Antonio José’s Sonata for Guitar — notes on an edition
The circumstances of the discovery, recording and publication of Antonio José’s Sonata for guitar are well documented in the two available editions, [Gallego/Gilardino 1990 (GG), Iznaola/Gilardino 1998 (IG)] and in Ricardo Iznaola’s brief article [Iznaola 1996]. These don’t need recounting here: rather, these notes document some of my observations on the sources, reflections, considerations, principles and choices in working with both these editions, with facsimiles of the two manuscripts and in preparing a new edition of the work.
The manuscripts
There are two manuscripts. The first (S1), used as the basis of GG, appears to be a rough copy, with some (but not many) crossings-out, and some additional sketches noted below. The second (S2), the basis for IG, is a fair copy. Both are dated “23 Agosto 1933”, which we can presume is the date of completion of S1, with S2 preserving the date (and adding the location “Burgos”) but likely copied shortly afterwards. The two editions provide facsimiles of the manuscripts on which they are based: unfortunately these are pure monochrome reproductions, additionally the S1 facsimile, whether due to its reproduction or a poorer state of the source material, is significantly less legible, which may excuse some of the issues in GG. Neither edition provides a description of the original manuscript — size, paper, binding. A clearer photographic reproduction of S2 is downloadable from IMSLP, this source was used for the examples below.
Some but not all of the differences between the two manuscripts are noted in [Iznaola 1996]. One of the surprising aspects of the two is their very close correspondence: without knowing more about José’s compositional practice, and notwithstanding the additional elements, it feels to me incautious to describe S1 simply as a sketch, but rather a working draft of a piece which was already — at least in its composer’s imagination — approaching completion. This is particularly true of the first two movements, which appear in essence identical to their forms in S2. There is a more significant wrong-turn in the third movement (described below), and an attempt at a different finale: in both cases these were crossed out, and the drafting continues confidently in music which is essentially identical to that of S2.
S1 — some observations
At the end of each movement in S1 the composer has added a timing: respectively “6 minutos”, “5 minutos”, “5 minutos”, “4 minutos”. These should caution us against taking the second movement Minueto quickly, or the Pavana Triste particularly slowly — or at least inform our decisions should we propose these interpretations.
In S1, an original 2 measures are crossed out following m.65:
As far as I can make out, these bars contain a single C♯-major harmony, and intriguingly sit under a 1st-time bar annotation and are followed by a repeat bar.
Following the end of the first movement, S1 has two small fragments, both crossed out, labelled to indicate they are ideas for the opening of a second movement Pavana and an untitled fourth movement.
The Pavana, in the more conventional duple metre for the form, presents in 3½ measures the phrase which ultimately appears in the cadence of the eventual third movement, Pavana Triste:
The tempo indication for the fragment of the fourth movement is somewhat indistinct in the facsimile, but appears to be Allegro (compare the large loop of the ‘a’ with the clearer allegro indication in both the abandoned sketch and the final draft of the Final). All that remains in the eventual concluding movement are the repeated sixteenth-note chords, though here there is no suggestion that they are to be strummed.
The Pavana Triste in S1 features two crossed-out systems.
The rejected music transitions quickly to the cadential phrase already sketched after the first movement (now in the Pavana’s final triple metre), and intriguingly references the opening theme of the sonata’s first movement. In the work’s final form, of course, these thematic recurrences are a feature of the last movement, and are expanded to extensive literal recapitulations: it is significant that José was thinking in terms of cyclic forms and a recurrence of the opening at this earlier point in the piece, even though he appears to have quickly rejected the idea in this form:
In S1 the complete draft of the last movement is preceded by the most extended abandoned fragment, an energetic allegro which takes its cue from the abandoned earlier fragment (A₄ and C₅ circling around B₄), settles on a 2/4 time signature, and adds a rasgueado indication. Ten measures of strummed chords are followed by an angular sequence: a double bar then precedes two measures which end up in the final form of the movement at m.23:
The angular sequence perhaps hints at the passage in m.29–32 in the movement’s ultimate form, though maybe all that the fragment provided as a model was a suggestion of the obsessive alternation of strummed chords and an angular single line that José finally settled on.
I think that the manuscript S1 was a work in progress, produced over a period of time, paused after the drafting of the first movement (where two alternative openings for movements II and IV are sketched), and supported by additional sketching and working out at the piano as drafting of the third and fourth movements continued. Although this needs to carry the caveat that the facsimile may well be poorly reproduced, the musical handwriting in S1 appears to vary in density, supporting the idea that it was produced over several working sessions. Additionally it seems clear that some of the dynamics in the first movement were added after the initial drafting, as they appear denser and in some cases repeat an existing dynamic indication in a lighter hand.
S2 — the second hand
Compared with the apparent scruffiness of S1, S2 is clear, neat and definitive. The consistency of the handwriting suggests that this was produced at a single sitting as a fair copy, transcribed from the working draft S1. José took some care to produce a well-laid-out performance score: the music is distributed across systems and pages to fill or near-fill the last whole pages of each movement.
Intriguingly, and in a rare example of what looks like carelessness, the piece carries the title Sonatina on the score’s first page (although on the cover page, above the second movement, and in both cover and first page of S1 the title is clearly Sonata). Sonatina is the title under which the first movement was performed by the work’s dedicatee, Regino Sainz de la Maza, in a concert in 1934.
This is noted in both GG and IG: the latter includes a translation of the review in the Buletin ateneo popular burgos from November/December of that year:
… En el programa fuguraba el “Allegro Moderato” de la “Sonatina”, en tres tiempos, de Antonio José…
… In the program was included the “Allegro Moderato” of the “Sonatina” in three tempos by Antonio José…
The literal translation of en tres tiempos as in three tempos here seems wrong: surely this means the work described has three movements. As this performance took place a full year after the composition of the Sonata, maybe this points to second thoughts on the composer’s part with respect to the form of the work.
The only significant point of confusion in S2 occurs in the Minueto, m.57–58. S1 has explicitly octave E♮, followed by A♮ (GG here reads this as C₅ — I think this is a misreading of the unclear original or reproduction. The example from S1 below has what looks like a second ledger line at this point, but if that were the case the notehead would hardly need a natural sign. The octaves in the preceding measures suggest the consistency of texture is meant to continue: maybe the composer was worried that an unclear attempt at the A₅ at this point would be misinterpreted as B₅, so tried to clarify the intention by adding the bottom part of the half-note under the existing ledger line).
In S2 both these were originally flattened, but an attempt seems to have been made to scratch out or erase the flat symbols:
More significantly, S2 contains additions in a second hand, with what appears to be a different pen or pencil. These additions are of two sorts. Firstly, barré and left-hand fingering indications in the second, third and fourth movements
To this I’d add the harmonics indications (the only ones in the manuscript) in m.52 of the Minueto. These don’t appear at the equivalent point in S1, nor in S2 a few measures later when the music is repeated. The letter forms in the ar indications is sufficiently different from José’s handwriting to distinguish them (compare the a and r in the rall indication below), though they appear denser in weight than the other fingering indications:
Secondly, a small number of chord re-voicing and changes to the content of some measures. These were clearly not added during the original production of the manuscript: the weight of the strokes appears quite different, and corresponds to that used for the fingering indications noted above:
There are surprisingly few of these — indeed, alterations are missing in nearly all cases where a chord or texture obviously needs needs adjusting for feasibility of performance.
There are two passages where these changes do alter the substance of the music. In the Minueto, m.11, the alteration replaces a rest in the bass with a note, and changes the following chord:
Secondly, in the Pavana, m.16 ff, the two lowest notes of the phrase’s opening chord are repeated on the last half-note beat, with parentheses around notes to be omitted. The weight of the stem and ledger lines in the addition is consistent with the other alterations in S2, and the open-string indication on the inner voice G₃, point to the second scribe as their author:
Although he clearly heard the textures of the work with respect to the instrument, José was no guitarist. Unless other evidence comes to light I assume that these were added by the work’s dedicatee, Regino Sainz de la Maza. It’s not clear why these annotations should have been applied to these particular passages — there are many other places where editing is needed to make the piece playable, and many places where imaginative fingering solutions need to be tried. The substantive changes to the Minueto and the Pavana don’t appear to be necessary — on the contrary, they both seem to me to compromise something of the original. It is of course not known when these annotations were made. It would be reasonable to suppose that José was present at the 1934 performance of the first movement: given this it is surprising that no alterations or fingerings are noted in the first movement of S2, and one might consequently imagine that an edited copy of this movement remains to be discovered.
The editions
GG suffers from having as its only source the working draft manuscript S1. Even so, there are a few surprising choices in the editing of the work. The rhythm of the chordal sections in the first movement’s second subject (and elsewhere where this texture is repeated) is changed — the bass line recast in sustained half-notes rather than the eight-plus dotted-quarter of the original:
The misreading of m.56 in the Minueto’s middle section has already been mentioned. Some measures before this in m.43, a glissando chord is awkwardly recast, in what appears to be an attempt to preserve some of the character of the harmony (note also the unnecessary change in the previous measure):
An attempt in the Pavana Triste to fill out the harmony in m.16 ff disregards the texture and the voice-leading (the original’s C₅, B♭₄ and D♭₅ on the last half-notes of these measures are transposed down an octave). The result makes the harmony of the passage appear more mobile than it should be, and loses the A♭₃ to G₃ connection between mm.23 and 24:
IG is in general less problematic than GG. However it uncritically (and without annotation) incorporates the second hand alterations from S2, namely the altered readings of m.11 and its repeated occurrence at m.89 in the Minueto, and the repeated bass notes added by a second scribe in the Pavana triste noted above, a reading that muddies the correspondence between mm.16–19 and 20–24:
IG also adopts the (apparently corrected) E♭ and A♭ reading of the problem measures in II, relegating the corrected version (and the version preserved in S1) to an ossia. There’s then an attempt to make sense of the harmonic inconsistency in m.58 by omitting the first of the repeated dyads in the inner voice, and altering the clearly-notated E₄ of the second beat (in S1 and S2) to E♭₄:
Finally, and as noted by Iznaola, an attempt is made to make the conclusion of the work more emphatic. The chords from m.195 are thickened, and the following passage (to m.205) transposed to a higher octave. Iznaola writes:
… an editorial decision was taken to change the original register in favour of a higher one. This, while allowing for a chordal voicing that maintains the original harmonic colours, also highlights the heroic spirit at the close of the work. [IG, p.35]
To my ears the instinct here is sound, but the execution spoils the effect. The thickening of the A and G chords, m.195–196, feels entirely justified. But the addition of an E♮ to the G-minor chord of m.196, while echoing the sonority of the movement’s opening and recurrent chord, draws our attention away from the fact that this is this movement’s first unequivocal assertion of that key, echoing the dramatic moment in the first movement where the second subject’s G-minor triad emerges and crystallising, in the Final’s final moments, the E/G-minor tension set up by the movement’s opening sonority.
More importantly, the original’s emphatic upward leap following the strummed chords before plunging back down to the final flourish is a strong and conclusive gesture which it is more than a pity to lose. The shape of the phrase echoes the ecstatic seventh leaps followed by step-wise descent in the opening movement, an echo and a fulfilment which I can’t believe is accidental, and it’s notable that in all the literal recapitulation of first movement material in the Final this motive is otherwise conspicuously absent. I propose an alternative below.
A new edition
The edition (let’s call it NE) arose from several impulses: a desire finally to learn the work properly after having the original edition for some years; this desire spurred on by hearing an unsatisfactory performance; an opportunity (sadly and inevitably postponed) to programme it in a lunchtime recital with some rarely-played works of his compatriot Antonio Ruiz-Pipó; a project to become familiar with the new guitar fingering capabilities of the fine Dorico engraving software; and the opportunity to take the time to do this during lock-down in the 2020 Covid-19 crisis.
Editing a fresh score from a non-guitarist composer has much in common with transcription, but brings a unique set of responsibilities. The edition is the door through which the work passes to the world: there’s an imperative to make what appears the best possible representation of the work and it’s idea. Of course, ‘best’ is at least a value judgement: principles and practices change, and there’s now something of an industry in undoing the editorial interventions of Segovia and others on the music they led through the door.
Like transcribing, editing is motivated by (conscious or unconscious) principles. These include amongst others technical feasibility (is this music physically possible), ease (can it be played in a way that connects and makes linear sense? Is it within the envelope of my/my market’s technical capabilities), sonority (does it make its point effectively given the character and sonority of the instrument), faithfulness (given I have to make changes, which are those that do the least harm to the idea, that remove the least and preserve the most of the ‘it’ that constitutes the work), consistency (do I make the same editorial decision given the same or similar circumstances). These principles are always in balance, a complex set of forces that guide us through the many decisions we make in arriving at a version.
So where to start? Let’s start at the beginning. The notation at the opening of S2 is intriguing:
This feels very old-fashioned. Late 18th/early 19th-century guitar music is sometimes engraved in what now appears to be a naive rendering, where a complex texture is rendered into a single line. As an editor there’s an immediate choice here — in the presence of notation which appears unconventional or even incorrect, what do we do? Both IG and GG expand this to two voices, with the bass part filling out the measure:
To me this seems both obvious and thoughtless (though in the autographs, S1 does notate the lower E₃ with a stem — but no dot — when the phrase is recapitulated at m.128). The original notation says something about how the lower notes colour and thicken the melodic idea — after all, the notation of the following measures show that José was perfectly happy distinguishing lines within a texture. How I hear and want to play this, is as follows:
Carefully articulate the end of the opening bass E₃ to support the metrical structure of the phrase, then cut the full chord short — it becomes an accent or weight to the melody, not something that sustains and muddies it. The question is — is this the province of the editor, or the performer? There are few circumstances in which an editor can validly change or clarify the notation of an original, particularly where (as in S2) the composer’s notation is clear, so NE has — after an initial excursion into the notation above — kept José’s original notation here.
In common with many non-guitar-playing composers, José sometimes presents chords or textures which are physically unplayable as notated. A simple example from the middle section of the Minueto: although each note of the chord is playable on a separate string, there are just not enough fingers to keep all the notes down, and the stretch from the lowest to highest note is unachievable.
Here, the editor’s mandate is clear: the chord is independent of voice-leading, it contains multiple instances of most of its pitch-classes, so the voicing can can readily be adjusted. GG chooses to go with a 4-note version, IG fills this out to 6 notes by omitting the low C♯₄ and adding a C♯₅ at an upper octave: it seems clear to me that the weight and dynamic of this chord needs a full texture, so this is the obvious choice at this point.
More problematic are cases where a chord or texture is playable, but awkward. In the first movement, m.16-19:
Although a stretch, the four lower notes of the chord in m.17 can be fingered (from the low F♯₃, 2/4/3/1). However it’s challenging to do this without significantly disrupting the flow of the 16th-note passage-work, and a couple of alternatives present themselves. Given the melody supplies the pitch-class, simply omitting the 4th-string E makes this feasible:
For additional playability, one might consider omitting the C# also.
The strong F♯₃ in the bass provides sufficient weight, and this also lets us honour the laissez vibrer ties and sustain the lower notes beyond the first quarter-note. However, the stacked fifths have a characteristic resonance that plays off against the open-string fourth chords of both the opening measure and of m.19, which for me makes compelling the case for retaining it.
(GG at this point preserves the C♯ but moves it up an octave, losing the B, which removes the most interesting component of the chord and does nothing to reclaim the sonority of the stacked fifths of the original chord.)
The spacious sustained chords of the first movement’s second subject present a more extended example, where in addition to re-voicing individual chords we also need to take into account voice-leading:
As they stand, these chords are simply unplayable: once again, the human hand runs out of fingers. GG’s version of this passage has already been considered above, its consolidation of the rhythm in the bass into single half-notes seems to me indefensible. IG’s version is more faithful in this respect at least:
It’s worth considering this reading from the point of view of what it keeps from the original, and what it omits. Present are the correct rhythm in all parts; in mm.47–49 the clear separation of the top line’s descending sixths from the harmony beneath; and in this harmony the two beats in each bar having the same voicing. What’s missing here is the voice-leading that pulls the F in the B♭ harmony up through F♯ to G and back again on the first beat of each of these measures. To me the return to an unadorned tonic B♭ chord on these beats breaks a significant continuity in the music, and this is what I’ve attempted to keep in NE, at the expense of moving that voice-leading up an octave, compromising the clearer separation of the top line and the chords: in the context this feels to me the better balance of the competing forces of textural and harmonic fidelity.
An extended example next: a complex texture in the Pavana triste, which raises questions about the choices we might make to preserve musical substance at the same time as coming up with a playable version. We’ve already looked at versions of this passage in GG and IG:
Three elements are in play here: a sustained bass pedal, a tolling repeated note in the middle of the texture, and a melodic line thickened in thirds. Here as elsewhere in the original, there’s a distinct sense of the physicality of the piano — ignore the added notes on the 3rd beats of these bars, if you play this at a keyboard at sounding pitch, with the open 5th an additional octave lower in the left hand, you’ll both feel and hear how natural the music feels. One almost expects to see a Ped___* indication under the passage.
GG displaces some of the lower thirds in the top line down an octave, misreading melodic doubling for harmonic salience and spoiling the effect of the sustained bass:
IG incorporates without comment the later additions to the text, and appears to aim for a maximal version incorporating as may of the original pitches as possible, shortening the notated duration of inner voices, with the occasional hopeful l.v. tie.
This changes the substance of the passage too much for me: in NE I’ve settled on a more radical simplification which maintains the continuity of the textural elements at the expense of losing the fifth of the bass part, and largely abandoning the parallelism supporting the melody. This is to me feels natural and instrumentally coherent, and has the bonus of being substantially more grateful to play:
Finally, let’s consider the last page of the sonata. Ricardo Iznaola’s instinct in IG is that the texture needs something to “heighten[s] the heroic spirit at the close of the work”, but his solution loses an important (structural, but also undoubtedly heroic) gesture in in the penultimate bars — the octave leap echoing the shape of the first movement’s main theme and its elaborations. Maybe the problem is simply the strummed chords in mm.202–206: one solution might be to restore these to their original register, though after the dizzying ascent to the guitar’s top A₅ this feels to me too abrupt a dislocation.
These chords themselves need care. There are two moving parts against a sustained and radiant E-major chord: E₄ to F♯₄ and back, and a fifth above B₄ to C♯₅. IG’s voicing within the higher octave has more space and preserves all the pitches of the chord, although the voicing necessarily turns the latter to a downward neighbour note voice-leading, G♯₄ to F♯₄ and back. GG solves this by omitting the F♯s, which is idiomatic, but it does seem a pity to lose the colour of the ninth. To preserve both the register of the voicing and the pair of dissonant notes, in NE I dispense with the sustained G♯₄.
Filling out the texture of the approach to these last bars is of course optional, and GG keeps the music in its original form. Re-voicing the chords in the dramatic strummed progression in mm.194–196 is an obvious starting point. In the following bars I’ve played with several options — for example, adding a repeated pattern on a pedal G₃ from m.196 on — but imposing harmony on these measures makes an awkward transition to the final E major, and ultimately feels heavy-handed and against the linear spirit of the passage. I’ve settled on thickening the texture with octaves, adding weight without damaging the integrity of the source’s registral choice. The music here is still wrestling with the tension between G minor and E, so doubling the C and D in the texture underlines the tonal ambiguity of the movement while adding weight and sonority. The rush of 16th-note octaves at the end of the passage is flamboyantly virtuosic (and suitably heroic), and will force something of an opening of the tempo which seems musically appropriate before the strummed crescendo and dramatic closing gesture.
Editing the José sonata has turned out to be a significant undertaking: the version will be available shortly on fedoramusic.co.uk. I’ve been fortunate to be involved in editing two major contemporary works for guitar. In 1981–82 composer and writer Bayan Northcott was extraordinarily generous with his time and imagination in writing his fine Fantasia, Op.3. Working on this was a collaborative task of continual refinement — in a time before email, rare was the day unmarked by the arrival of a small letter or postcard, with two or three meticulous staves and a question or two about feasibility, chord voicing or sonority. More recently I’ve edited for publication Graham Fitkin’s wonderful Skirting, the guitar’s first undoubted masterpiece of the 21st century. In addition to the score, here I had two models — the recorded performance of Tom Kerstens, the work’s commissioner, and a version prepared by Richard Wright of the Menuhin School with the young guitarist Kevin Loh. Working with the composer, my editorial decisions differ from both: in the published edition I set myself a goal of producing a more complete version of the score than either of these, changing as little as possible in finding solutions for some otherwise problematic sections. In a work that’s essentially linear, and in which significant long-term processes need to be kept intact, my guiding principle was to retain as much of the original’s material as possible. Editing both this and the Fantasia were simpler tasks than making a version of the José, but all three efforts are motivated by consistent principles and values — of respect for the composer and the score, the musical idea, and its realisation in the rich sound world of the guitar.
References
[GG 1990] Sonata para guitarra Antonio José, ed. Angelo Gliardino/Juan José Sáez Gallego, Edizione BÈRBEN, 1990
[IG 1998] Sonata para guitarra Antonio José, ed. Angel Gilardino/Ricardo Iznaola, Edizione BÈRBEN, 1998
[Iznaola 1996] “A Problem in Musical Heuristics: the Guitar Works of Antonio José” Ricardo Iznaola, Guitar Journal EGTA (UK), 1996
