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On
Saturday, October 15, 2016, the 29th Guitar
Conference was held in Benevento. This edition
offered the opportunity to reach another
significant long wished goal, that is the launch
of the initiative in a southern city of Italy
aiming to involve more and more the various
research resources of our peninsula. The
realization of the Conference was supported by
the Conservatory "Nicola Sala" thanks to the
precious coordination of M° Piero Viti and the
Municipality of Benevento and valid assistance
for the technical aspects regarding video and
photo was as well offered by dotGuitar web
magazine directed by M° Lucio Matarazzo. The
Conference has found its ideal setting in the
small jewel of the sober and elegant
architecture of the Teatro di Palazzo De Simone,
destined in the Eighties to be the location of
the Conservatory itself.
The
documentary exhibition organized at this
Conference brought together unpublished and
autographic manuscripts alongside rare print
editions and original instruments of the
traditional Neapolitan guitar, thanks to the
availability of masters owing important private
collections (Stefano Aruta, Antonio Grande,
Piero Viti), regarding a period lasting from the
second half of the eighteenth century to the
second half of the twentieth century with
particular reference to the figures of
Ferdinando Carulli and Teresa De Rogatis.
As
completion of the content offered on the day of
musical studies, folders with detailed material
were presented to the public together with the
gift of the volume ‘Emilio Pujol’ by Giuliano
Balestra, offered by the Cultural Center
"Fernando Sor".
The day
was opened with the institutional greetings of
the Conservatory "Nicola Sala" by the director
M° Giuseppe Ilario and M° Piero Viti, guitar
teacher at this conservatory. Then took the
floor the curator Simona Boni who opened the
study works of the 29th Conference presenting
the interventions of the masters and the
speakers.
The
first intervention, as usual dedicated to the
ancient guitar repertoire, was held by Marcello
Vitale. Utilizing a strong symbolic suggestion
like that of the 'labyrinth', Vitale illustrated
the problematic path of retrieval of ancient
music, both of the philological profile as well
as of the specifically 'organologic' guitar,
with the consequent adoption of pertinent
executive practices. Vitale insisted that every
historical reading is reduced, if it is not
inserted in a lively and continuous tradition.
This is leading to a concept of philology
'renewing itself' and being placed side by side
to a new direction of oral tradition trespassing
into ethnic and popular music. Vitale made us
aware of the findings that he conceived by
showing examples of execution both on baroque
guitar with gut strings as well as on the swing
guitar created by Vincenzo De Bonis with metal
strings and mobile jumper.
During
the next intervention, Damiano Rosa effectively
depicted the figure of Johann Kaspar Mertz, the
romantic guitarist born in 1806 in Pressburg,
actually Bratislava, in Slovakia and
rediscovered in the Eighties of the last
century. Rosa, who has been using various
bibliographic sources, introduced the public to
the almost magical central European atmosphere
of different traditions crossing between them
and then recognizing themselves prodigiously in
a uniform cultural matrix. After describing the
various phases of Mertz's artistic life,
emphasizing in particular the experimental
attitude he had for the instruments of the time,
Rosa concluded his speech by offering a
listening to some pieces including the Notturno
op. 4 n. 2 and the transcription of Annen Polka
by J. Strauss, performed on a guitar Vincenzo
Chalet built in Rome in 1851.
Again
dedicated to Johann Kaspar Mertz was the report
of Paolo Lambiase and Piero Viti, authors of an
important research and execution study about the
works for two guitars of the musician of
Bratislava. The investigation began in the
Nineties with the realization for the new era
of one of the first incisions of the 11 Duets
for Guitar, published in the original text of
the Mertz opera omnia by the musicologist Simon
Wynberg. During the following years the work
catalogue for two guitars of the author has
greatly expanded until the recent finding of
other compositions for this formation. Today, on
the occasion of thirty-five years of activity as
duo, Lambiase and Viti presented their next
record project, which in cooperation with the
dotGuitar label will feature the full set of
works for two Mertz guitars known so far. The
report concluded with the execution of some of
the most recent pieces of rediscovery, examples
of a complete and rigorous dialectical way of
thinking of the original nineteenth-century
repertoire for guitar duo.
With
Giulio Regondi, another important author of the
nineteenth century has been object of a
contribution by the young and talented
concertist Flavio Nati, recently awarded with
the 'Golden Guitar' as Young Promise at the
International Guitar Conference in Alessandria.
Some significant moments were remembered of
Regondi's biography, starting with his debut as
enfant prodige. Insisting on the
multi-instrumentalism of the Italian guitarist,
Nati recalled the importance and weight that the
concertina also had in the life of the musician,
an instrument similar to the accordion for which
Regondi, who had already gained the appreciation
and guitar admiration by Sor and Carcassi, wrote
numerous works. After a short excursion about
the author's compositional style in works for
only guitar, Nati proposed to the public the
performance of the Air Varié Op.21. w ith a cool
and enthusiastic approach.
The
last contribution of this first part of the day
saw as speaker Antonio Rugolo, the guitarist of
Puglia whose recordings of guitar work by Guido
Santorsola have received the unanimous consent
of the critics of the sector. Rugolo offered a
meticulous revelation of the life and work of
the Italian-Uruguayan musician who alternated
the role of interpreter as violinist and viola
player to that of conductor and composer. His
compositional style has gone through several
phases, from a traditional language to chromatic
experimentation in the Fifties up to the use of
the dodecaphonic serie in the early Sixties.
Rugolo has examined some of Santorsola's works
dedicated for guitar, proposing to the public
the performance of the Preludio, of the Suite
Antiga for only guitar, then as duo with
Angelo Gillo Preludio and Tempo di
Minuetto and finally as trio with Marco
Caiazza the Concertino N. 1.
After
the traditional photography of the group and a
short and welcoming moment in the Conservatory's
premises, the resumption of afternoon work
started with the intervention-testimony of
Stefano Aruta involving the participants by
starting from the coincidence - almost a
fatality – to find themselves in this context
right on Teresa De Rogatis's birthday.
Stefano
Aruta's testimony was more like a participant,
as the result of a special relationship that he
had first as a pupil and then as a friend like a
son, within the human and professional affairs
of a musician with a complex and contradictory
personality to which guitar historiography still
owes something. After recalling the most
significant moments of the human and
professional career of De Rogatis, Aruta
denounced the sense of 'deprivation' of the
places that can be perceived in her music as
well as in her life, an aspect that lets us
realize how much she was able to feel out of
place regardless of where in the world she had
decided to live. The report concluded with the
listening to a sound document, the recording of
the Berceuse and of a Studio of
octave for piano performed by his son Mario
Feninger, and the live execution proposed by
Aruta of the Minuetto della Sonatina for
guitar.
An
interesting cross section regarding the more
recent Partenopean guitar tradition was proposed
by Antonio Grande, a Neapolitan guitarist and
composer, with a brilliant narrative verve In
his articulated report Grande reconstructed some
important events related to the history of
Naples' guitar history, starting with the first
concerts that took place during the immediate
postwar years, when return to normal was tried
with the reopening of the Teatro San Carlo and
the Scarlatti Association. Some memorable
performances were remembered including among
others of Andrés Segovia, Alirio Diaz, Eduardo
Caliendo (the most important guitarist of the
Neapolitan historic twentieth century) up to the
memorable concert of 1982 by Maria Luisa Anido.
After a detailed study about some Neapolitan
composers, Grande completed his intevention by
the performance of the Conversazione con le
cose senza nome n. 5 by Patrizio Marrone.
Fabio
Fasano's intervention was centered on the
analysis of Sonatas of Raffaele Iervolino,
composer from the Campania, which he interpreted
in 2015 in recording a monographic CD for the
magazine Guitart. Fasano examined some aspects
of the style of Iervolino with particular
reference to the form of the sonata privileged
by the composer and his language being rich in
new insights and at the same time nourished by
references to the compositional guitar
tradition. In particular, the Sonata Eduardo
(written as a tribute to Eduardo De Filippo)
which Fasano proposed to the public, is a sort
of biographical account of the composer through
an original style that fuses the lesson of
leading guitarists and composers of the
twentieth century with the essence of Neapolitan
musical culture.
After
Fabio Fasano took the floor Antonella Col who
illustrated in a report of great interest how
the Global Method of Bioenergetics, based on a
technique of learning and development of bodily
awareness, constitutes a methodology of support
for concert and instrumental teaching. This
method, also validated by various articles and
specific studies that have proven its
effectiveness, allows to free oneself from the
tensions that sometimes characterize the body
posture of the musician and often emphasize in
the periods ahead of the concerts through a
series of targeted exercises, capable of
engaging the three psychic, physical and
emotional spheres. It is thus possible to reach
a correct position from the biodynamic point of
view, capable of conferring an instrumental and
therefore highly communicative setting, as
Antonella Col reported regarding her experience
of years of work with various musicians.
On the
theme of the correct instrumental approach
focused also Mario Fragnito's intervention,
starting from the assumption that playing means
translating thought into motion. It is therefore
necessary to acquire the ability to represent
oneself by expressing through the movements, to
construct with them a 'map' to refer to during
the execution. Help in this sense comes from
physics, especially biomechanics, providing
objective answers and objective parameters to be
conveyed to students, both on posture and
motoric schemes to be achieved as well as on the
production of sound in its consistency and in
its timbre. Fragnito's report, rich in
references to his personal didactic experience,
raised remarkable participation and reflection
on aspects of great importance which are
fundamental from the earliest approach to the
instrument.
The
concluding intervention was presented by Bruno
Battisti D'Amario, a great master, today praised
among the pioneers and promoters of modern
guitar, who has formed numerous students of
success in the world of concert music and
didactics. Bruno Battisti D'Amario has traced a
number of phases of his personal artistic
history since he was first captured by the
"magic" sound of the guitar during the studies
at the Conservatory "S. Cecilia" in Rome under
the guidance of Benedetto Di Ponio up to his
concert and didactic career that led him to
explore several fields of music of the twentieth
century. He recalled in particular his
collaboration with important masters such as
Maderna, Morricone, Rota and Petrassi as well as
the first executions of rediscovered works of
the past or even the stimulating experience of
music with others flanked by soloist concertism.
This
last testimony was the call for a ceaseless
'quest for sound' that should emerge from each
of us in order to be the balance between mind
and music. We can therefore adhere
unconditionally to the consideration of Bruno
Battisti D'Amario, according to whom the purpose
of this Conference is to achieve 'the good of
the guitar'.
P. Troncone,
Il XXIX Convegno Chitarristico
Program
Abstract relations (in italian)
Photos
Video
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