Hi Stanley, > Glowing reviews of Sor's technical brilliance are hard to find (are there > any?), certainly compared with Giuliani, Ferranti, Legnani and others.
Which does not prove that Sor had a more wooden technique than the Italians. Aguado testifies that Sor played his op.59 "à la perfection". Somewhere else Aguado remembers that Sor played everything "well expressed". The more expressive someone plays, the less the listener notices technique. The less 'virtuosity' (rapid runs for the sake of brilliance) is composed into the music, the less reviewers will speak about technical brilliance. Giuliani invites comments on his virtuosity, Sor, by the nature of his compositions, less. There is alo maxim No1 in the Methode. > But his music often creates a tension between almost > academically-obsessive correctness > and idiomatic elegance. Isn't there always a "tension" when a composer writes for guitar instead of a guitarist? >Despite his undoubted executant abilities in the > area of refined musicianship and expression, I wonder about his ability to > play his own music with legato (still often a problem for us today)! "Legato", you'd have to explain what you mean with that word before I start rambling on. > Here, Sor explains an obvious inability to deal with Giuliani's right-hand > textures as a reluctance to deviate from the technical "rules" he > established for himself (not on musical grounds)! It seems you demand too much of him. Sor is not a guitarist like us, playing any composer. His reason for playing the guitar was doing his own stuff. Why play Giuliani when you're Sor? Especially when you have a different view on the genre of guitarmusic? Moreover, him composing his own variation was not against normal musical practice. > Looking at Sor's music, the right-hand textures and patterns he employs > are > indeed restricted to his "rules" (with the exception of the early Op. 14). > But this limitation (it surely cannot be intellectual, merely physical) > places him behind not only contemporaries such as Aguado, Giuliani (even > Matiegka and Molitor) but also behind many earlier guitarists (Doisy, > LHoyer, Merchi, even Lemoine and Gatayes). Maybe I do not understand you, but how could you judge a composer who reaches perfectly expressive results against others who maybe play more scales? What is "behind"? Or are you comparing music with athletics? > But brilliant technical display is not the reason we look to Sor; we look > to > him for outstanding compositional skill and refinement. (However, the lack > of notated expression in such carefully constructed music is perplexing!) You mean "loud", "soft" etc? That would be handy for US in our time. There is some, but dynamics were to follow the 'affect' of the music, and the affect (sic) is quite clear most of the time. And his music is conservative in the way that it follows normal practice, intended effects (sic) should've been clear to US when living in 1830. > As for the use of the right-hand little finger, I can make no comment > since > I haven't experimented with it. Still, as they sometimes say about a > convincing performance: correct technique, correct instrument, corrent > interpretation, 5%; imagination, 95%! I missed something! Is "imagination" already a part of guitar performances? Then it can't be those of Sor ;-) Paul To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
