Giuliani: Flute And Guitar Duets

Description

Mauro Giuliani (1781-1829)Duets for Flute and Guitar Mauro Giuliani was born in Bisceglie, a small town near Bari in the southeast corner of the old Kingdom of Naples. After early musical training, the details of which are not clear, although he was apparently a competent cellist as well as a guitarist, he settled in Vienna in 1806. There he established himself as the best guitarist in a city where the guitar was already popular and befriended many of the city’s musical luminaries, including Beethoven, Schubert, Mayseder, Moscheles, Diabelli, and others. An important innovator, he composed what may have been the first virtuoso guitar concerto (both his and that of Ferdinando Carulli in Paris were first performed at about the same time) and dozens of other works, many of them requiring prodigious technique on the instrument. In 1819 Giuliani returned to Italy, reportedly to escape debtors, and he spent his last years in Rome (until about 1823) and Naples. His works continued to be published after his death in 1829, a fact which confused many of his early biographers into believing he had lived until 1840 or later; in reality, the "M. Giuliani" who enjoyed a musical career in the 1830s was Mauro’s own son, Michele. Biedermeier Vienna, perhaps more than any other city in history, recognised music as a vocation which was its own reward. Children of both sexes began to study music from the age of four or five and many of them became quite accomplished performers. The guitar offered many advantages; it was cheaper and more portable than a fortepiano and easier to begin learning than a violin. Its lack of volume was less of a problem, since it was rarely played in the larger venues and was, in fact, an advantage in a small room where louder instruments could be overpowering. Most of the students of the guitar, however, like those of any other instrument, were learning the instrument for the social advantages it conveyed, not because they aspired one day to become concert artists themselves. A guitar could provide entertainment in a bourgeois parlour or aristocratic salon, diversion in a military camp, or pass the time on a long voyage by horse-drawn carriage, and competent young musicians, particularly young women, were frequently asked to perform in social gatherings, a time-honoured tactic to attract the attention of potential suitors. These social functions of the guitar explain why so many of the published works of composers such as Giuliani were dedicated to pupils who are addressed as "Mademoiselle," but also, with somewhat less frequency, "Captain" or "Lieutenant." A significant quantity of the Viennese publications for guitar were not solos but rather chamber music which featured the guitarist as an accompanist or concertante in a small ensemble. The guitar’s enduring popularity has always had a great deal to do with its ability to provide chordal accompaniment to a melody instrument or human voice. The most popular instr