Schubert and Mertz CD | Duo LiveOak

CD NOTES
Singers have always loved singing to the guitar, with its intimate resonance, and for both singers and guitarists, Schubert?s lieder are a dream repertoire. The emotional power and complexity of melody, poetry, and accompaniments alike are legendary. On the guitar, the play of finger on string, with its resulting variations in tone and attack, affords a nuance of _expression which is not available to the piano. In accompaniments for Schubert?s songs these qualities more than make up for the more limited range and dynamics of the instrument.

In the late 18th century, the new six-string guitar existed side by side with the five-string, the six course, as well as the now-waning five-course (baroque) guitar. By the year 1807, fueled by the influence of Giuliani, this new guitar had established its popularity in the musical capital of Vienna.

In that year, when Schubert was a boy of ten, the thriving musical community saw the publication of Beethoven’s famous song Adelaide in guitar transcription as well as many guitar works of Giuliani, Molitor, and Aguado.

In 1821, in his first publication of Schubert lieder (Opus 1-7), Schubert’s publisher Diabelli (a guitarist himself) chose to issue four of his songs in guitar versions. These editions not only helped Schubert?s efforts to establish himself as a songwriter, but it also appealed to the growing contingent of guitarists in Vienna. Judging by the plate numbers, there were two cases (Der Wanderer, D 493 and Morgenlied, D 773) in which Diabelli’s publication of the edition with guitar accompaniment seems to have preceded the piano version.

This simultaneous printing of select Schubert songs with both guitar and piano accompaniment became a pattern as Schubert became respected as a lieder composer. Over two dozen of his songs were published in his lifetime with guitar accompaniments and many more followed his early death as his fame increased. There was clearly a market for these guitar settings, as shown by the multiple printings of them in the early 1800’s not only by Diabelli but also by such houses as Pennauer, Sauer and Liedesdorf, J. Czerny and Cappi.

Although there are still some today who debate that Schubert played the guitar, others say that Schubert not only played but composed on the guitar when he couldn’t afford a piano, playing under a blanket in bed, because he couldn’t afford heat either! According to Percy Scholes in the 1943 Oxford Companion to Music:

“One of Schubert’s friends, Umlauf, records that he used to visit him in the mornings before he got out of bed, and usually found him with a guitar in his hands: ‘He generally sang to me newly composed songs to his guitar.”?

Another source says that his principal possessions were a few books, a guitar and a pipe. Further evidence of his interest in and understanding of the guitar is his 1813 setting of a Cantata to guitar accompaniment (D 80) honoring his father?s name day. Also, in 1814 he added a cello part to Wenzel Matiegka’s Notturno for flute, viola and guitar.

The 19th century romantics? passion for the guitar was so intense it was dubbed ?guitaromanie?. Paganini, whose fame was made on the violin, was also an incomparable guitarist. In fact, those who heard him on both instruments had a hard time deciding which he played best. In 1821 he and Rossini dressed up as two female singing beggars and strummed their way on two guitars through the streets of Rome during carnival. Berlioz’ principle instrument was the guitar?he never played piano?and in true romantic fashion he would often take his guitar up to the mountains for long rambles, serenading the peasants and inventing wild recitative from Virgil with strange harmonies on his guitar. His friend French playwright Ernest Legouvé wrote:

“The guitar embodied all instruments for him, and he was very good at it.”

The guitar’s popularity was intense for three or four decades before it began to wane. The Bratislavan guitarist/composer Johann Kaspar Mertz (1806-1856) belonged to this latter period but did not adhere to the typical post-classical style. He made significant contributions to the colors and harmonic language of the guitar repertoire, having been clearly influenced by his pianist wife, Josephine Plantin, and her knowledge of Mendelssohn, Schumann and Chopin. It is with Mertz that we first see titles such as Lied ohne Worte (Song without Words), Abendlied (Evening Song), and Unruhe (Unrest), showing his desire to create poetic sketches. Thus the title of one collection of his works, Bardenklänge, is literally “Bard Sounds”. While it was popular in his day to write variations on popular and operatic songs, Mertz also wrote six arrangements of Schubert songs. One assumes that as a precocious young player of both guitar and flute, Mertz started out on a six-string guitar. But like many of his contemporaries, he ended up preferring the increased range of the eight- and then the ten-string guitar. He was popular both as a composer in Vienna, where he was a leading member of the Vienna school of guitarists, and as a touring performer (Prague, Berlin, Dresden, Moravia, Poland, Russia). In 1856 Mertz won the coveted award for guitar composition in Brussels.

Frank Wallace plays from the Chanterelle edition of Mertz’s works (Monaco, 1983, Simon Wynberg, editor).

Of the seventeen songs on this CD, ten are Wallace?s own transcriptions from the piano version and seven are by Thomas F. Heck. (See footnotes on playlist.) Though many have transcribed Schubert?s songs, we are particularly indebted to Thomas Heck and his performance edition Franz Schubert: Sixteen Songs with Guitar Accompaniment, Tecla Editions, 1980. Detailed notes about these songs and their publishing history can be found in his publication.