Pastiches
John Schneider, Guitars
Matthew Cook, Percussion
Gloria Cheng, Harpsichord
Microfest Records, 2024
Buy or Learn about the Album via MicroFest Records or Listen on Spotify
Great to hear the new release from Grammy Award winning guitarist John Schneider. Pastiches highlights an interesting range of works performed in their historic temperaments using a variety of refretted guitars. It’s a wonderful and refreshing return to these excellent compositions with historically accurate intonation.
The album ties together a vast array of styles and musical eras. Rarely would Ponce, Mudarra, Bogdanovic, Giuliani, Harrison, Britten, and Dowland be grouped together so successfully while priming our curiosity of new sound worlds and performances. Also of note are the wonderful collaborations with harpsichordist Gloria Cheng and percussionist Matthew Cook.
There is a very interesting and significant write-up by Schneider in his liner notes which you can read more of at MicroFest Records. Below are the opening paragraphs:
For centuries, to write ‘In the Style of….’ or creating a work in “The Antique Style” has given countless composers the inspiration for composing new music, helping them to unlock the doors to creativity. Students are perennially given blueprints from the past to inform and inspire, temporarily relieving them of the responsibility of fabricating both form and content. On the other hand, it was no coincidence that the six movements of Schoenberg’s first 12-tone composition Suite for Piano, Op.25 (1923) were forged in the crucible of a Baroque dance suite, a clear case of serving new wine in old bottles. The same era found Stravinsky’s Neo-Classical style flourish when he famously remarked, “Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal!”, repeatedly proving the maxim by making any material that he purloined unmistakably his own.
Yet true pastiche pays homage to music of the past via mimicry of both style and content. The past century of scholarship has revealed that earlier eras enjoyed a delightful diversity of tunings, to the point where many modern listeners condemn the application of contemporary equal temperament to J.S. Bach, for example, as a blatant anachronism, guilty of withholding a vital and intentional aesthetic layer from that canonical repertoire. Surely then, it follows that members of Britten’s midcentury Elizabethan court should dance to music that is tuned un-equally, no less than a counterfeit Baroque suite supposedly by Bach benefits from being well-tempered, even if it happened to be written by one of Mexico’s most beloved 20th century composers.
Guitars
- Vogt [1988] with Fine-tunable Precision Fret-board
- Mattingly [1983] with Novatone Fingerboard, tracks 14-17
Repertoire and Tunings
- Preludio in E by Manuel Ponce (1882-1948)
- Fantasia X by Alonso Mudarra (c.1510-1580)
- Suite in A minor – Manuel Ponce
- 3 Renaissance Micropieces – Dusan Bogdanovic (b.1955)
- Variations on a Theme by Handel – Mauro Giuliani (1781-1829)
- Two Sonatas, Usul, Three Jahlas – Lou Harrison (1917-2003)
- The Courtly Dances from Gloriana – Benjamin Britten (1913–1976)
- Come Heavy Sleep – John Dowland [arr. Britten] (1563-1626)
- Preludio in E (duo) – Manuel Ponce
