Research Output

Entre os desafios que encontro ao lidar com a música para violão de Ferdinand Rebay (Viena, 1880-1953), está o de interpretar a sua rica notação expressiva. Esta reflete não apenas idiossincrasias do compositor, mas também convenções interpretativas de seu tempo com as quais o intérprete atual não mantém conexão direta. Livremente inspirado pela metodologia experimental de pesquisa artística proposta por Assis (2018) e aplicando a minha estratégia tripartite (MANTOVANI, 2021), que envolve compreensão da notação, adequação estilística e adequação técnica, este recital-palestra aborda um aspecto singular da música de Rebay, que é a sua meticulosa notação de acordes arpejados e notas deslocadas. Dentre as fontes que informam a minha investigação, encontram-se tratados e métodos do século XIX e início do XX, bem como registros fonográficos de violonistas e pianistas contemporâneos de Rebay, que em geral revelam maneiras de tocar distanciadas das convenções atuais. Partindo da arqueologia para a genealogia, torna-se possível especular sobre uma “interpretação historicamente informada” da música de Rebay que remete ao que Haynes (2007) chama de “estilo romântico”, e de cujo protocolo de performance a prática de arpejar acordes e deslocar a melodia do acompanhamento era elemento integral. A experimentação criativa com tal protocolo integra um “mindset estilístico expandido”, potencialmente aplicável não apenas à música de Rebay, mas também a repertórios análogos do Romantismo e início do século XX.

In this paper, I will contextualize and problematize the text sources for Ferdinand Rebay’s Second Sonata in E Major (1941). Following a presentation of the issues involving the published editions and manuscript sources, I endeavour at what I have been calling a “posthumous collaboration” with the composer. This process presupposes an extensive familiarity with Rebay’s music and is anchored on the need for performer revision and eventual intervention on the text that is often observed in guitar music written by non-guitarist composers. I will discuss the three main categories that arise when dealing with Rebay’s text—unplayable passages, unidiomatic passages, and difficult/uncomfortable passages—followed by demonstrations of how I have managed to overcome them. The process culminated with the premiere recording of the sonata, filmed at the Heiligenkreuz Abbey, sponsored by the Hermann Hauser Guitar Foundation, and released by Guitarcoop in 2022.

Since the revival of Rebay’s guitar music that started in the early 2000s, more attention has been given to his chamber rather than solo music. This is understandable, considering that chamber music was a unique characteristic of the Viennese guitar scene during the so-called “Twentieth-Century Guitar Renaissance.” However, Rebay also wrote many solo works, including sonatas, variation sets, characteristic pieces, and miniatures. This paper covers what is arguably his most sophisticated solo music—the seven sonatas for guitar, written between 1925 and 1944. I will talk about the Viennese guitar environment that supported Rebay’s output, examine the role of his niece, guitarist Gerta Hammerschmid, in helping (as well as restricting) the dissemination of his music, investigate the background and sources of the solo sonatas, and trace their publication and performance history. Finally, I will explain the concept of “posthumous collaboration,” showing how my interventions in Rebay’s Second Sonata in E major (1941) helped bring the piece to life eighty years after it was composed. This paper is associated with my performance film of this sonata, funded by the Hermann Hauser Guitar Foundation and released by GuitarCoop in 2022.

Ferdinand Rebay (1880-1953) was a pioneer among the non-guitarist composers who started to write for the instrument in the 1920s. However, in spite of having composed more than 150 guitar works, he is today undeservedly obscure. This paper examines his more than 30 sonatas or sonata-structured works, most of which are made of chamber music for combinations that range from duos to a septet. The goal is to situate Rebay’s chamber sonatas within the guitar repertoire, understanding it as a unique Viennese chamber-music branch of the so-called twentieth-century guitar renaissance.

After almost two decades since its rediscovery in the early 2000s, a performance tradition of the guitar music of Ferdinand Rebay (1880–1953) is gradually emerging. However, because Rebay comes from an Austro-German Romantic heritage in which the guitar has a marginal role, shaping this tradition presents special challenges nowadays. In my attempt to reconnect to Rebay’s music both as a scholar and a guitarist, I established a methodology that departs from the musical text and arrives at a critically-informed performance. It involves understanding his meticulous notation, acknowledging the stylistic performance conventions that surrounded his Viennese environment (both general and guitaristic), and framing this information under my own concepts of instrumental playing. Along this process, I have encountered a few obvious Romantic traits in Rebay’s music which are not only justifiable from a stylistic point of view but are also explicitly suggested by his notation. They include prescribed vibrato, implied portamento, and most prominently, a recurring notation of arpeggiated chords. Since there are no surviving direct links to a contemporary practice of Rebay’s music besides a few annotated fingerings from his guitarists, I support my reasoning with historical information taken from methods and treatises, authors who dwelled on similar questions such as Brown and Peres da Costa, as well as recordings of musicians who were related to Rebay at some level, including Austria’s foremost guitarist, Luise Walker. I conclude the lecture-recital by illustrating how Rebay’s notation demands can be applied to performance in an informed way, playing the third movement of his Großes Duo in a-Moll with the NOVA Guitar Duo.

This lecture-recital will contextualize and present a rarely-performed work for guitar duo by Ferdinand Rebay (1880-1953), the Großes Duo in a-Moll (1902/1940). In spite of stylistically being a one-of-a-kind Romantic sonata, its performance is limited by its original instrumentation, which asks for an instrument no longer widely available, the Quintbass Gitarre. In the course of this presentation, I will examine the work’s significance within the guitar repertoire, investigate the peculiarities of the instrumentation from an organological and practical point of view, and explain my approach to adapting the work to fit the instrumentation of the NOVA Guitar Duo. Rebay was one of the first non-guitarist Austro-German composers to write for the guitar, starting in the 1920s. Using the resources that were available to him, he scored the work for a regular guitar and a Quintbass Gitarre (tuned a fifth below), making extensive use of this instrument’s distinctive lower register. Nevertheless, this type of guitar went out of fashion since Rebay’s time and any attempts to adapt its part to the regular guitar’s range would inevitably jeopardize the musical text. The NOVA Guitar Duo makes use of an extended-range 8-string guitar which was created in the 1990s and reaches both lower and higher registers than the regular guitar. This instrument is an appropriate surrogate for the Quintbass Gitarre; however, in order to preserve Rebay’s idiomatic writing and make the best use of the ensemble’s resources, the adaptation involved transposition and rebalancing of melodic material.

This lecture-recital will contextualize and present a rarely-performed work for guitar duo by Ferdinand Rebay (1880-1953), the Großes Duo in a-Moll (1902/1940). In spite of stylistically being a one-of-a-kind Romantic sonata, its performance is limited by its original instrumentation, which asks for an instrument no longer widely available, the Quintbass Gitarre. In the course of this presentation, I will examine the work’s significance within the guitar repertoire, investigate the peculiarities of the instrumentation from an organological and practical point of view, and explain my approach to adapting the work to fit the instrumentation of the NOVA Guitar Duo. Rebay was one of the first non-guitarist Austro-German composers to write for the guitar, starting in the 1920s. Using the resources that were available to him, he scored the work for a regular guitar and a Quintbass Gitarre (tuned a fifth below), making extensive use of this instrument’s distinctive lower register. Nevertheless, this type of guitar went out of fashion since Rebay’s time and any attempts to adapt its part to the regular guitar’s range would inevitably jeopardize the musical text. The NOVA Guitar Duo makes use of an extended-range 8-string guitar which was created in the 1990s and reaches both lower and higher registers than the regular guitar. This instrument is an appropriate surrogate for the Quintbass Gitarre; however, in order to preserve Rebay’s idiomatic writing and make the best use of the ensemble’s resources, the adaptation involved transposition and rebalancing of melodic material.