Viennese Guitar & Nylon Jazz by Franklin Lei

7:30- 9 PM Tsang Shiu Tim Art HallFree admission ︳All are welcome

12 NOV

hkustcfa

Guitar by J.M. Rudert, dated 1811 in Vienna (to be used in this

evening’s program)

For more details, please visit://artsctr.ust.hk

Ages6 +

Mauro Guliani and the Early Viennese Guitar

1814 marks Napoleon’s abdication and exile to Elba. The Congress of Vienna convened in September to redraw the national boundaries of Europe. One Mauro Giuseppe Sergio Pantaleo Giuliani (1781-1829), who 8 years before had left wife and young child in Trieste to seek fame and fortune in that musical capitol of the world, was appointed by Metternich as “official performer” at the Congress. Without question Giuliani was then the world’s greatest performer on his instrument. He was fortunate to be in Naples when the world’s first 6-string guitar was made there. While Giuliani initiated the popularity of an instrument which today is the world’s most played, his guitar (possibly by Gennaro Fabricatore I) also gave rise to a style of lutherie unique to Vienna during 1806-1822.

The early Viennese guitar emulates the Baroque lute in its tessitura, its lightness of tone and of weight, and its fast action with a fingerboard inlaid flush into the soundboard. In 1808, J.F. Reichardt, a fourth generation pupil of the great Baroque lutenist Silvius Leopold Weiss, wrote of Giuliani that the “Neapolitan guitar player whose consummate skills [on such an un-consummate instrument] often brought me back to the good old days of true lute playing.”

In 1822, Vienna’s most famous luthier Georg Staufer came out with his “Legnani Model” – a guitar with a slab fingerboard affixed on top of the neck and the soundboard. This design gave extra weight (and tonal gravity) to the instrument ever since, setting the guitar on the road to its modern classical, archtop, and even solid body designs.

In 1989 I was referred by the then head of musical instruments at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna to a violin maker’s shop, where I purchased the Rudert guitar heard tonight. It was not only unplayable: its neck was broken, its back split down the center, and its soundboard detached from the rest of the instrument. Lute maker Mel Wong (黄守寅師傅) of San Francisco undertook its restoration during 1991-1995. Recently 黄師傅 expresses his recollections:

“It was fortunate that no one had [previously] attempted to repair it. The miracle of it all was that the old glue had eventually failed, but all the parts were intact. A bit of assembly work, fresh glue and [the guitar is] ready for a new turn in life.”

Well, that “bit of assembly work” took Mel nearly 5 years, most of it spent in re-attaching the soundboard. When Mel began this project, neither he himself nor I had any assurance that the guitar could even be made playable, let alone has a decent sound. 20 years on, this guitar is not only holding together, but to me its true voice has once again emerged. Of course I choose to play Giuliani’s most famous piece, which he was composing while my guitar was being built in the same city. (And Beethoven was composing too, as well as being a faithful subscriber to Giuliani’s concert series in the Kleine Redoutensaal.) But lately I have discovered this guitar to be even wonderful for solo Jazz.

The Guitar and “Chord-Melody” Jazz

The guitar was assimilated into Jazz performances during the 1920s and 1930s. At first it played a limited rôle of chordal accompaniment in the Big Band. With the advent of amplification the guitar began to take on a solo voice, emulating traditional wind instruments but usually playing a single line “to sound like a horn.” After WWII guitarists began to play the occasional full-voice unaccompanied solo, as interlude to a band setting. Joe Pass was one of the first to not only play entire pieces alone on the guitar, with “fingerstyle” technique similar to classical guitarists, but he also performed and recorded entire programs of himself unaccompanied. His achievements remain unsurpassed. Today many Jazz guitarists play in this “chord-melody” style, perhaps as a reaction to the heavily electric Fusion style of the 1980s. They use many different guitars including the acoustic classical guitar, and there is not yet consensus on a single standard technique.

A major ingredient of the Jazz guitar repertory is Latin Jazz, especially the Bossa Nova as exemplified by Antonio Carlos Jobim; likewise percussive Afro-Cuban music such as Mongo Santamaria’s. Another Jazz guitar source is transcription and re-interpretation of great Jazz pianists such as Bill Evans. Above all else, solo guitar pieces come from the American Songbook, the collective name for “standards” -songs made famous by Broadway and Hollywood. Cole Porter needs no introduction. And Harold Arlen is likewise remembered for his songs for films, especially the Academy Award winning “Over the Rainbow” sung by Judy Garland. But “Blues in the Night,” Arlen’s unashamed attempt to create African-American music so impressed Hollywood moguls that they changed the name of the film to this title, and it narrowly missed a second Oscar for Arlen. Vernon Duke was the most interesting in this group. Born Vladimir Dukelsky in Kiev and trained at Kiev Conservatory, he anglicized his name to Vernon Duke on the advice of George Gershwin, but continued to compose serious music under his real name. He wrote at least 3 symphonies, an un-orchestrated piano concerto, and a cello concerto which finally received a professional recording by Naxos in 2006. As Vernon Duke, songwriter for Broadway, he was prolific but is still a “one-shot composer” best remembered for Autumn in New York.

~ Franklin Lei

Program

I.

Deve ser amor (It must be love) Baden Powell (Roberto Baden Powell de Aquino), 1937-2000

Wave Antonio Carlos Jobim, 1927-1994 (Arranged by Alexander Chu Kit-Hung)

Afro Blue Mongo Santamaria, 1917-2003 (Arranged by Emily Remler)

II.

Grande Ouverture, Opus 61 : Mauro Giuliani, 1781-1829

Andante Sostenuto – Allegro MaestosoSource: Facsimile of the First Edition by Giovanni Ricordi, Milan, 1814.

III.

Blues in the Night* Harold Arlen, 1905-1986

Song for Helen Bill Evans, 1929-1980 (Arranged by Greg Stone)

Autumn in New York* Vernon Duke, 1903-1969

Night and Day* Cole Porter, 1891-1964

(*Arranged by Franklin Lei)

Original guitar by Johann Michael Rudert, dated 1811 in Vienna; restoration by Mel Wong, Blackbird String Arts, San Francisco