.
*****
No. 1 The repeat markings for bars 9-16 and 17-24 are
editorial.
In No. 5 some accidentals are editorial. 14, first beat: the B sharp is A sharp
in the original, here corrected.
__________
OPUS 43. MES ENNUIS, SIX BAGATELLES
First published in Paris in 1830-31.
* * *
At the harmonics in No. 3, bars 69-70, in the third chord
the figure on the A string is 3 in the original. That cannot be played and in any case
gives a note which does not fit harmonically.
It is perhaps an engraver’s error, perhaps for 9 which is what I have
put here, which is easily playable and which gives a good musical solution.
In no. 5, the sharp on the F at bars 14 and 46, and the
natural on the F in bars 15 and 47, are editorial.
__________
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