Thomas Schmitt - Juegos filarmónicos (2019)

The works that sound in this recording represent an important part, although nowadays unknown, of a repertoire for guitar that at the time, at the end of the 18th century, could be considered an elitist music for privileged people of a certain social class. Already the simple fact of being a music that was composed and sold in the form of scores, in handwritten editions (Gosálvez Lara 1995, 44), made it inaccessible to the majority of the population in Spain around 1800. The census of the minister Floridablanca, which was carried out in 1787, during the reign of Carlos III, evidence that there were approximately two million farmers and day laborers, that is, people whose salary ranged between 1 and 3 Reales per day, and who lived in a socio-economic situation -economic very precarious. If we compare this salary with the price of some products (food and music), we see an immediate reflection of this poverty: cooked common bread, the basis of daily food, cost approximately 0.4 Reals per pound (ca.460gr), the Saffron (62.4 Reales) was also a genuinely luxurious product (Torija Isasa 2009, 620). But music also had its price, whether in the form of sheet music, strings, music lessons or instrument acquisition. Through the historical press we can check some of its costs: a «violin with its box» was worth 3200 Reales; the «bolero dance lessons with castanets», Rs 50 / month at the student's home, and Rs 30 / month at the teacher's home (Acker 2007, 297). For the collection of musical instruments of Carlos IV (1787) a guitar by Lorenzo Alonso is acquired for 320 Rs (Labrador López de Azcona 2005/06, 77). And in the handwritten editions, the prices for the scores could range between Rs 6, for example a Rondó for guitar by Pierre Porro (Acker 2007, 424), and the 80 Rs of the Principles for playing the guitar of Federico Moretti, «a I take in 4th largest landscape, with 53 sheets of French-recorded music [that is to say by chalcography] by D. José Rico »(Acker 2007, 387). When we compare these prices with the wages of day laborers, we clearly see that musical products were unattainable for them. In other words, the Theme with ten variations of Fernando Ferandiere, which was announced for 10 Rs, was worth 11.5 kg of bread, which means at the same time the supply for 25 days. And the 80 Rs of the Principles to play the six-order guitar of Federico Moretti amounted to approximately 92 kg of bread. Music was, in this sense, a true luxury that only a small part of society, an elite, could afford.

Moreover, another distinctive factor is important: the music in its handwritten edition had to be read, both its advertisements themselves, as the titles of the compositions, the notes, but also the instructions, etc. If we look at the literacy rate in Spain at the end of the 18th century, we see that complete illiteracy (that is, the person who did not even know how to sign his name) reached 55.97%: 51.38% of the population of Madrid , 81.87% of the Ciudad Real (Soubeyroux 1985, 166). Certainly the farmers and laborers belonged to this immense group of illiterates. Obviously, it does not mean that in this "class of inhabitants", terminology used in the Floridablanca census, there was no culture; rather, it was another cultural form based on oral tradition. Literacy, that is, reading ability, therefore represents a strong distinction between social groups. Being able to read the scores was considered essential and frequently the need for this faculty was noted. Ferandiere says that "true merit and primacy consists in touching exactly what is written" (Ferandiere 1799, 12), and, he adds, not in improvisation; In addition, this method highlights precisely this fact in typography, with capital letters: it is COMPOSITE MUSIC for Guitar by D. Fernando Ferandiere (Ferandiere 1799, 31), and not music for guitar composed by D. Fernando Ferandiere.