Est-ce bien ça?, op. 48

These pieces by Sor, Est-ce bien ça op. 48, were first published in Paris in about 1832. The title means “Let’s see if this is it”. The work has to be understood in the context of a certain polemic. The original edition of this work has a preface, as follows Messieurs, Cet ouvrage m’a été demandé en 1814, mais je ne voudrais pas laisser croire que j’y travaille depuis cette époque. Ne me sentant pas encore converti j’ajournai. La demande me fut réitérée à mon retour de Russie; j’essayai enfin: je composai mon Oeuvre 45, mais avec la méfiance dont porte le cachet son titre: Voyons si c’est ça. Hélas! Ce n’etait point encore ça . . . on me l’a dit. “II y a trop de notes à doigter dans la basse; je suis assez jouable jusqu’au No. 4; mais l’andante No. 5 commence à pencher vers l’harmonie, et la Valse No. 6 est presque toute à trois parties.” J’ai donc tâché de faire aujourd’hui comme les auteurs qui ne tombent point dans ces inconvénients; j’ai ecrit pour l’Editeur; aussi bien je suis le mien depuis mon Oeuvre 34. J’ai suivi mes modèles dans leur marche mélodique et dans celle de la basse; j’ai omis seulement certaines transitions que je n’ai pu m’expliquer et dont peut-être ne se rendraient pas raison non plus Haydn Mozart ni Beethoven, car je n’en ai jamais trouvé de pareilles dans leur musique. Si votre approbation me prouve que j’ai réussi je ne désespère pas de produire encore quelqu’ouvrage qui vous fasse dire: C’est ça. Agréez en attendant, le témoignage du respect le plus profond avec lequel j’ai l’honneur d’être Votre tres humble Serviteur Ferdinand Sor. (‘Sirs, This work was asked of me in 1814, but I would not like it to be thought that 1 have been working on it ever since then. As I was not yet convinced, I put it off. The request was repeated on my return from Russia, and then l tried: I composed my op. 45, but with the doubts which are seen in its title: Voyons si c’est ça, Let’s see if this is it. Alas! It was not yet it. People said to me: ‘There are too many notes to finger in the bass; I’m fairly playable up to no. 4, but the andante no. 5 begins to move a bit too much towards harmony, and the waltz no. 6 is almost all in three parts,’ So now, in this present work, I have tried to do as those composers do who do not suffer from this inconvenience: I have written for the publisher, and indeed l am my own publisher since my op. 34. 1 have followed my models in their melodic structure and in that of the bass; I have only omitted certain transitions which I have not been able to explain to myself and which also perhaps Haydn Mozart and Beethoven could not explain, for I have never found any such in their music. If your approval proves to me that I have succeeded, I do not despair of eventually producing some work which may cause you to say: That’s it. Meanwhile please believe the deepest respect with which I have the honour to be Your humble servant Ferdinand Sor’) Op. 48 is one of a series of works by Sor which have a polemical context, and in order to understand that context we must go back a little. In 1828 Sor had published his op. 31, a series of relatively easy “lessons” for the guitar, designed specifically for beginners. They are at a lower level of technical difficulty than his earlier studies, op. 6 and op. 29. Yet we gather from his preface to op. 35 that in that op. 35 he was attempting to provide pieces of practical value to beginners which would be even easier than those of op. 31. In 1830 he published his Méthode pour la Guitare, and this should be studied for the whole background to his opinions about what constitutes “easy” music and what constitutes “difficult”. It is clear that a certain bitterness is present. Some months later appeared his op. 43, whose full title is: Mes Ennuis, Six Bagatelles pour la Guitare, Composées et Dédiées à qui les voudra, which, translated, means: “My cares (or; troubles), six bagatelles, composed and dedicated to anyone who cares to have them”. There is, however, no preface, and the music itself gives no clues, consisting only of six moderately easy pieces. Opus 44 followed, a series of 24 very easy pieces for beginners. A preface says that some people might think that these easy pieces ought rightly to have been published with the Méthode; but that such a belief is wrong, because if they had been published there, they might have distracted the reader’s attention from the principal point, which is the inculcation of proper technique. Once the basic principles have been grasped, the reader can pass on to pieces such as these. Sor attacks those who buy a method simply for the easy pieces which it might contain. The next work in the series is op. 45, Voyons si c’est ça, six petites pièces faciles pour la guitare dont le but est de conduire graduellement à ce que l’on est convenu d’appeler difficulté, composées et dédiées à celui qui aura le moins de patience; or “Let’s see if this is it. Six short easy pieces whose aim is to lead gradually to what people call difficulty, dedicated to whoever has the least patience.” The sarcasm is obvious, against a wrong attitude to so-called “difficulty”, and the dedication itself is ironic, to the person who has the least patience—that is, who is the most impatient to play the guitar quickly and without effort, an aim which Sor rightly dismissed as improper in the first place. There is no preface, and once again the music gives no clues, being of moderate difficulty (it includes, incidentally, one of Sor’s most charming pieces, the Andante, No. 5). With opus 48 we at last begin to penetrate the matter, for there is a preface; there are footnotes; and the music itself is ironic. The title is Est-ce bien ça? (“Is this it?”). The preface says that this work had been asked of him already in 1814 (that is, when he had arrived in Paris from Spain); that he had not wished to write it then; that it had been asked of him again on his return from Russia (in 1827) and that this time he had tried, with his op. 45, Voyons si c’est ça. But (people said to him) the pieces in op. 45 had too many notes in the bass which could not be played on open strings, and they were written in too many parts. Now, as we know, the pieces in op. 45 are in fact not difficult: it follows that Sor is saying ironically that his critics were demanding music which was unreasonably easy. He goes on to say that with this present op. 48, he is trying again, and this time he is writing for the publisher—that is, of course, himself. Moreover (he says), in writing this music he is following his models in their melodies and in their bass, omitting only certain transitions of which, he says, Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven would not approve. Can we determine who these (ironic) models were? To do so we must turn to the music. No. 1 is an utterly childish march which is unlike anything else that or wrote. It has a faux-naïf footnote pretending obtuseness about the pitch of the guitar. No. 2 is an anodyne waltz. No. 3 is a minuet mostly in two parts, with three simple variations; it contains a footnote about the use of the lefthand thumb to stop a note on the sixth string which, in view of Sor’s known strong views against that practice, is manifestly ironic. No. 4 is a deliberately absurd waltz, using nothing but open strings for the bass at the beginning, and pompous scale passages towards the end. This piece, more than any other, makes fun of his still anonymous “models”. No. 5 uses rapid runs but combines them with nothing else that has any musical interest. No. 6 is an apparently innocuous rondeau, but as it approaches its end, it becomes enmeshed in an enormously long-drawn-out sequence of quasi-cadences, until a foolish little phrase, noteworthy only by being somewhat different from what has preceded it, is marked “très expressif”. That says it all. With op. 51 the story continues. A la bonne heure! or, At last! A preface says that certain “connoisseurs” have pointed out that the music in op. 48 “ne ressemble du tout à la mienne”, is not written at all in Sor’s usual style. They said that he should write music which, while being in his own style (“de ma musique”), should have basses of the kind familiar from certain other works; and they also said that op. 48 was still not easy enough for someone to play who cannot be bothered to study (!). So, says Sor with sarcasm, he has written these six waltzes of op. 51, using open strings as far as possible for the basses, and fingering them until there are almost as many fingerings as notes; and one of the anonymous “connaisseurs”, on seeing the first two waltzes, cried out: “At last!” —a title which, says Sor, he then gave to the collection. When we look at the first two waltzes, we find that they are deliberately absurd, using many open strings and banal musical phrases, and the remaining four are scarcely better. The whole work, title, preface, music, and all, is in fact a savage satirical attack. Who are the objects of Sor’s satire? So far we know that they advocated very easy music; that they provided such easy music in order to achieve sales for the music publisher; that they advocated using the left hand thumb to stop notes on the sixth string; that they used open basses as far as possible; and that they wrote exceedingly dull music which is parodied in Sor’s op. 48 and op. 51. Sor’s last words on the subject are to be found in the preface to his op. 59, in which he attacks those who have degraded (his own word) the guitar by ignorance and “routine”, which is a pejorative word meaning habit for habit’s sake, and by writing “de la pauvre musique” for the instrument. He even gives two examples, the overtures to Rossini’s Guillaume Tell and Semiramide, both fine works in their original versions, he says, but mutilated (his own word) by guitar arrangements which, because they follow bad principles are themselves necessarily bad, and which “[rendent] pitoyable et mesquine la musique la plus delicieuse”. If we try to identify the objects of his attacks, we find that the overture to Rossini’s Semiramide was in fact arranged for solo guitar by Matteo Carcassi as his op. 30, and selections from Rossini’s Guillaume Tell as his op. 36 (this latter is available in Carcassi: Selected Works for the Guitar, ed. Noad, New York, 1976), and that at least twelve Rossini overtures were arranged for two guitars, and for guitar and piano, by Ferdinando Carulli. It would appear, then, that this whole series of works by Sor, with their unusual titles, and with the irony of their prefaces and even sometimes of the music itself, may be regarded as documents in a controversy between Sor and the followers of Carcassi and of Carulli. When more research has been done on the music of this period, it will be possible to see whether that is so, and to set these documents in their full and proper context. The first footnote in op. 48 is at no. 1 bar 12, last beat, and reads as follows: “Ceux qui regardent les choses de trop près diront qu’ayant l’air de représenter les cors je devais écrire cette phrase une octave en dessus pour que la guitare qui joue une octave en dessous ne produise pas un effet qui n’a jamais été produit par les cors. En ce cas ne sachant que répondre je prie les auteurs des ouvrages qui m’ont servi de modèles de venir à mon secours.” (‘Those who look too closely at things will say that, apparently imitating horns, I should have written this phrase an octave higher, in order that the guitar, which sounds an octave lower than written, should not produce an effect which has never been produced by horns, In such a case, not knowing what to reply, I beg the composers of the pieces which served me as models to come to my help.’) The next footnote is in no. 3, bar 3, at the word pouce: “Mais ... le pouce! oui: le pouce pour le Sol dièse; c’est la position naturelle du poignet.” (‘But ... the thumb! yes, the thumb for the G sharp; it is the natural position of the wrist.’) And finally at the last bar of no. 3 (bar 64, second time bar): “Si la critique trouve cette terminaison trop brusque je dirai que c’est un genre tout comme un autre, et que je l’ai adopté parce qu’il est très commode et très simple.” (‘lf critics find this ending too abrupt, I will say that it is a style just like another, and that I have adopted it because it is very convenient and very simple.’) This edition comes from the new 2019 second edition of Sor’s New Complete Works for Guitar edited by Brian Jeffery. The Introduction and Index to the entire series are here in nkoda. This new edition is copyright © by Brian Jeffery 2019. Your cooperation is requested in not making illegal copies for other people. Brian Jeffery