Fernando Sor
A lithographed painting of Fernando Sor, c.1825
Born	Baptised 14 February 1778 (birth date unknown) Barcelona
Died	July 10, 1839 (aged 61) Paris
Nationality	Spanish
Occupation	Composer, Guitarist

Josep Ferran Sorts i Muntades (baptised 14 February 1778 – died 10 July 1839, Paris) was a Spanish guitarist and composer. He is best known for his guitar compositions, but he also composed music for opera and ballet, earning acclaim for his ballet titled Cendrillon. Sor’s works for guitar range from pieces for advanced players, such as Variations on a Theme of Mozart, to beginner pieces such as the first few of his instructional book Méthode pour la guitar (Guitar Method).

Sor gave concerts throughout Europe, including in England, Paris, Berlin and Warsaw. Before the early 1800s, the guitar was little known in England. Sor seems to have created a market for himself there and then met the demand.^[1] Sor’s contemporaries considered him to be the best guitarist in the world,^[2] and his works for guitar have been widely played and reprinted since his death.^[1]

As Sor's works were published in various countries, his name was translated, leading to variations in the spelling. Variations have included Joseph Fernando Macari Sors, Fernando Sor, Ferran Sor, Ferdinand Sor, and Ferdinando Sor.^{[2][3][4][5][6][7][8]}

[edit] Biography

Musician and his Family,French oil painting (Bibliothèque Marmottan, Boulogne-Billancourt, Paris)

Born in Barcelona to a fairly well-off family, Sor was descended from a long line of career soldiers, and intended to continue that legacy, but was distracted from this when his father introduced him to Italian opera. He fell in love with music and abandoned a military career. Along with opera, Sor's father also introduced him to the guitar, which, at the time, was little more than an instrument played in taverns, thought to be inferior to orchestral instruments.

Sor studied music at a monastery on the slopes Montserrat, a mountain near Barcelona, until his father died. His mother couldn't afford to finance continued studies and withdrew him. It was at this monastery that he began to write his first pieces of music for the guitar.

In 1808, when Napoleon Bonaparte invaded Spain, he began to write nationalistic music for the guitar, often accompanied by patriotic lyrics. After the defeat of the Spanish army, Sor accepted an administrative post in the occupying government. After the Spanish repelled the French in 1813, Sor and many other artists and aristocrats who had befriended the French left Spain for fear of retribution. He went to Paris, and never returned to his home country again.

He began to gain renown in the Parisian art community for his skills of composition and for his ability at playing the guitar, and eventually began to tour across Europe, gaining considerable fame. In 1827, due partly to his advancing age, he settled down and decided to live out the rest of his life in Paris. It was during this retirement that he composed many of his better works.

His last work was a mass in honour of his daughter, who died in 1837. Her death sent the already sickly Sor into serious depression, and he died in 1839. He died of tongue and throat cancer. ^[9]

[edit] Quotes

François-Joseph Fétis has called him "le Beethoven de la guitare"^{[citation needed]}, though he has also remarked the Sor had failed to produce a good tone^{[citation needed]} on one occasion. ^[10]

"The creative worth of Sor's guitar sonatas is high. The ideas, which grow out of the instrument yet stand up well enough apart from it, are fresh and distinctive. The harmony is skillful and surprisingly varied, with bold key changes and with rich modulations in the development sections. The texture is naturally of interest too, with the melody shifted from top to bottom, to middle, and frequent contrapuntal bits added. Among the extended forms, the first Allegro movements still show considerable flexibility in the application of 'sonata form', especially in the larger number of ideas introduced and recalled. For that matter, the style still goes back to that of Joseph Haydn and Mozart, especially in the first movement of Op. 22, which has all the neatness of syntax and accompaniment to be found in a classic symphony, and its third and fourth movements, which could nicely pass as a Minuet and Rondo by Haydn."

—The sonata in the classical era (published 1963) (p. 664) by William S. Newman

"How should one perform Sor's music? I believe the answer is with considerably more freedom, expression and passion than has, for the most part, been done in the recent past. Sor, in his method of 1830 has much to say about the use of tone color on the guitar and even discusses how to imitate the various orchestral instruments. This use of color is something that is very uncommon amongst modern guitarists. Ironically Sor says very little about other aspects of expression, but other guitar methods from the era do recommend much use of portamento, arpeggiation of chords, and other expressive devices which most people today consider anachronistic and completely out of style in the interpretation of the guitar music from this very era! (It never ceases to amaze me how so many modern guitarists and musicologists [...] don't even consider the wealth of material and instruction from Sor's era which cries out that this music is meant to be expressed with such devices as dynamics, tone color, portamento, chordal arpeggiation [...]. These same modern guitarists with the conspiratorial support of supposedly enlightened musicologists will often perform this music, sometimes on a "period" guitar, and use practically none of the above-mentioned expressive devices.)"

—Fernando Sor - Master Composer For Guitar?^[11]

[edit] Works

The original cover of Sor's Variations on a Theme of Mozart, Op. 9, published in Paris in 1821

	Opus 31 No. 1 The first piece from Sor's Opus 31, c.1828
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One of Sor's most popular compositions is his "Introduction and Variations on a Theme by Mozart", Op. 9. It is based on a melody "Das klinget so herrlich, das klinget so schön!"^[12] from The Magic Flute, which Mozart composed in 1791.^[13]

[edit] Méthode pour la Guitare

Sor's Méthode pour la Guitare was first published in Paris in 1830 and translated into English by A Merrick in 1832 under the title Method for the Spanish Guitar .

The original cover of Sor's Méthode pour la Guitare, published in Paris in 1830.

[edit] Instructional material

Sor was a prolific and, in his time, quite popular composer—and there was a great demand for him to compose material that was approachable by less accomplished players. The resulting body of instructional studies he produced is not only noteworthy for its value to students of the guitar, but for its inherent musicality. Much of this work is organized in several opuses (in increasing order of difficulty): Opus 60 (25 lessons), Opus 44 (24 lessons), Opus 35 (24 exercises), Opus 31 (24 lessons), Opus 6 (12 studies) and Opus 29 (12 studies).

[edit] References

[edit] External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Fernando Sor

[edit] Sheet music

• Rischel & Birket-Smith's Collection of guitar music Det Kongelige Bibliotek, Denmark
• Boije Collection The Music Library of Sweden
• George C. Krick Collection of Guitar Music Washington University
• Fernando Sor (creativeguitar.org - largely taken from the above sources)
• Free scores by Fernando Sor in the International Music Score Library Project
• Free scores by Fernando Sor in the Werner Icking Music Archive (WIMA)

[edit] Biography

• Fernando Sor UXL Encyclopedia of World Biography, (2003)
• More detailed biography and performance notes (www.musicweb-international.com)
• Another biography (www.classicalguitar.net)

[edit] Publications

• Information (Tecla Editions)
• Ich, Fernando Sor Versuch einer Autobiografie und gitarristische Schriften; by Wolf Moser (Edition Saint-Georges, ISBN 30001552741)

[edit] Historical sources

• Recensionen: Guitarre-Schule von Ferdinand Sor Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung; published by Breitkopf und Härtel, 1832
• Diccionario biográfico-bibliográfico de efemérides de músicos españoles by Baltasar Saldoni
• historical source Revue de Paris; published by Demengeot & Goodman, e.a., 1851
• historical source The Harmonicon, 1823
• historical source Dictionnaire des artistes de l'école française, au XIXe siècle; by Charles Gabet; 1831
• historical source Seven years of the King's theatre; by John Ebers; published by Carey, Lea & Carey, 1828
• historical source Revue musicale; by F. J. Fétis; 1827
• historical source Bentley's miscellany; by Charles Dickens, William Harrison Ainsworth, Albert Smith; published by Richard Bentley, 1844

[edit] Photos

• Images of Sor (Gallica)
• Image of Sor (enciclopedia.cat)
• Fernando Sor's grave at the Cimetière de Montmartre: paris.fr (Plan of the cemetery - Sor's grave is located at Division 24, number 1) (see also landrucimetieres.fr, findagrave.com)