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„The Sonata for Guitar in 1920-1950 period – The

Neoromantic Generation ”

Ph.D. Thesis by Costin Soare

Résumé

We will begin by saying that metaphorically speaking and by

circumscribing the object of our research, the 1920-1950 period represented for

the guitar world a sort of sonata exposition: it is the time when certain ideas,

certain “themes” were presented, their development still being “work in

progress” today. There are many factors which have had their contribution to

the boom of our instrument in the 20th century, unfortunately still seen at that

time as a “less serious” one; if we were to choose three main “themes”, those

would be: the predecessors - the guitarist-composer Francisco Tárrega and the

luthier Antonio de Torres; the guitarist Andrés Segovia and the composers of the

so-called neoromantic generation (Turina, Ponce, Castelnuovo-Tedesco, José,

Manén, Moreno-Torroba). Our thesis, entitled „The Sonata for Guitar in 1920-

1950 period – The Neoromantic Generation ”, forays the world of the composers

mentioned above through their output in a certain genre, the sonata; our

approach will follow an analytical approach at a syntactic and, especially,

semantic level, by highlighting the emotion and sentiments specific to the

performing act during its progress. We will present an account of our research

by succinctly discussing each chapter of our thesis.

Introduction

The first subchapters of the introduction represents in fact the theoretical

base of the thesis: the first, discussing general aspects concerning the analytical

methods in the 20th century, starts with a short description as found in „The

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Treatise of Musical Form and Analysis” by Livia Teodorescu-Ciocănea. Their

enumeration (the referential-descriptive method; the positivist-constructivist method;

the hermeneutic method; the energetic method; the structural method; the holistic

method of Schenker) reveals also, beside the specific approach of each method,

some historical and philosophical implications, namely the

interaction/complementarity which always existed between the philosophical

and practical ways of knowledge: in this way, the aesthetics, the science

studying, defining and enouncing the principles/laws of beauty in the art of

sounds, will influence the musical theoretical thinking and also the practical

side of it during different eras. The importance of the concept derived from

here, interdisciplinarity, resides in the way certain ideas, attitudes specific to a

certain field of thought, could be found and have an influence in another: the

intercrossing of music with imagination and creativity, with literature, poetry

and visual arts, but also with psychology, hermeneutics, philosophy, rhetoric,

mathematics, can be of help in the search of an analysis model with relevance

in the performing act.

This second subchapter proposes varied perspectives in the search of the

analysis method(s) which can get us closer to the „correct” way of performing a

musical work: this search represents the fruit of our experience and, having no

pretension to offering definitive or complete answers, we will try to offer our

personal vision, defined as a mode of being with a certain perspective of the

world around. A first idea springs from the words of Arthur Schnabel who

declares that „the true analysis means a clarification and intensification of the

musical sensibility, an additional stimulus in the correct direction, as established

by our musical instinct”, in contrast with a formal type on analysis which

makes more harm than it helps. That implies also a good intellectual thinking:

for avoiding all sorts of excesses there is a need to find an equilibrium between

the emotional and the intellectual side; Schnabel also recommends studying

composition, a great exercise for a musician-performer.

Then we discuss the analysis model developed under the supervision of

the conductor and professor Takao Nakamura, whose relevance in

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understanding and interpreting a musical score was already verified in various

contexts. Based initially on analysing the music with text, the model needed a

set of questions regarding the way in which certain structures, tonalities,

timbres and so on, are able to create certain affective moods, namely the

emotions felt by the performer and also by the audience.

Following this road we reach the subject of affects and musical rhetoric

which is, historically speaking, a part of the theory and practice of the Baroque

Era, but which is also generally applicable in the theory of interpretation for any

kind of music. Being based on the rhetorical-musical figures, the concept of

musica poetica was searching, as Dietrich Bartel says, „a balance between science

and art, ratio and sensus, speculation and craft”. A short enumeration of the

affects (Amor, Luctus seu Planctus, Dolor, Laetitia et Exultatio, Praesumptio et

Audacia etc.) and of the rhetorical-musical figures (abruptio, anabasis, antithesis,

climax, dubitatio, epizeuxis, passus duriusculus etc.), as found in the treatise

Musurgia Universalis by Athanasius Kircher, is meaningful to our research: we

can observe how certain musical patterns give a specific affective „answer”,

scientifically documented by the theoreticians of the era.

One of the essential features of the music, that of expressing something,

could be found in all the musical epochs: one of the meanings of the term

expression „is referring at the emotional qualities of music as perceived by the

auditors”, in the opinion of the musicologists Juslin and Persson. To be able to

communicate those emotions, a mediator between the composer and the public

is needed: this is the performer. But what and how is the performer

communicating/performing/transmitting? For an accurate answer, the

instrumentalist needs a „guide of performance” to help him find the musical

„truth”, an objective view in a very subjective world, that of a language at the

borders of the ineffable. The book of Diana Moş, „Introduction to the hermeneutics

of the musical discourse”, offers a possible way in which one can decipher the

musical score and its meanings: „the object of the hermeneutics will be not

particularly the music score, but the discourse – the text being actualized,

performed at a certain moment”. Using a linguistic terminology based on a

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series of concepts like „explicitation-comprehension”, „sense-meaning”,

„syntactic-semantic”, the author reveals the complementarity between rational

or logical thinking and the psychological world of the human being. There are

also interesting ideas concerning the poeticism inherent to the musical score

which leads towards ambiguity, a intrinsic quality of music which can reveal

various levels of meaning; we can also mention the chapter about „a (possible)

musical hermetic”, which discusses the suprarational side, the „mystery”, the

subconscious energies dictating the making and interpretation of a musical

work.

We have finally presented the goal of our research which is emphasising

the specific emotions of the musical performance during its progress in time,

mental states/affects derived from:

1. the „objective” interpretation/performance of a musical score, meaning

to follow adequately certain musical paths by founding their logic in the

writing itself of the work (tonality, modulations, performing instructions,

motivic and thematic material and the way those are being developed

etc.);

2. a „subjective” perspective containing our own experiences, in other

words the personal, unique and non-repeatable performance of a music

at a given time;

For the description of these affects we will use a list of specific words

inspired form an essay of Marianne Ploger, „The Craft of Musical

Communication”; the analysis will also follow the important sintactical

elements, will suggest our personal approach concerning the tempo, dynamics,

agogic and timbre. We will also present two diagrams about the extremes of the

semantic tension (maximum and minimum).

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The guitar in the 20th century

Before our analytical undertaking, we needed a historical frame of the

guitar phenomenon in the 20th century: we have presented the important

events, people and the „conquests” specific to each period. Shortly, they are as

follows:

I. 1852-1920 – the first year mentioned is the year in which Antonio de

Torres (1817-1892) starts his career as a guitar luthier, developing an

instrumental design bearing an outstanding influence in the

evolution of the instrument; 1852 is also the birth year of Francisco

Tárrega, guitarist, composer and pedagogue whose influence in the

20th century guitar world was prominent; around 1920, Manuel de

Falla becomes the first non-guitarist composer writing a work for the

guitar: Homenaje pour le Tombeau de Claude Debussy;

II. 1920-1965 – starting with the twenties, the more and more sonorous

voice of Andrés Segovia (1893-1987) can be heard: he is the one who

succeeded in bringing the instrument on the big stages of the world

and whose charismatic personality convinced more and more

composers to write music for the guitar; the first audition, in 1964, of

Benjamin Britten’s Nocturnal after John Dowland, op. 70 and its

publishing one year later will be for „the guitarists a process of

reevaluation, a technical and musical challenge ”;

III. 1965-21st century – a period of maximum flourishing of the guitar at

all levels.

Evoking the great figure of Andrés Segovia is a good occasion for a short

discussion about his stylistic approach in performance: elements like the

horizontal approach to fingering, vibrato, rubato, glissando, legato, a full and varied

sound etc., as found in the book by Graham Wade and Gerard Garno („A New

Look at Segovia”), reveals a musical world different from the contemporary one;

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the exacerbation and the extreme individualization of the musical discourse

were the premises of a very subjective way of performing: the „correct” stylistic

approach was not the main goal of the performer, who was the absolute master

on the stage.

A period of normality in the guitar world starts with the second half of the

century, the focal point being the year 1964 when the premiére of the Nocturnal

after John Dowland by the English guitarist Julian Bream took place: this is an

important moment in which the new school of guitar goes on its own way,

different from the Segovia legacy. The guitar and its players will benefit from

this change: more and more contemporary composers start writing works for

the instrument, festivals and magazines makes possible a good information

flow, the guitar enters the academic institutions, audio and video recordings are

being made, musicological research is developing. It happens somehow the

same thing, at a smaller level, in our country starting with the 90’: composers

show interest in writing for the instrument, whose rapid ascension have at its

base the premises above mentioned.

Performing analysis

To reach our goal, the emphasising of the specific emotions of the musical

performance during its progress in time, we have chosen four sonatas which are

representative for that era:

1. Manuel Maria Ponce – Sonata III (1928)

2. Joaquin Turina – Sonata (1932)

3. Antonio José – Sonata (1933)

4. Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco – Sonata (Omaggio á Boccherini), op. 77

(1935)

Our choice was based on the intrinsic value of these sonatas, another

criteria being their frequent performances and recordings. Each chapter

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presents in a short manner biographical data and information about the

composer’s musical world, general matters concerning the other guitar works,

the circumstances surrounding the sonata genesis and the actual analysis

which, beside the above mentioned goal, gives an account of the syntactical

aspects and also makes suggestions about tempo, dynamics, timbre and so on.

We discuss also about the maximum and minimum, the extremes of semantic

tension: for two of the sonatas (Ponce and Turina), we have added diagrams of

the semantic tension and made a succinct commentary, in this way completing

the initial information regarding the quality of the affects with quantitative data

showing the intensity of those psychological states.

A very important aspect for every movement of the sonatas was the

characterizing of the essential (micro)structures: the principal tonal group (GTP)

or the first theme, the secondary tonal group (GTP), the principal motifs or ideas of

the slow and final movements in the form of a rondo; this „description” has

pointed at various levels of the musical language: syntax, melody, harmony,

articulation, timbre, metre, tempo etc. The accurate description of these

elements will lead to a proper understanding of the progress or evolution of

that specific movement (for example, a correct appraisal of the musical

parameters of the GTP and GTS will lead, without doubt, to a performance in

the spirit of the respective movement). It is understood that the analysis

continued at the macrostructural level, looking how the principal ideas have

contributed to the development section or how the emergence of new motifs in

the episodes created a contrast with the refrain or have become complementary to

it. We will describe in a concise way such a model of analysis based on Manuel

Maria Ponce’s Sonata III, letting the interested reader to have a more detailed

account during the integral lecture of the performing analysis chapter.

We have identified in the GTP the main elements of the musical discourse

such as: the agitation and disquietude affects present in here come out from the

leap motion of the melodic line, from the ostinato figure in the bass line on D,

from the „harsh” tonal color of the d minor tonality; we suggest here the musical

equivalent of a ballade, there is an energy which makes us think about the

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aesthetic categories of pathetic and heroic. In the bridge section we follow two

motives derived from the GTP acquiring a special importance in the progress of

the exposition: the first one, built on two chords (minor chord with major

seventh, respectively augmented chord with major seventh) exposed in the

form of arpeggios, suggesting affects of tumult and ardour, takes us to the

semantic maximum of the exposition; the second one, in the bass line as a

melody in a step motion with an affect of inward pathetism, connects the two

appearances of the arpeggio motive. In GTS one can feel a clear contrast with

the previous section, the sober and calm mood emerging from the minimal

melodic movement accompanied in the bass line by repeated sounds, like

delicate timpani strokes.

Ponce builds intelligently the subsequent musical plot by emphasising in

the first section of the development the dramatic and pathetic character of the

main theme: the gradual intensification of the musical discourse, presenting

now fragments of theme accompanied by arpegios in triplets, leads us to the

maximum semantic tension of the whole movement. The following section

appears again in a clear contrast with the preceding one: from here starts the

area of lyricism, nostalgia, even reverie, which progresses in an espressivo and

intimate mood (low dynamics, short fermatas, poco rubato, dolce). In the

recapitulation we can observe the same structure with the exposition, with two

exceptions: starting with bar 115 there is a transposition at a minor third lower,

and the secondary theme is also transposed with a perfect fourth higher in the

initial tonality, d minor: this way, the last section concludes by approving an

(almost) classical sonata allegro.

We have tried by using our imagination to justify the using of a song

(Chanson) full of lyricism and nostalgia as the second movement of the sonata

through the universal feeling of longing, which could have been the state of a

Mexican man living in Paris, far away from his native land. Within the

simplicity and sincerity of this song, Ponce appeals to the polyphonic syntax,

sometimes imitative, but generally treated in a free way; the first section, in a

tri-strophic form followed by a coda, is divided in three segments: a first phrase

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presenting a simple and lyrical melodic line, a meditation followed by an

intensification of the emotion, the climax being found in the first bar of the last

segment. Among the important technical and musical coordinates to be taken

into account, there are: a molto legato articulation; poco rubato, observing not to

exaggerate the feelings involved in it; to highlight each voice in the given

polyphonic context; a moderate tempo (andante comes from the italian word

andare – to walk), not a slow one. The median part (Vivo) can be described as

energetic, even exuberant and it has a ascending-descending dynamic profile

presented in successive waves repeating one and the same melodic and

rhythmic figure. In „recapitulation” we can hear again, in a slightly varied way,

the first section: the polyphonic texture gets a little more thick, creating an

atmosphere of intense emotions; it is followed by a coda, a gradual extinction,

like the immersion in a dream.

The refrain of the last movement of the sonata, whose structure makes us

to suggest a classic rondo form followed by a Spanish fantasy, runs its course in

the tonality of D major, at an allegro non troppo tempo, with the character subtitle

of giocoso. This first segment is defined by a tonal-modal game whose varied

nuances can be accurately performed by using extremely short fermatas,

different articulation and timbre. The episodes can be resumed as follows:

- B: lyrical, cantabile, slightly improvisational, „Spanish mood”;

- C: capricious character, unpredictable, ironic; it uses the anapaest figure

from the second movement (Vivo);

- D: meno mosso, it reminds us of the lyrical atmosphere of the Chanson; the

texture resembles to a chorale, requiring special attention to the voices’

independent motion;

The last „episode”, the fantasia mentioned earlier, is in fact a rondo

characterized by: the repeated usage of the frigic mode; virtuosity passages in

the Spanish flamenco style; the legato tremolo, a technical device specific to the

guitar. The episodes suggest a more pathetic affect, in contrast with the „refrain”

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energetic style; it is interesting to observe the density of the semantic tension

maximums, which can give the guitarist some good ideas about how to

intelligently build the tension and the dramaturgy of this last movement.

Synthesis

Starting from a quotation of Daniel Albright, who declares that

„neoromanticism in the 1920s meant a subdued and modest sort of emotionalism,

in which the excessive gestures of the Expressionists were boiled down into

some solid residue of stable feeling”, the first synthesis subchapter, under the

title of „Common stylistic features in the guitar sonatas written by

neoromantic composers in the first half of the 20th century”, includes in a

general way some relevant historic, stylistic and axiologic ideas. We mention

the influences received in the works for the guitar from musical trends of the

time, like impressionism, neoclassical style, late romanticism or national schools; also,

despite a position outside the avantgardist movement of those times, owed to

the traditionalist/conservative spirit of Andrés Segovia, the guitar works will be of

great importance to the evolution of the instrument in the last century by their

intrinsic musical value. As a matter of fact, this is the most important reason in

choosing and analysing the the four sonatas in this thesis, not to mention the

constant performances in festival, recitals and recordings, a cultural fact of great

relevance.

We then enumerate as follows few general stylistic features coming out

from the sonatas’ analysis: cyclic form; an expanded tonal frame which includes the

modal; the typical Spanish character (flamenco scales, using of the frigic mode); the

using of the homophonic syntax (which does not exclude few polyphonic moments of

great beauty); a form structure which includes in two sonatas’ allegro movements no

development section, and in another one a reduced development section, then, in the

slow movements, the usage of a song as an expressive device and, finally, for the third

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movement, the classical form of rondo, with some liberties taken; mentioning the

impressionistic or neoclassical style influences.

In the subchapter entitled technical perspectives, we have generally

presented the issue of the instrumental technique, which is an important element

of the „craft” of each artist, a field of thought and practice by which the musical

substance gains structure and clarity. An indispensable base for

communication, the correct instrumental technique is a must for those wishing to

get closer to the musical ideal. Two of the most important methods in the 20th

century are presented here: „Escuela razonada de la guitarra” by Emilio Pujol, a

first rank personality in the guitar world and „Escuela de la guitarra” by Abel

Carlevaro, unveiling a special perspective in the physiology of playing the

instrument. Both of them look at what we might call the traditional technique of

the guitar, whose complementary perspective is the contemporary technique, with

special sound effects used in contemporary music, not discussed in this thesis.

Pujol’s method, based on Francisco Tárrega technical principles, is written

in the spirit of 19th century treatises: it contains in the theoretical exposition

general things about lutherie, strings, range, positions, historical issues, the first

contact with the instrument, watching the correct position of the body and both

hands and a series of advices for the future musicians. In the next volumes,

there is a concentric approach of the technical means, starting with open strings

exercises and arpeggios, then going into the area of the left hand through varied

combinations of the fingers, preparatory exercises for scales and position

exchange, getting finally in the last chapter, subtitled virtuosité, to complex

exercises which point at a thoroughness of the technical capabilities of both

hands and the complete development of the musician-guitarist.

Abel Carlevaro is the founder of an innovatory technical school, based on

a deep knowledge of anatomy and physics laws, whose originality and

functionality were one of the most important steps in the guitar evolution in the

last century. The author uses clear concepts in a logic manner by the aid of an

analytical thinking able to decompose a instrumental gesture/procedure,

simple or complicated, in its components, the conscious recomposition of it

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representing the necessary step towards the development of the performer. The

first volume contains the theoretical exposition and discusses in order the

following issues: the position of the instrument, the right hand, the guitarist and his

total development, the left hand, scales, „dampers” and vibrato, completed by a

preliminary discussion of the exercises from the following practice books.

Concepts like stable equilibrium, natural position, fijacíon, toques, unity through

muscular contraction need to be assimilated and transformed in correct technical

means through a constant practice routine always under the scrutiny of an

active intellect.

Finally, we have exposed our personal perspective over the necessary

technical means of the performer in the 21st century; we have enumerated a list

of technical means necessary to every player (confidence, mobility, force,

versatility, agility, clarity, robustness, flexibility, endurance, independence, dynamism,

precision), then we have presented a model of approaching the instrumental

technique based on our experience as performer and pedagogue. Shortly, this

focuses on the following elements:

- for the right hand: repeated notes, arpeggios, chords, tremolo, rasgueado and

natural harmonics; tirrando and appoyando approach;

- for the left hand: fingers’ combinations, legato (then appogiaturas, trills,

mordents etc.), barrée, extensions, position exchange, natural and artificial

harmonics;

To this, we will add scales and technical procedures specific to the guitar

like tamburo, pizzicato, glissando; all the technical exercises must have at their

base a correct and relaxed position of the body and both hands, always

supported by an active thinking.