Eduardo López-Chavarri Marco (1871-1970)obra guitarrística

Laburpena

The figure of the Spanish musician Eduardo López–Chavarri Marco (1871–1970) has been studied from various perspectives according to his multifaceted professional life, but to date there has not been any comprehensive study dedicated to his guitar compositions. This fact is in line with the very low diffusion and inclusion of these compositions in the concert repertoire of guitarists. The guitar corpus of this composer, which consists of a good handful of works (some of them of the highest quality) was created almost entirely between 1922 and 1932 and is part –an outstanding part, in our opinion– of the new guitar repertoire of the Interwar Period that arose after the dazzling appearance of Manuel de Falla’s Homenaje (1920) in the music scene of the time. At that time a reissue of that nineteenth-century Parisian guitarromanie took place, with the particularity that the authors of the new repertoire, for the first time in history, were not guitarists. López–Chavarri, like other composers who barely knew the guitar and its distinctive features, tried to associate himself with some prominent players of the instrument. However, these guitarists, due to various circumstances, did not give fair diffusion to the works composed for them and in a few years all these compositions were almost completely forgotten. Among the various objectives of this work stand out the following: raise awareness of all the information available about the manuscript and printed sources of this repertoire; based on this research, complete an exhaustive catalog of the guitar works of López–Chavarri; analyze in detail these compositions and the circumstances in which they were created; and complete several musical editions using different procedures (according to the number and characteristics of the original sources of the compositions in each case). This work also includes a wide collection of paper news, reports, chronicles, reviews and press interviews related to our composer and to his connections with the guitar. On the other hand, the biographical profile of López–Chavarri has so far been presented in almost a hieratic way, idealized and devoid of a more human and (from the historical point of view) more interesting content. Our investigations revealed unexpectedly some aspects of this author’s personality (ideological, temperamental and sentimental) drawing a renewed perspective of his character and clarifying certain issues, related to the historiography of his guitar repertoire, which initially seemed more confuse to us. The primary sources of information included in this work (correspondence, journalistic chronicles, autograph annotations in the musical manuscripts, etc.) have been considered to confirm some historical facts that objectively demonstrate the rich and complex personality of a man who –beyond the topics of the revered Maestro– had his passions, his devotions, but also his anger and wounded pride incidents, like any human being. López–Chavarri was an artist impossible to classify, no matter how much he has been pigeonholed by associating him with several generations and aesthetic trends. This doctoral dissertation is organized in two main blocks: the first consists of a review of the professional and personal biography of the composer, his first approaches to the guitar world and, finally, an analytical study of the social and aesthetic environment in which his works for the instrument were created. The second and broader one is fully dedicated to the guitar work by López–Chavarri and includes a brief essay on the musical aesthetics of these pieces and another one that addresses a problem shared by a good part of the Interwar guitar repertoire: the proliferation of versions for other instruments and instrumental combinations (written by the composers themselves) based on the original compositions for guitar. The questions that these new versions may pose when undertaking the task of properly editing this repertoire are also considered here. We have contrasted the study of the aforementioned correspondence of López– Chavarri with that of the musical manuscript sources, and such collation, joined with the compilation of testimonies on these works’ reception both by audience and critics (known through the information found in contemporary press) have resulted in a coherent and complete account of the entire historical process that led to the formation of this corpus. Motivations, encouragements, disappointments, abandonments and, in summary, a wide range of human expressions and emotions have appeared during this research to recreate a living and passionate story. Both the information provided by our catalog and the historiographical content of the present dissertation represent an exhaustive tool to deal with any future editorial project related to the composer’s guitar works with absolute confidence.