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“Come, heavy Sleep, the
image of true Death,
And close up these my weary
weeping eyes,
Whose spring of tears doth
stop my vital breath,
And tears my heart with
Sorrow’s sigh-swoll’n cries.
Come and possess my tired
thought-worn soul,
That living dies, till thou
on me be stole.”
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Benjamin Britten’s (1913–1976)
“Nocturnal after John Dowland” op. 70, a work considered the highlight of
the guitarristic opus of the 20th century, is the resonant
image that describes, at best, the
intellectual target of the guitar as opposed to so-called “absolute art”.
Composed in 1963 after a lengthy period of
preparation, it was presented a year after by Julian Bream at the
Aldeburgh Festival and it reveals clearly the British composer's feeling of
cultural belonging. Indeed far from the virtuous segovian influence, he represents, via the guitar the
irresistible epopee of the English liutists and virginalists of the
renaissance, as if to mark the newly-arrived Elizabethan spirit of the
time. In the “Nocturnal” by Britten, so called “variations” are simply
sound pictures to which the didascalic element (it is indeed very present
in the partiture) is required as a listening key. It aspires to the poetic
ideal that generated the work (Songs or Ayres of four parts, 1597). Evocative
citations such as “Come, heavy sleep” do blend themselves, with
executive indications such as “Very agitated”, in a constant spiral which
invites the audience in a dimension of clear approbation of a dowlandian
target which is achieved only at the end of the final run (Passacaglia),
which is full of bristling rhythmic sovrappositions and polyphonic
germination. With this work Britten gives to the guitar the honour and purification which only a
few earlier composers were able to determine; free from diaphanous recalls,
the “Nocturnal” exprimes an experience of logical rather than spontaneous
recognition. It apparently presents ethereal moods (the dream) solely to
liberate the “sublime art” of the intellect, cultivating it and
subsequently picking up the, at times, subtly ironic poetic
"palpitations" which (with an “as soft as possible”) lend
the music an intelligence of its own.
The only work
dedicated to the guitar of the Triest born composer Antonio Bibalo
(1922), is "Study in blue", presented on this CD. Independently
of cultural roots, this composition by Bibalo requires that the guitar play
a more evident role, in other words the role of an instrument that can be
comprehended by various cultures. Bibalo is considered one of the
greatest composers in Northern Europe: in his adoptive country (Norway) he
favoured the so-called "world art consort" style definition,
revisiting his own past stylistic units, which indeed never renegaded. As
an active opera composer, Bibalo owed the greatest part of his success to
"The Smile at the Foot of Ladder" (1962) - text by A. Miller-,
the first of a number of successive works for the theatre or for
instrumental ensembles. In "Study in blue" the rarefied
germination of a few notes instantly signify the delicate plots within,
only to evoke with progressively more definite scansions that result in the
expressive completeness of an evolved composition.
The
"Sonatina libra" of Roland Dyens (1955) belongs to more
recent works guitar in which the conceptual aspect, so relevant to the
works of the last three decades, at once loses that inner reference in
order to privilege a more well defined atmosphere. The guitarist, owes his
evolution to the school of the extraordinary Alberto Ponce. Roland Dyens
dedicated his efforts, and deeply growing conviction to the composition,
only after considerable personal exploration of the nineteenth-century
repertoire, only himself to become a point of reference internationally in
a very short space time. Above all his personal
exploration concerns the guitar's expressive skills via the introduction of
delicately touching sound effects and rhythms in order to present a
personal and different vision of the instrument. As an author of film
music, of instrumental versions of folk - songs, and of works for unusual ensembles (guitar octet), Dyens
plays with names and paradoxes; the above mentioned "Sonatina
libra" has no relation to the concept of "liberty", (on the
contrary, it is simply a "divertissement", a pun if you like). It
is different in content since it reveals the author's love of travelling.
India, the sounds of Brazil, the sole fact of his being born in Tunis, "the other France", directly
propel him into an external, free dimension. The almost romantic model to
which "Sonatina libra" adheres lead the listener on an exotic
journey through fantastic premonitions. The second of the three movements
deserves special mention - in it the poetry of the unusual harmonic
combinations overwhelms as if in a crescendo of sublimation in the precious
"Parisian" atmospheres from whose the journey begins. The
"scordature", the "rasgueados", the "touché"
all become confused in colour, and in the rhythmical
"tourbillons" of the last movement to arrive at a simple
algebraical beauty. The same beauty that, in the Middle Ages, was apparent
in "livornese" Fibonacci, and which is today in works of
composers such as Riley, Maxwell-Davies and Brouwer.
"Two
Movements" for guitar by the Slovene, Alojz Srebotnjak (1931)
reveal the metaphysical anticipations of the Northbalkan Area sound keys,
which are still alive. The first of the two movements, identifies
the constant of his parallel intervals in the liking of a mathematical
subtraction, in which various introductions of rhythmical accumulation
produce a sense of almost transcendental suspension. The metronomical
amplification of the second movement produces, in temporal perspective, the
recall of fundamental scansions on mixed measures of 5 and 7, subsequently
embedded on progressive topics, made from violent sequences of accords as a
declaration of homage of the composer to the Macedonian folkloristic world.
The composition of the work is due to the pressure of the Triest born
guitarist Bruno Tonazzi. "The
Two Movements" assume for the guitar a wider significance than is
suggested by the primary idea; the transpositive concept is therefore
constantly surmounted by a semantic one in which we have to uncover signs
of esoteric philosophy.
In the works of
the Spanish composer Federico Mompou (1893-1987) we find and admire
more than in other composers of his country the impalpable element of
ethereal description. This makes him the most "French" among
those artists which converged on Paris in the first years of the 20th
century "to build" the so-called impressionism. As a
refined pianist he wrote the "Compostelana Suite" after a meeting
with Segovia at a private concert in Marseilles, just a little before the
Master's departure towards Mexico. The country where, in short, an other
pianist, Manuel Ponce Maria, would mark the history of the guitar. Mompou's
impressionism is however more intimate; the guitar itself becomes
"intimism" and the prudent proceeding of the music is almost
something special, an intentional insecurity. As an insatiable
admirer of Bach's art, Mompou uses severe outlines for the
"Compostelana Suite", while veiling however, the slow movements
of the composition of melancholic sadness. Nevertheless it is dedicated to
Segovia, the suite reveals his inspiration in Mompou's lively religious
affinity to the ecclesiastical community of Santiago de Compostela: the
venue for the work's "premera" and from which the Suite takes its
name.
To speak about
the guitar, an instrument that, in the last century, experienced
extraordinary and universally acknowledged progress, means to mix thousand of names and faces
that loved and supported the guitar. In its fatal course, time itself has
made its own promotion of this lofty art which reveals in a significant
manner the consistence of the gesture; not strings, not woods, but purity
itself. Marko Feri tells through sounds the shyness of a noble and
capricious instrument, as to make it vibrate or cry in order of the supreme
instinct. This is not a “technical guitar” or a “study” – it is simply a
metaphysical participation.
Giorgio Tortora
Translation: List scarl
(Opicina-Trieste)
Date recording:
September-October 2003
Cover: Laura Grusovin
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