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Padre Antonio Soler Life of a monk and composer The details of the life of the Catalan composer Antonio Soler are obscure. His humble birth, his upbringing and musical education, and his eventual isolation in the El Escorial monastery near Madrid have effectively drawn a veil over the more intimate details of his existence, so that important milestones in his musical development and career were not recorded for posterity. We know that Soler’s father was a musician in a military band, born in 1685, the same year as Johann Sebastian Bach, Handel and Scarlatti. Antonio Soler himself was baptised on 3 December 1729 in Olot, a village in the province of Girona, which makes him two years older than the Mannheim composer Christian Cannabich, three years older than Joseph Haydn, six years older than Johann Christian Bach and ten years older than Dittersdorf. His lifetime overlapped those of Wilhelm Friedemann and Carl Philip Emanuel Bach, Wagenseil and Boccherini. Soler died in the Escorial on 20 December 1783, the year in which Haydn wrote his Cello Concerto in D, Mozart his Piano Concerto in C (K415), Beethoven his first piano sonatas, and the year in which the French writer Stendhal was born. We can be virtually sure that Soler was quite unaware of all these events. Of the composers mentioned Soler only knew Scarlatti, Boccherini (who, as a favourite of the Spanish King’s brother, lived in Madrid between 1769 and 1785), and later, through Boccherini, also Haydn. Soler’s strong Iberian and traditional roots are partly explained by his musical training from 1736 onwards in the Escolanía de Montserrat, the Benedictine monastery with one of the oldest music schools in the world, in the mountain massif near Barcelona. Soler was especially inspired by the organist José Elas, who in his turn was a pupil of Juan Cabanilles, the phenomenal organist of the cathedral in Valencia until 1712. Elas instructed Soler in the old Spanish music tradition, and used the works of Cabanilles, Miguel Lopez and Elas himself (24 organ pieces through all the keys) in teaching the young organist. When the Bishop of Urgell asked Soler for a suitable organist for the El Escorial monastery near Madrid, Soler unhesitatingly proposed himself. Fray Antonio entered the order of St Hieronymus in the Escorial and took the vow in 1753. From his ordination until his death he fulfilled the post of organist and maestro de capilla. 2
The only extant biographical text that gives Soler a face of his own is the necrology deposited in the Escorial’s memorias sepulcrales on his death in 1783. The document portrays Soler as an ascetic monk, whose love for the solitude of his cell was greater than the order expected; a humble monk with a working week of an astronomical number of hours and only four hours sleep at night. In spite of his stringent schedule of breviary and prayer book (which took up eight hours of the day and was supposed to make the monks forget their worldly vocation), Soler composed 471 works in a 30-year career. In that time he also wrote an important treatise on the technique of modulation as well as a history of religious music in six volumes. He taught the royal Infante Gabriel, was actively interested in the field of instrument building and carried on a lively correspondence with Padre Giovanni Battista Martini in Bologna about issues in the history and the theory of music, and he even published a discourse on the Spanish exchange rates. Soler’s duties included the composition of and charge over the execution of church music, but also of musical intermezzos for the plays of great writers such as Pedro Calderón de la Barca, which the monks performed at the end of each academic year. Because in the days of Ferdinand VI and María Bárbara the Spanish royal family spent every autumn in the Escorial, Soler was able to study further with court organist José de Nebra and also with Domenico Scarlatti, María Bárbara’s keyboard teacher. The rest of the year, too, gave Soler that chance because the Hieronymites had a monastery in Madrid. One of the parallels between Scarlatti and Soler is that both became famous for their many sonatas written for royal patrons. Soler, for instance, as teacher of the talented young prince Gabriel, wrote some 144 keyboard sonatas, six quintets for keyboard and string quartet and six concertos for two organs simply ‘to please him’. The strict monastic environment of the Escorial seems to have left hardly a trace in Soler’s compositions. On the contrary, cheerful jollity and a sunny, playful disposition, so characteristic of the music and painting of the light-footed Spanish rococo, reign supreme in his music. Soler’s style is on the one hand firmly rooted in the Spanish polyphonic keyboard tradition of Cabezón, Cabanilles and Correa de Arauxo, but on the other hand there is the clearly discernible influence of the Italian instrumental music that was to have far-reaching effects on the music of the Iberian peninsula as a result of the cultural exchange with the 3
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Kingdom of Naples, which was then in Spanish hands. All the same, it appears that Soler was less concerned than Seixas and Scarlatti by the challenges of thematic development in emerging musical forms of the time. On the whole he stuck to the single-movement sonata form with one dominating theme and one dominating motoric impulse. He made use of short periods, linking and repeating motifs of one or two bars into a mosaic-like whole. Unlike those of his European contemporaries, Soler’s sonatas show hardly any thematic development, and seen from a European angle his pieces sound somewhat short of breath, like the work of Cabanilles, José Elas and José de Nebra: a characteristic of Spanish composition even until the 20th century. Soler’s harking back to the Spanish folk music tradition and dance music gives his music a typically Iberian colouring and rhythm. His 272-page controversial masterpiece of music theory Llave de la modulación y antigüedades de la música (1762), which became the subject of a five-year heated correspondence, also shows this curious mixture of past and future. On the one hand he leans on the music treatises of Zarlino and Gerone, and other Italian and Spanish composers and theoreticians of the 16th and 17th centuries, but on the other hand he reflects the principles of harmony of Domenico Scarlatti with all his freedom of alterations and abrupt modulations. In Soler we find a drastically compressed harmony that creates a very modern impression through its sophisticated play of light and dark effects with numerous major–minor changes and flamenco-like chords, mixing tonic, dominant and subdominant harmonies into a spicy aroma. This rich sound culture, combined with a fabulous technique, a predilection for syncopation, ostinato and Iberian dance rhythms like the polo, jota and fandango, make Soler one of the most original composers of the 18th century. Another parallel with Scarlatti is that Soler’s sonatas were not first published in his own country, but in London, and not until 1796, 13 years after his death. English music publisher Robert Birchall’s is the only 18th-century edition, comprising 27 sonatas that Lord Fitzwilliam had received as a present during his visit to Soler in 1772. The fact that no other autograph of Soler’s keyboard sonatas has been discovered makes the Birchall edition doubly important. In the first place Soler would have given the British art collector Lord Fitzwilliam
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(after whom the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book was later to be called) a selection of his very best pieces. Secondly, the copy of this edition kept in Cambridge contains the only confirmation in writing (by Lord Fitzwilliam) that Soler was taught by Scarlatti. Moreover, the Birchall edition shows (as did various other handwritten 18th-century copies of other sonatas) how Soler, in imitation of Scarlatti, grouped most of his sonatas in pairs according to key, an ordering that is not consistently reflected in the ‘complete’ modern edition of the sonatas by Samuel Rubio. One of the most curious harpsichord compositions of all time is the Fandango attributed to Soler. It has been handed down to us in only one source: a manuscript in the Biblioteca Nacional de Catalunya in Barcelona that does not even mention Soler’s name. On an almost identical ostinato bass José Martí composed a Fandango con variaciones para el forte piano. This work, however, mirrors Soler’s style so faithfully that we can be sure of Soler’s authorship. In the case of Soler’s Fandango it is perhaps better to speak of a written-out improvisation. The composition is no fewer than 462 bars long, based on a harmonic ostinato motif in A major and D minor. The incantation-like repetition of the theme, especially in the slow tempo of a fandango, has a hypnotic and breath-taking effect that has resulted more than once in a comparison with Maurice Ravel’s Boléro. It was this kind of movement that Giacomo Casanova felt when he stood eye-to-eye with a number of dancers when visiting Madrid in 1767: It almost defies description. Each couple, man and woman, takes no more than three dance steps at a time as they click their castanets with the music of the orchestra. They make a thousand and one gestures of incomparable lasciviousness. Here one finds the complete expression of love, from beginning to end, from the very first sigh of desire to the ecstasy of delight. It seemed to me that after such a dance the woman could not refuse her male partner anything, for the fandango fires the senses into a tremendous passion. The delight I experienced as a spectator of this bacchanal nearly drew from me an involuntary exclamation. 훿 Clemens Romijn
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On the trail of Soler My Soler research started in 1945 in a dark second-hand music shop in Los Angeles, when I saw two small volumes of piano sonatas by unknown Spanish composers of the 18th century compiled and edited by the Cuban composer Joaquín Nin in 1925–6 (he added performance markings, such as ritardandi and crescendos that had not been the practice at that time). The collections included sonatas by Padre Antonio Soler. The wealth of ideas and the exquisite realisation of mood and colour in his works fascinated me. I decided to look for more Soler. I already owned on microfilm the complete music collection of the Library of Congress in Washington DC, which included the six piano quintets of Soler, published in 1933 in full score without separate instrument parts. A grant from the Del Amo Foundation in California enabled me to go to Spain to satisfy my growing interest. My first stop took me to the Santa Maria de Montserrat Abbey, where Soler studied from the age of six. The helpful monks brought me cartons of manuscripts dating from the 16th to the 19th centuries, all torn, some even eaten by rats. I discovered 60 sonatas, all copies in different handwriting; none were in Soler’s hand, but they may have been copies made during his lifetime by monks or students. To this day, no manuscript copies of Soler’s sonatas have turned up. The monks gave me board and lodging, as well as the keys to the monastery so I could come and go as I pleased. Before I left, after weeks of research, I played them a Soler recital: it was the first time they had heard the music of their brother. From there I travelled to El Escorial, another important destination in Soler’s life, where I met with a much less friendly reception. Padre Samuel Rubio was the long-time maestro de capilla, but he was reluctant to allow me any access to their collection of musical treasures; he even prevented my research at El Escorial for seven long years. There was no catalogue: I had to ask for each work I wanted, even though there was no way to know what they had. After being told that the library held no sonatas, I requested some choral works that I knew they had. I obtained 130 villancicos for choir and chamber instruments, many masses, hymns and other religious works, the six concertos for two keyboards as well as the six piano
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quintets and some stage music. I have returned to Montserrat and El Escorial many times to continue my research. Further travels took me to the Biblioteca Nacional de Catalunya in Barcelona, where I found 38 sonatas as well as the famous Fandango, and the Institut français in Madrid, which I left with 33 sonatas, after fighting for hours to get the microfilm. A visit to the library in Munich yielded but one canon, whereas another 27 sonatas were found at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge: the sonatas that Soler gave to Lord Fitzwilliam during the nobleman’s visit to El Escorial in 1772, and asked him to publish in England. Fitzwilliam arranged to have them published by Robert Birchall in London, and they eventually appeared 13 years after Soler died. Sadly, the original manuscripts were lost. The Institut de France in Paris holds the bad copies of the sonatas that Joaquín Nin used for his edition. The latest Soler discovery concerns 31 letters that he wrote to the 14th Duke of Medina Sidonia, a grandee of the first rank Knight of the Order of the Golden Fleece, and a lover of music. The letters were found by the musicologist George Truett Hollis in the archives of the Duchess of Medina Sidonia, in Sanlúcar de Barrameda, Cádiz, Spain. The letters reveal something of Soler’s personal character: greedy, ambitious, sarcastic and devious at times. In one of his letters to the Duke, Soler wrote that even though he is known as a pious monk at El Escorial, he is also ‘the Devil dressed as a monk’. Such traits are also betrayed by Soler’s 78-page rebuttal of an attack by Antonio Roel de Rio against his treatise Llave de la modulación y antigüedades de la música. My editions of Soler’s music began in 1957 with four volumes of sonatas and one with the Fandango only, published by Mills Music, London. Tetra USA have published two more volumes and Henle Verlag have issued a volume of 18 sonatas. I have also edited Lamentación and Salve for Universal Edition. I contributed the Soler Bibliography to the New Grove Dictionary, as well as writing many articles and giving lectures and masterclasses. The bulk of my Soler research material is held at the Hispanic Society of America in New York, so it may be publically viewed. 훿 Frederick Marvin
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Keyboard Sonatas During the 18th century musical taste changed rapidly from a Baroque style into a more galant and Classical style. Perhaps due to the slightly isolated character of the Iberian peninsula, Spain lagged behind somewhat. Nevertheless, the changes of taste are clearly recognisable in the œuvre of Soler. Soler considered himself a ‘disciple’ (whatever that may mean) of Scarlatti, and there is a clear kinship between the works of the two composers. In 1768 Luigi Boccherini settled in Spain and clearly had a great influence on Soler. He also might have known works by Haydn, whose music was circulated in Spain and who even received a commission from Spain (Die Sieben letzten Worte unseres Erlösers am Kreuze Hob.XX/2). In fact, in his later works Soler abandoned the single-movement sonata form that he had inherited from Scarlatti and started to use a four-movement sonata form instead. The style is also quite different from the Scarlattian sonata, and bears witness to the influence Classical composers from abroad had on Soler. The nine sonatas recorded on CDs 7 and 8 are numbered by the composer himself with opus (obra) numbers. Perhaps Soler intended the sonatas to be published or considered it fashionable to provide them with opus numbers. The sonatas usually start with a cantabilelike movement, followed by a fast movement. The minuettos are striking, with tempo indications such as Maestoso, not the first feature one would expect of a minuet. The first slow minuet is followed by a second quick minuet, usually bearing the tempo indication Allegro, after which the first minuet is repeated. In the Op.4 Sonatas the fourth movement is fast, often with the additional indication of Pastoril or Non molto. These last movements have a kind of naivety often found in Soler’s villancicos, a kind of madrigalistic cantata often connected with Christmas. The Op.8 Sonatas are arranged slightly differently from the Op.4 Sonatas. As with the Op.4 Sonatas, the first movement is usually an Andante or Moderato movement, cantabile in character. The second movement is a Minuet, the third movement is a Rondo and the sonatas finish with a virtuosic fourth movement.
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Along with the development of musical taste, the taste for instruments changed during the 18th century. For over 300 years, the harpsichord, and, in some countries including Spain, the clavichord, were the common keyboard instruments for chamber music. The fortepiano, invented by Cristofori at the end of the 17th century, only had a minor influence on mainstream musical life. The Spanish court used to have some fortepianos by Cristofori or by his student Ferrini, but these instruments were probably intended to accompany singers. Scarlatti definitely played these instruments and Soler might have played them as well. The piano in the early 18th century was a novelty only courts were able to afford, but in the second half of the century the influence of the fortepiano became more evident and gradually took over from the harpsichord. Stylistically, the later works by Soler ask for (at least according to my taste) the use of the fortepiano. In particular, the common use of the Alberti bass and repeated notes in the left hand as accompanying figures for the more melodic right hand makes it very hard to realise a convincing interpretation on the harpsichord. I therefore used a fortepiano for some parts of this recording (CDs 7 and 8), although one is never sure if Soler had this instrument in mind when he composed these pieces. There are Spanish pianos known from the period, heavily influenced by the Cristofori model. However, for practical reasons I used my own Viennese fortepiano after an instrument from 1795 by Anton Walter. I don’t actually know if there is a copy of a Spanish 18th-century fortepiano with the range Soler requires in these sonatas. Although in the last couple of years more efforts have been made to revive the Florentine fortepiano, the revival of the 18th-century Spanish fortepiano is still in its infancy. 훿 Pieter-Jan Belder A note from the performer One of the pioneers in Soler’s music is Emeritus Professor Frederick Marvin, a concert pianist who began making visits to Spain shortly after the end of the Second World War in the search for Soler manuscripts (his notes can be found above). For this recording I was forced to rely on the 1950s edition by Samuel Rubio. Apart from the fact that there are numerous mistakes and misinterpretations in this edition, for which Rubio is excused since the
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manuscripts are often bad copies and difficult to read, I found out that not every sonata known to be by Soler was included in this edition. My friend David Kelzenberg from Iowa kindly lent me the Marvin edition he possessed, from which I recorded several sonatas for part of this project. 훿 Pieter-Jan Belder Six Concertos for Two Organs From 1766 onwards it was one of Soler’s tasks to teach the son of King Charles III, Infante Gabriel. Together with the acquisition of an exceptional organ, this instruction was to become the immediate cause of his composing for an unusual combination. In 1776 Soler composed six quintets for string quartet and organ, which were followed by the Seis Conciertos de dos órganos obligados a year later. The two organs mentioned in the title of these six concertos have confused many performers. Although a number of churches on the Iberian peninsula have two organs, usually on each side of the choir, most of these instruments are positioned too far apart for reliable interaction. Furthermore, none of the original instruments still extant in Spain, Portugal and Italy have the range of five octaves required for these six concertos (GG–g”’), which may have been inspired by the range of the fortepiano. Unique instruments often came into being at the European courts of the 18th century, which were home to a highly esteemed musical culture. Thus the Spanish musicologist Beryl Kenyon de Pascual has discovered that in 1778, soon after the death of Infante Gabriel, a special organ was put up for sale. The advertisements show that in 1774 José Casas had built an organ for Infante Gabriel that consisted of two fronts and two keyboards, with no fewer than five octaves, positioned opposite each other. The organ was advertised for sale in a local newspaper in Madrid in 1791. In addition to the two fronts and two keyboards with 61 keys, the advertisement also mentions a number of stops. For the main keyboard underneath the main front, three stops are mentioned for the left hand and four for the right hand. Echo and counter-echo are mentioned as specific timbres. The second keyboard has three stops for the right hand and just one for the left
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hand. It is also mentioned that two organists may play at the same time, each applying different timbres or stops. In the manuscript of the Seis Conciertos preserved in the library at the Escorial, three stops are specifically mentioned for the first organ: Flautado (8’ = prestant), Octave (4’) and Regalias (8’). In the part of the second organ only two stops are referred to: Flautado (8’) and Flautin (probably 4’). The Cantabile of the fifth Concierto contains indications of the missing fourth stop of the first organ: the Echo. In the Seis Quintetos the identical four stops of the first organ are mentioned by name. The ambit of the Echo part (from cis’) shows the Echo only to be operational on the treble side: it must have been an Echo Cornet positioned in a simple swell box. Such a swell box was a great novelty at the end of the 18th century and another resemblance to the dynamics of the fortepiano. Each of the Seis Conciertos has two movements, as do the sonatas. The second movement consists of a minuet often followed by variations and finished with a da capo. Judging by the high demands set by the Seis Conciertos, Infante Gabriel must have been a dexterous musician. He probably performed these works together with his teacher, both to learn and to entertain. 훿 Maurizio Croci & Pieter van Dijk With the exception of CD4, which uses Frederick Marvin’s edition (M), the works have been numbered according to the Rubio edition (R).
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