The Sor Project

This project grew out of my admiration for the Spanish guitar virtuoso Fernando Sor (1778-1839). Below are recordings of the six valses for two guitars of Sor’s Op. 44 bis. (Through the miracle of overdubbing, I play both parts.) Although Sor intended these as easy teaching pieces, they’re also rich studies in musicianship. With this in mind, each recording is accompanied by a short essay on some aspect of the music you’ll be hearing. I offer my performances and opinions with a cheerful air of infallibility. But it’s not so important that you agree with my playing or opinions. What’s more important is that you come away from this project with an appreciation for this elegant and delightful music.

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Tempo?

In none of these waltzes does Sor give a tempo indication. Common sense is some help. A waltz isn’t a dirge, nor is it a breathless sprint, so obviously neither of these extremes is appropriate. But questions remain: at what tempo should these pieces be played? And how flexible can one be with tempo changes? A good place to start is with the music itself. Listen carefully enough, and the right tempo begins to suggest itself. So let’s take a closer look at Valse No. 1.

This piece in in 3/8 (as are all the pieces in Op. 44 bis), and that implies a “one to a bar” feel. Finding the right tempo can involve a bit of trial and error. For example, when I first recorded this piece, I played it at a slightly slower tempo. Yet I soon changed my mind and redid it at a faster tempo. The slower recording teetered dangerously close to a “three to a bar” feel. Further, tempo is, among other things, a balancing act between detail and momentum. The slower the tempo, the more detail you can do. The faster the tempo, the more you can convey forward movement.

There are always trade-offs between the two. In my slower recording, there were touches of detail that are lost in the faster recording. But to me, this piece begs for a joyful and rhythmically vital performance. The slower recording, for all its nice touches, simply didn’t deliver. As for tempo changes, I keep this piece pretty steady. The harmony is basic—other than one secondary dominant, the chords are I, IV, and V. Peppering this piece with tempo changes would give it an affected air unsuited to its simple charm. And as the first piece of a six work opus, its job is to get the ball rolling and create a joyful and carefree mood. Finally, since it’s less than two minutes long, tempo changes would tend to disrupt its forward momentum. If this piece were longer and more sophisticated, I might add a few discrete tempo changes. It’s not, so I don’t.

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When Two Play As One

A problem when playing a guitar duet is synchronizing both parts. In making these duo recordings, I expected that tempo changes would be the biggest challenge in overdubbing. But this turned out to be not as much a problem as I anticipated. It helped that I’m playing both parts, so it made things a bit easier than coordinating between two different players with different ideas on how to time a tempo change. Most surprising to me was how hard it was to synchronize both parts at a steady tempo. In my early recordings, I was appalled at how ragged my ensemble was. Sometimes, with the second guitar playing nothing more than a steady eighth note pulse, there would be long passages where not a single note really locked up with the other guitar part. What was the problem?

With a little thought, I came up the reason. Duet musicians are commonly exhorted to listen to each other—clearly a good idea. If I don’t think too deeply about it, I interpret this to mean that I must react to what my duo partner is playing. What I failed to realize, however, is that I must do more than merely react. Reaction implies that I hear something and then respond. But if I only react to my duo partner, I’ll always be a bit behind. Instead, I must anticipate. This is especially important in a guitar duo, because the sharp attack of a plucked string makes it obvious when two guitarists aren’t precisely together.

This, by the way, is the reason that experienced ensemble players rely so heavily on visual cues. If, for example, I watch a guitarist’s right hand, it’s much easier to anticipate what he or she is about to do. (Provided, of course, the player isn’t trying to throw me off. I once had a young student who liked to make me jump the gun by giving false cues.)

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Let It Be

Valse No. 3 showed me that sometimes one can be too clever for one’s own good. For some reason, this piece filled me with ideas. I noticed, for example, that Sor had lots of fun with upbeats, sometimes tossing upbeat notes back and forth between the two guitars. So I thought I might make this piece a study in upbeats. One idea led to another, and I decided to keep lengthening the recurring upbeats until the last one nearly stopped the piece in its tracks. It would be fun—or so I thought.

How wrong I was. Listening to the finished recording, I was appalled. Rather than a whimsical tweaking of the tempo, my idea devolved into a demented rhythmic taffy pull. The piece seemed to be fighting against my great interpretive idea.

So I stepped back from the wreckage and decided to let the music speak for itself. Playing it in my head, I noticed the melody had a self-satisfied, almost smug air. Mulling this over, I recalled that smug people aren’t prone to deep self-examination. Happy with surface appearances, they skim along blissfully unaware of the shadows in their character. With this, it became clear why my great idea hadn’t worked. I was imposing something on the piece that was contrary to its nature. The piece didn’t want to be an upbeat study. It didn’t want to be clever. It wanted to be left alone to go its smug and merry way.

Needless to say, I redid the recording. Both the piece and I are happier with the result.

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Dance of Shadows

In a collection of six short waltzes, differences—whether large or small—are significant. Valse No. 4 has the only minor key episode in the entire opus. And it’s the only piece in which the middle section doesn’t go to the subdominant key. Indeed, it’s no accident that Sor placed it near the middle of the opus—contrasting with the smug waltz that preceded it and the rollicking waltz that follows, this is the dark cloud that crosses an otherwise sunny sky.

Consider also that the E minor melody has the narrowest range of any of the six waltzes. Other than one leaping high note, it spans less than an octave, and has a repeated falling third that gives it a somber and obstinate air. To heighten this moody obsessiveness, I take all the repeats.

With all this in mind, it seems wrong to give this piece a clipped, rhythmically taut performance. Instead, restraint and rounded edges are in order. Even the childlike innocence of the middle E major section seems better without having too much made of it.

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Context: The Expressive Wild Card

This waltz has something the other five don’t: an introduction. Why did Sor do this? I suspect context is the answer. After the brooding Valse No. 4, something brighter seemed called for, and Valse No. 5 certainly fills the bill. (It’s my favorite of the set.) But Sor was too subtle a composer to leap directly from melancholy to merriment. Rather, he eases us into it with the simplest of means: a repeated A, suggesting a dominant setup to the D major whirl to follow. Would Sor have omitted the introduction if this waltz had followed something else? Perhaps, perhaps not—we can never know for sure. But its place in this opus may explain its uniqueness.

Outside the music itself, context has the greatest influence on what a composer writes and how a performer interprets. Consider, for example, that in no other waltz do I add my own ornaments. Consider also that in no other piece do I linger on a note so conspicuously before continuing on my merry way. (A bit of the “great idea” that fell flat in Valse No. 3 found a home in No. 5.) Why? Because no other waltz in the set matches No. 5 for unbuttoned exuberance.

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Intellect & Inspiration

While Valse No. 5 is my overall favorite, No. 6 has my favorite episode. The middle section floats a melody that makes me smile whenever I hear it. What’s more, my performance of this melody shows how intellect and inspiration can happily coexist.

Recording the takes for this waltz, I fell for the middle section melody in a big way. More and more, I wanted to bring out its coyness. On the spur of the moment I did one take with a light staccato, cutesy articulation—as I did it, I wasn’t sure it would work. But listening to the playback, I loved it. Score one for going with the flow.

Now, should I have left well enough alone? Well, in listening to the take again, I realized that it was a good idea, but the execution could be better. For example, there was a note that I hadn’t played staccato, but it really wanted to be staccato. Further, this melody occurs four times. The second time is when I do the staccato, but I don’t do it the next two times the same melody recurs. Why? Because I want to keep the listener guessing. After hearing the staccato, an alert listener will likely expect it again when the melody repeats. By refusing to do it again, I keep the alert listener off balance. With Sor, one doesn’t want to go to the well too often. It’s better to understate rather than hit the listener over the head. So thinking through my spur of the moment idea gave it a brighter sheen. I redid the take, and the result was better.

Some musicians mutter darkly that intellect kills the spirit. I’m not one of them. Used judiciously, intellect heightens those happy accidents of inspiration that make music come alive.

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Coda

Now that you’ve listened to the six waltzes of Op. 44 bis, I’d like to offer a parting thought. Hearing these pieces from the vantage of our own time, we shouldn’t make the mistake of believing this music reflects a simpler and more joyous era. Sor lived through the Napoleonic wars, and anyone familiar with Francisco de Goya’s work knows how brutal a time it was. In this light, Sor’s graceful little waltzes are poignant evocations of an ideal that reality, then and now, seldom achieves.

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“I think to overapply romanticism to Sor’s music is a great mistake. There’s a classicism—not unlike Mozart—in his style, which to my mind is a style of beautiful understatement. But if you give understatement space and time, it has a positive element that transcends the simplicity or the innocence of the material. Sor needs immense care and affection, and if one invests his music with that, I can’t see how anybody can object to it.”

— Julian Bream