Thesis
Mantovani, Luiz. Ferdinand Rebay and the Reinvention of Guitar Chamber Music. PhD thesis. Royal College of Music, 2019.
Ferdinand Rebay (1880-1953) was a pioneer among the non-guitarist composers who started to write for the guitar in the 1920s. However, in spite of having composed close to 400 guitar works, he is today undeservedly obscure. This thesis examines his more than 30 sonatas or sonata-structured works for guitar, most of which is made of chamber music for combinations that range from duos to a septet. In Part 1, I situate Rebay’s chamber sonatas within the guitar repertoire, understanding it as a reaction to the lighter repertoire of the guitar clubs, the turn-of-the-century’s main guitar niche in German-speaking territories. After investigating the guitaristic context, I look at Rebay’s career and interactions with the Viennese guitar circles, highlighting the work of his main champion and niece-guitarist, Gerta Hammerschmid. Later, I analyse his compositional style and demonstrate that, by associating the guitar with the Austro-German Romantic sonata prestige, Rebay may have intended to elevate the instrument’s status in the eyes of the mainstream Viennese audiences. His exploration of the guitar in chamber music is equally paradigmatic, as he frees the instrument from its typical accompaniment roles and explores a fully-balanced texture in his sonata writing. In Part 2, I approach a selected group of seven chamber sonatas from a performer’s point of view. Faced with the lack of a continuous performance tradition of Rebay’s guitar music, I propose to incorporate an extended stylistic and technical mindset largely supported by historical investigation, which helps understand Rebay’s meticulous notation and realize it convincingly. Finally, I trace Rebay’s collaborative steps through the layers of information available in his manuscript sources, also proposing a “posthumous collaboration” to deal with score-based issues and make problematic passages—or in some cases, full works—playable and idiomatic. By initially situating Rebay’s guitar music and later addressing some of its most important performance aspects, I hope to provide secure historical and interpretative grounds for the modern guitarist interested in his music.
Dictionary entries
Mantovani, Luiz. “Rebay, Ferdinand”. Grove Music Online. 24 November 2020.
Book chapters
Mantovani, Luiz. “Compreensão da Notação, Adequação Estilística e Adequação Técnica: Uma estratégia tripartite para embasar a interpretação da música para violão de Ferdinand Rebay”. In MusiCS: Musicologia Histórica, Composição e Performance, edited by Marcos Holler and Acácio Piedade, 177–212. Curitiba: Editora CRV, 2021.
Este artigo é uma elaboração sobre algumas das questões de pesquisa que tratei em meu doutorado, ao refletir sobre a interpretação da música de câmara para violão do compositor vienense Ferdinand Rebay (1880-1953). A investigação, desenvolvida entre 2015 e 2019, beneficiou-se da minha condição de intérprete-pesquisador: se, por um lado, eu utilizava a pesquisa musicológica para informar a minha prática musical, por outro o feedback desta reorientava a primeira, num processo retroalimentar cuja metodologia incorporou elementos autoetnográficos. Ao olhar criticamente para a minha própria prática, percebi que boa parte dos problemas de interpretação que enfrentava na música de Rebay tinham relação com o distanciamento existente entre o meu universo de referências e os contextos originais que ampararam a concepção e execução deste repertório. A estratégia que ora proponho para encurtar esta distância foi construída a partir de três dimensões interpretativas: a compreensão da notação, a adequação estilística e a adequação técnica.
Journal articles
Mantovani, Luiz. “Fine-Tuning Ferdinand Rebay’s Second Sonata in E major for Guitar”. Musicologica Austriaca: Journal for Austrian Music Studies (30 December, 2022).
Composed in 1941 and dedicated to his guitarist niece, Gerta Hammerschmid, Ferdinand Rebay’s Second Sonata in E major for Guitar remained unperformed during his life, only gaining its premiere recording after my performance film was released in 2022. One of the reasons for this deferral is that the piece needed a thorough revision to fit the guitar’s idiom and, for reasons that can only be speculated about, this was not done by Hammerschmid at the time. This article examines my solutions to score-based issues encountered during the preparation of the sonata for performance, many of which demanded intervention in the musical text—a process I call “posthumous collaboration.” First, however, I investigate the relationship between Rebay and his Viennese guitar environment, explaining his motivations for writing over thirty sonatas or sonata-structured works for the guitar and then focusing on the group of seven solo guitar sonatas that he wrote between 1925 and 1944. The article is written from the perspective of an artist-scholar who looks critically at the repertoire and engages with it with the kind of authority that can only emerge from integrating scholarly studies with artistic experience.
Mantovani, Luiz. “Editing Strategies for Overcoming Instrumentation Issues in Rebay’s Großes Duo in a-Moll”. Vortex Music Journal 8, no. 3 (15 December, 2020): 1-27.
This article looks at contextual and interpretive issues surrounding the Großes Duo in a-Moll by Viennese composer Ferdinand Rebay (1880-1953). After situating Rebay within the contemporary guitar developments in Vienna, I contextualize the piece and highlight its significance as a one-of-a-kind Romantic sonata for guitar duo. Next, I look at the potential difficulties of incorporating it into the repertoire of modern guitar duos due to Rebay’s use of a near-obsolete instrument, the Quintbass Gitarre, while also offering a brief organological investigation. Finally, I describe in detail my attempts to adapt the piece to the instrumentation of my ensemble, the NOVA Guitar Duo. Backed up by an extensive familiarity with the composer’s style, I endeavour to intervene in the text, not only for playability reasons but also to rebalance melodic material in the fashion of traditional guitar duo and domestic Austro-German chamber music writing.
Magazine articles
Mantovani, Luiz. “Szkic do portretu Ferdinanda Rebaya”. Sześć Strun Świata 24 (October, 2023): 27-30.
Mantovani, Luiz. “Experiências Colaborativas: Participando do nascimento de uma obra”. Hallceart 1 (March, 2012): 64-66.
Conference abstracts and proceedings
Mantovani, Luiz. “In Search of a Fictitious Fassung letzter Hand: A case-study about my ‘posthumous collaboration’ with Ferdinand Rebay”. Paper presented at the Cohort for Guitar Research Meeting, University of Cambridge, Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, UK, 4 November 2023.
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.
Mantovani, Luiz. “The Solo Sonatas of Ferdinand Rebay: An introduction and commentary on my ‘posthumous collaboration’ with the composer”. Paper presented at the GFA Scholarly Track Day, University of Indianapolis, Indianapolis, USA, 26 June 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.
Mantovani, Luiz. “Ferdinand Rebay and the Reinvention of Guitar Chamber Music”. Paper presented at the Cohort for Guitar Research Meeting, University of Cambridge, Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, UK, 14 April 2019.
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.
Mantovani, Luiz. “Identifying and Realizing Romantic Conventions in Ferdinand Rebay’s Guitar Music”. Lecture-recital presented at the Dublin Guitar Symposium, DIT Conservatory of Music and Drama, Dublin, Ireland, 23 February 2019.
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.
Mantovani, Luiz. “Modernizing instrumentation in Ferdinand Rebay’s Großes Duo in a-Moll”. Lecture-recital presented at the 3rd Festival Conference of Music Performance and Artistic Research ‘Doctors in Performance’, Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre, Vilnius, Lithuania, 5 September 2018.
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.
Mantovani, Luiz. “Modernizing instrumentation in Ferdinand Rebay’s Großes Duo in a-Moll”. Lecture-recital presented at the 1st International Conference on Artistic Research in Performance, Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester, UK, 29 June 2018.
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.
Miscellanea