Thursday, February 08, 2007

On The Arpeggione Again

I just received a note by Dr. Osamu Okumura, the president of the Arpeggione Society in Japan. What a pleasant coincidence that I'm actually working now on Schubert's most beautiful Arpeggione Sonata.

It's amazing how the only currently existing piece of music written for this instrument has piqued the curiosity of so many people around the world, to the extent of re-constructing this obsolete instrument. If I have a chance, I would certainly love to try out this instrument and learn to play this masterpiece this historical instrument. I had written an entry on this instrument when I was first seduced by the immense beauty of this work. Thankfully, the range of the arpeggione that is used in this work falls just barely within the range of the guitar that I am able to try my hands on such a gem and incorporate it into my repertoire.

No groundbreaking compositional techniques or strange harmonies used, but just simply charming. It isn't like Bach whereby I'm continually discovering new things about the works, but somehow, I can never get bored listening or playing this work, probably due to its seamless blend of a wide spectrum of emotions in such most poetic manner...

I'm still in the midst of studying this work. Analysing the entire harmonic structure and texture of this work. A not-so-easy task with the arpeggione being an obsolete instrument. But by studying his works which he had composed in the same period of his life, it does help me understand his style in this Arpeggione Sonata a lot more thoroughly.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I have been in contact with Dr. Okumura about arpeggione because I have made built an arpeggione instrument in 2001 in order to play the Schubert sonata.

I have thus been able to play this great music as originally written in New York in May 2002 and it has been then recorded with Paul Badura-Skoda in Florence in January 2006. (CD released in 2 weeks by Fuga Libera - www.fugalibera.com)

About arpeggione, today's composers have also been curious to write for my instrument and I have received from them nearly 20 new pieces since 2001!

I have created a new web site about my arpeggione project: http://site.voila.fr/arpeggione
(Be patient, everything is not yet translated into English...)

Happy to read your post about this great music!

Nicolas Deletaille