Carlo Fierens - Coste: Complete Guitar Works Vol.6: Pièces de concert I (2025)
BAND/ARTIST: Carlo Fierens
- Title: Coste: Complete Guitar Works Vol.6: Pièces de concert I
- Year Of Release: 2025
- Label: Da Vinci Classics
- Genre: Classical Guitar
- Quality: flac lossless (tracks)
- Total Time: 01:08:20
- Total Size: 248 mb
- WebSite: Album Preview
Tracklist
01. Rondeau de concert, Op. 12
02. Le Tournoi, Fantaisie chevaleresque, Op. 15
03. Souvenirs, Op. 17: No. 1, La Vallée d’Ornans, Cantabile et Rondeau
04. Souvenirs, Op. 18: No. 2, Les bords du Rhin, valse
05. Souvenirs, Op. 19: No. 3, Delfzil, scherzo
06. Souvenirs, Op. 19c: No. 3b, Etude
07. Souvenirs, Op. 20: No. 4, Le Zuyderzée, Ballade
08. Souvenirs, Op. 21: No. 5, Les Cloches, Fugue et Rondeau
09. Souvenirs, Op. 22: No. 6, Meulan, Andante et valse
10. Souvenirs, Op. 23: No. 7, Les Soirées d’Auteuil, Sérénade
11. Le Départ, Fantaisie Dramatique, Op. 31
Life
Napoléon Coste was born on the 27th of June 1805 in Amondans in the department of Doubs in eastern France, a date that was not established until 1982. He grew up in the neighbourhood of Ornans, to which he later dedicated several compositions. In 1813 he was in the Dutch town of Delfzijl with his father, a captain in the French army, he passed the Zuiderzee and crossed the river Rhine. The memory of these places returned in his compositions, the Souvenirs. He started his career as a guitarist in 1826 in Valenciennes, where he lived as a youth, began to compose, and played in a concert with the travelling virtuoso Sagrini. At the end of 1828 he settled in Paris, where he stayed for almost the rest of his artistic career. There, in the centre of important musical developments, he joined the circles of musicians who originated from Valenciennes, and also of famous guitarists, among whom Sor became of great importance to him, as he studied harmony and counterpoint with him and became his friend, joining him in concerts. His life in Paris is expressed in several programmatic compositions, after Berlioz’ invention of musical drama.
He developed his artistic talent, participated in mixed concerts, where he played his own compositions, most of which were published by well-known publishers or by himself, chez l’auteur. His performance and compositions were praised in the upcoming musical journals of the time, but the guitar as an instrument was generally disdained, in such a way that it eventually disappeared from the musical scene during his lifetime. When Coste came to Paris, the guitar was very popular and was played at a high level, as can be seen in the many guitar methods of the time. But the instrument became popular among amateurs mostly, causing more artistic compositions to become difficult to publish. Therefore, Coste composed and arranged much popular music for pedagogical and commercial purpose. As a guitar teacher he has many pupils and he made a revision of Sor’s method in 1851, one of the last methods published in Paris, known as the Méthode Coste-Sor. He entered upper class musical society upon joining the Société académique des Enfants d’Apollon in 1841 and the musical freemasons’ lodge Les Frères Unis Inséparables in 1843, where he gave concerts on his heptacorde, the seven-string guitar made for him by the luthier Lacôte. Many of his compositions were meant for this instrument. The recordings of this compact disc are performed by Carlo Fierens on an original heptacorde made by René Lacôte in 1855, which matches the very same heptacorde Coste designed. His fame reached international level and he was visited in Paris by admirers from Stockholm, Copenhagen, Riga, and St. Petersburg. In 1856 the Russian guitar-playing nobleman Makaroff opened a contest for guitar composition and construction in Brussels. Coste sent in five compositions, out of which his Grande Sérénade opus 30 wan second prize, coming in after Mertz’s Concertino. He made no use of this laureate to travel through Europe as a guitar virtuoso, but returned to Paris, and also, to his own regret, to the job he had as an administrator at the municipality, from which he was pensioned in 1875. He had fewer pupils, had to publish his works by himself, and moreover injured his left shoulder twice, first in 1863, then again in 1874, but nevertheless he continued to perform in concerts.
His Éudes de Genre opus 38 were published by Richault c. 1872 and were dedicated to many of his pupils, among them Louise Olive Pauilhé, who he married in 1871, during the Prussian occupation of Paris. In his last years he still composed masterpieces as before, but also more didactic and easy pieces, which nevertheless are fine examples of his Romantic style. He died on 14 January 1883. His works were collected by admirers but disappeared from the concert repertoire. Only a few of his studies remained well known among guitarists, until Simon Wynberg publishes his complete works in 1981, opening up new attention for his oeuvre, that appears more and more in concert life since that time. This is becoming evident in the present series of recordings by Carlo Fierens.
Work
The music of Coste displays a wide spectrum of characteristics of the Romantic style. The theme and variation genre aside, Coste chooses to continue the composition with new musical ideas or varied repetition of these, which gives his works an episodic or rhapsodic character. Over time his compositions show more and more Romantic characteristics. There is a wave of periods with strong Romantic and light Romantic compositions. The latter have a more didactic or commercial purpose.
The importance of Romanticism in Coste’s music is reflected mostly in aspects of harmony, wherein complexity and intensity of texture are characteristic. His use of altered chords and dissonances can be related to that of Liszt, his harmonic progressions to those of Berlioz, his harmonic freedom to that of Chopin. His chromatic modulations, with or without common tone, are comparable to those of Schubert. In melody the figurations are most important, showing the aspect of virtuosity in his music. Without being an imitator, his texture can be related to the figuration and passages of Chopin, his practice of chromaticism with that of Schubert, his high level of playing technique to that of Liszt – all this connected to his great control of the instrument, with which he expands the limits of technical possibilities, based on the principles of Sor.
In musical expression, dynamics and articulation contribute to the emotion. Here external references can be made to the vocal portamento of Chopin and the arioso of Schubert. Few indications to exoticism are found, except perhaps influences from Spanish music that could be considered exotic. In the Romanticism of Coste story as well as folklore and the use of rests contribute to the narrative character of his music. Here, historicism plays a role in his programmatic works, which represent, just as with Berlioz, musical dramatics. For all these aspects, Coste can be placed at the centre of the musical developments appearing in Romantic music in Paris in the middle of the 19th century. True enough, in his own words, a modest composer for a modest instrument, in his masterpieces, Napoléon Coste has succeeded in elevating Romantic guitar music to a high level. Among the great three composers of Romantic guitar music, with Mertz and Zani de Ferranti, Coste can be considered as most important. Coste surpasses the other two in a musical way and knows how to express a multifaceted palette of Romantic elements in his music, which is further enhanced by his intensive harmonic writing. His work is versatile and varied, attractive to the listener, player, and analyst in both its broad lines and its details. From his early works on, which already show some boisterousness, a great development leading to his masterworks can be seen in the middle of the century, in which the Makaroff compositions play a major role. His approach towards virtuosity and complexity is of such a delicate and logical nature that his music attains a high technical level, never at the cost of performance. The musical expression, to which Coste gives his full attention, comes to maturity this way. In this study the Romanticism in his music becomes transparent, by way of analysis and defining criteria. These premises and results can be used as a starting point for research into the works of Zani and Mertz, to further demonstrate the importance of Coste for Romantic guitar music.
Dr. Ari van Vliet
Biographer of Napoléon Coste: Composer
and Guitarist in the Musical Life of 19th-century Paris
Vol. 6: Pièces de concert I
This volume collects some of the finest contributions to the concert repertoire by Napoléon Coste. It features some ambitious works (op. 15, op. 31) and some simpler pieces (opp. 17-23) that nevertheless express his style and masterfulness in guitar writing at the finest degree. Their composition spanned over 15 years, during which Coste was imposing himself as the heir of Fernando Sor, a position that he consolidated with the publication of the Methode for guitar, a true testament to Sor’s school, seen through the lenses of his younger French disciple.
Op. 12, probably composed in 1840, is a playful Rondo that opens dramatically with a diminished chord and a flamboyant introduction. In contrast to the elaborated opening, with constant mood changes and variety in texture, the theme sounds spontaneous and simple, displaying a guitar writing which manages to be brilliant and virtuosic without losing the simplicity of inspiration that is typical of the best examples of Coste’s style.
Le Tournoi, Op. 15, is a far more elaborated and complex work, and we can guess how dear it was to the young composer by its dedication to one of the most important figures of Paris’ music life of the mid Eighteen Hundreds: Hector Berlioz. The French leading composer was the one who played a major role in the definition of tone poem, program music that drew inspiration from a variety of sources. He also had a great interest (like all the romantics) in a romanticized view of the Middle Ages by authors such as Walter Scott. This interplay of references is crucial when we approach Le Tournoi, with its clear chivalrous theme. The opening depicts the scenario by introducing a fanfare with trumpets and horns (the mimesis of other instruments had always been a common cliché of the guitar, described by Sor and Coste himself). The piece then proceeds through a Maestoso theme that opens a variety of episodes, through different moods that, although not following a determined narrative, clearly tells us a story. It is a complex and challenging piece that marks a step forward in Coste’s writing technique.
The seven Souvenirs, opp. 17-23 (plus an étude that complete the page after the third one, thus catalogued as op. 19c) are another attempt to adapt the genre of the tone poem to the guitar. This time, it is an ideal journey through locations that we can imagine were dear to the composer’s heart, both in present-day France and the Netherlands. The waltz, Coste’s favorite, is the genre that is predominant in the collection, meaning that this form was easily associated with happy and meaningful moments of the guitarist’s life.
The journey begins in Ornans, where the composer spent his childhood. It is divided in two parts, a meditative cantabile introduction followed by les Montagnards, a Rondo that features a long central episode in E minor. Op. 18 brings us to Les bordes du Rhin, an uplift waltz with an irregular form that alludes to folkloric music by the use of bourdons effects. A fanfare announces both the beginning of the piece and the subsequent episode in D major. Delfzil, portrayed in op. 19, is a city in modern days’ Netherland, but it was for decades in the hands of the French troops, with its famous (no longer existent) fortress. The military story of the town is probably evoked in the stürmisch scherzo in D minor that opens the piece, a scherzo that becomes a proper waltz when the key moves to D major. Le Zuyderzée is a ballade, referring to the episodic poetic form as freely reinterpreted by romantic composers (Chopin above all). It is once again a landscape in modern days Netherlands, the inland sea whose dangers are well depicted in the D minor introduction, before leading to a waltz in several episodes and a virtuosic finale. Les Cloches, op. 21 is more loosely connected to a precise place, and it is a rarity in Coste’s production in that it features one of the very few learned forms in his works: the introduction is a fugue (rather a fugato) with imitations and modulating sections. The Rondeau that follows imitates the bells with its arpeggiated theme with campanella effects. The two last pieces of the set, op. 22 Meulan and op. 23 Les soirées dans Auteil have a French setting, both being depictions of small villages in the surroundings of Paris, where we can guess the composer had a pleasant time off. Whereas Meulan is a rather plain waltz preceded by an introduction and interspersed with free episodes, op. 23 is much more complex and rhapsodic, starting as a serenade and developing into a Scherzo-waltz, sounding like some of Coste’s valses favorites.
We are informed by Coste himself (see the foreword to the Girod edition of Op. 31), that Le Départ was meant to be among the pieces selected to the already mentioned Makaroff competition of 1856, but it was completed only after the submission deadline. This anecdote tells us how much care was put into the composition of a piece that was supposed to display the composer’s ability at its best. In fact, it is one of the very few Coste’s pieces that made it to modern days’ repertoire, also due to the fact that the key of E facilitate the transposition to the six strings instrument. It is a vivid transposition into music of the departure (and return) of the French troops to the Crimea war, a theme that places it firmly in the context of the political and cultural life of Coste’s days Europe. The pieces remarkably balances virtuosic elements and expressive moments, with a formal unity that is seldom to be found in contemporary pieces.
01. Rondeau de concert, Op. 12
02. Le Tournoi, Fantaisie chevaleresque, Op. 15
03. Souvenirs, Op. 17: No. 1, La Vallée d’Ornans, Cantabile et Rondeau
04. Souvenirs, Op. 18: No. 2, Les bords du Rhin, valse
05. Souvenirs, Op. 19: No. 3, Delfzil, scherzo
06. Souvenirs, Op. 19c: No. 3b, Etude
07. Souvenirs, Op. 20: No. 4, Le Zuyderzée, Ballade
08. Souvenirs, Op. 21: No. 5, Les Cloches, Fugue et Rondeau
09. Souvenirs, Op. 22: No. 6, Meulan, Andante et valse
10. Souvenirs, Op. 23: No. 7, Les Soirées d’Auteuil, Sérénade
11. Le Départ, Fantaisie Dramatique, Op. 31
Life
Napoléon Coste was born on the 27th of June 1805 in Amondans in the department of Doubs in eastern France, a date that was not established until 1982. He grew up in the neighbourhood of Ornans, to which he later dedicated several compositions. In 1813 he was in the Dutch town of Delfzijl with his father, a captain in the French army, he passed the Zuiderzee and crossed the river Rhine. The memory of these places returned in his compositions, the Souvenirs. He started his career as a guitarist in 1826 in Valenciennes, where he lived as a youth, began to compose, and played in a concert with the travelling virtuoso Sagrini. At the end of 1828 he settled in Paris, where he stayed for almost the rest of his artistic career. There, in the centre of important musical developments, he joined the circles of musicians who originated from Valenciennes, and also of famous guitarists, among whom Sor became of great importance to him, as he studied harmony and counterpoint with him and became his friend, joining him in concerts. His life in Paris is expressed in several programmatic compositions, after Berlioz’ invention of musical drama.
He developed his artistic talent, participated in mixed concerts, where he played his own compositions, most of which were published by well-known publishers or by himself, chez l’auteur. His performance and compositions were praised in the upcoming musical journals of the time, but the guitar as an instrument was generally disdained, in such a way that it eventually disappeared from the musical scene during his lifetime. When Coste came to Paris, the guitar was very popular and was played at a high level, as can be seen in the many guitar methods of the time. But the instrument became popular among amateurs mostly, causing more artistic compositions to become difficult to publish. Therefore, Coste composed and arranged much popular music for pedagogical and commercial purpose. As a guitar teacher he has many pupils and he made a revision of Sor’s method in 1851, one of the last methods published in Paris, known as the Méthode Coste-Sor. He entered upper class musical society upon joining the Société académique des Enfants d’Apollon in 1841 and the musical freemasons’ lodge Les Frères Unis Inséparables in 1843, where he gave concerts on his heptacorde, the seven-string guitar made for him by the luthier Lacôte. Many of his compositions were meant for this instrument. The recordings of this compact disc are performed by Carlo Fierens on an original heptacorde made by René Lacôte in 1855, which matches the very same heptacorde Coste designed. His fame reached international level and he was visited in Paris by admirers from Stockholm, Copenhagen, Riga, and St. Petersburg. In 1856 the Russian guitar-playing nobleman Makaroff opened a contest for guitar composition and construction in Brussels. Coste sent in five compositions, out of which his Grande Sérénade opus 30 wan second prize, coming in after Mertz’s Concertino. He made no use of this laureate to travel through Europe as a guitar virtuoso, but returned to Paris, and also, to his own regret, to the job he had as an administrator at the municipality, from which he was pensioned in 1875. He had fewer pupils, had to publish his works by himself, and moreover injured his left shoulder twice, first in 1863, then again in 1874, but nevertheless he continued to perform in concerts.
His Éudes de Genre opus 38 were published by Richault c. 1872 and were dedicated to many of his pupils, among them Louise Olive Pauilhé, who he married in 1871, during the Prussian occupation of Paris. In his last years he still composed masterpieces as before, but also more didactic and easy pieces, which nevertheless are fine examples of his Romantic style. He died on 14 January 1883. His works were collected by admirers but disappeared from the concert repertoire. Only a few of his studies remained well known among guitarists, until Simon Wynberg publishes his complete works in 1981, opening up new attention for his oeuvre, that appears more and more in concert life since that time. This is becoming evident in the present series of recordings by Carlo Fierens.
Work
The music of Coste displays a wide spectrum of characteristics of the Romantic style. The theme and variation genre aside, Coste chooses to continue the composition with new musical ideas or varied repetition of these, which gives his works an episodic or rhapsodic character. Over time his compositions show more and more Romantic characteristics. There is a wave of periods with strong Romantic and light Romantic compositions. The latter have a more didactic or commercial purpose.
The importance of Romanticism in Coste’s music is reflected mostly in aspects of harmony, wherein complexity and intensity of texture are characteristic. His use of altered chords and dissonances can be related to that of Liszt, his harmonic progressions to those of Berlioz, his harmonic freedom to that of Chopin. His chromatic modulations, with or without common tone, are comparable to those of Schubert. In melody the figurations are most important, showing the aspect of virtuosity in his music. Without being an imitator, his texture can be related to the figuration and passages of Chopin, his practice of chromaticism with that of Schubert, his high level of playing technique to that of Liszt – all this connected to his great control of the instrument, with which he expands the limits of technical possibilities, based on the principles of Sor.
In musical expression, dynamics and articulation contribute to the emotion. Here external references can be made to the vocal portamento of Chopin and the arioso of Schubert. Few indications to exoticism are found, except perhaps influences from Spanish music that could be considered exotic. In the Romanticism of Coste story as well as folklore and the use of rests contribute to the narrative character of his music. Here, historicism plays a role in his programmatic works, which represent, just as with Berlioz, musical dramatics. For all these aspects, Coste can be placed at the centre of the musical developments appearing in Romantic music in Paris in the middle of the 19th century. True enough, in his own words, a modest composer for a modest instrument, in his masterpieces, Napoléon Coste has succeeded in elevating Romantic guitar music to a high level. Among the great three composers of Romantic guitar music, with Mertz and Zani de Ferranti, Coste can be considered as most important. Coste surpasses the other two in a musical way and knows how to express a multifaceted palette of Romantic elements in his music, which is further enhanced by his intensive harmonic writing. His work is versatile and varied, attractive to the listener, player, and analyst in both its broad lines and its details. From his early works on, which already show some boisterousness, a great development leading to his masterworks can be seen in the middle of the century, in which the Makaroff compositions play a major role. His approach towards virtuosity and complexity is of such a delicate and logical nature that his music attains a high technical level, never at the cost of performance. The musical expression, to which Coste gives his full attention, comes to maturity this way. In this study the Romanticism in his music becomes transparent, by way of analysis and defining criteria. These premises and results can be used as a starting point for research into the works of Zani and Mertz, to further demonstrate the importance of Coste for Romantic guitar music.
Dr. Ari van Vliet
Biographer of Napoléon Coste: Composer
and Guitarist in the Musical Life of 19th-century Paris
Vol. 6: Pièces de concert I
This volume collects some of the finest contributions to the concert repertoire by Napoléon Coste. It features some ambitious works (op. 15, op. 31) and some simpler pieces (opp. 17-23) that nevertheless express his style and masterfulness in guitar writing at the finest degree. Their composition spanned over 15 years, during which Coste was imposing himself as the heir of Fernando Sor, a position that he consolidated with the publication of the Methode for guitar, a true testament to Sor’s school, seen through the lenses of his younger French disciple.
Op. 12, probably composed in 1840, is a playful Rondo that opens dramatically with a diminished chord and a flamboyant introduction. In contrast to the elaborated opening, with constant mood changes and variety in texture, the theme sounds spontaneous and simple, displaying a guitar writing which manages to be brilliant and virtuosic without losing the simplicity of inspiration that is typical of the best examples of Coste’s style.
Le Tournoi, Op. 15, is a far more elaborated and complex work, and we can guess how dear it was to the young composer by its dedication to one of the most important figures of Paris’ music life of the mid Eighteen Hundreds: Hector Berlioz. The French leading composer was the one who played a major role in the definition of tone poem, program music that drew inspiration from a variety of sources. He also had a great interest (like all the romantics) in a romanticized view of the Middle Ages by authors such as Walter Scott. This interplay of references is crucial when we approach Le Tournoi, with its clear chivalrous theme. The opening depicts the scenario by introducing a fanfare with trumpets and horns (the mimesis of other instruments had always been a common cliché of the guitar, described by Sor and Coste himself). The piece then proceeds through a Maestoso theme that opens a variety of episodes, through different moods that, although not following a determined narrative, clearly tells us a story. It is a complex and challenging piece that marks a step forward in Coste’s writing technique.
The seven Souvenirs, opp. 17-23 (plus an étude that complete the page after the third one, thus catalogued as op. 19c) are another attempt to adapt the genre of the tone poem to the guitar. This time, it is an ideal journey through locations that we can imagine were dear to the composer’s heart, both in present-day France and the Netherlands. The waltz, Coste’s favorite, is the genre that is predominant in the collection, meaning that this form was easily associated with happy and meaningful moments of the guitarist’s life.
The journey begins in Ornans, where the composer spent his childhood. It is divided in two parts, a meditative cantabile introduction followed by les Montagnards, a Rondo that features a long central episode in E minor. Op. 18 brings us to Les bordes du Rhin, an uplift waltz with an irregular form that alludes to folkloric music by the use of bourdons effects. A fanfare announces both the beginning of the piece and the subsequent episode in D major. Delfzil, portrayed in op. 19, is a city in modern days’ Netherland, but it was for decades in the hands of the French troops, with its famous (no longer existent) fortress. The military story of the town is probably evoked in the stürmisch scherzo in D minor that opens the piece, a scherzo that becomes a proper waltz when the key moves to D major. Le Zuyderzée is a ballade, referring to the episodic poetic form as freely reinterpreted by romantic composers (Chopin above all). It is once again a landscape in modern days Netherlands, the inland sea whose dangers are well depicted in the D minor introduction, before leading to a waltz in several episodes and a virtuosic finale. Les Cloches, op. 21 is more loosely connected to a precise place, and it is a rarity in Coste’s production in that it features one of the very few learned forms in his works: the introduction is a fugue (rather a fugato) with imitations and modulating sections. The Rondeau that follows imitates the bells with its arpeggiated theme with campanella effects. The two last pieces of the set, op. 22 Meulan and op. 23 Les soirées dans Auteil have a French setting, both being depictions of small villages in the surroundings of Paris, where we can guess the composer had a pleasant time off. Whereas Meulan is a rather plain waltz preceded by an introduction and interspersed with free episodes, op. 23 is much more complex and rhapsodic, starting as a serenade and developing into a Scherzo-waltz, sounding like some of Coste’s valses favorites.
We are informed by Coste himself (see the foreword to the Girod edition of Op. 31), that Le Départ was meant to be among the pieces selected to the already mentioned Makaroff competition of 1856, but it was completed only after the submission deadline. This anecdote tells us how much care was put into the composition of a piece that was supposed to display the composer’s ability at its best. In fact, it is one of the very few Coste’s pieces that made it to modern days’ repertoire, also due to the fact that the key of E facilitate the transposition to the six strings instrument. It is a vivid transposition into music of the departure (and return) of the French troops to the Crimea war, a theme that places it firmly in the context of the political and cultural life of Coste’s days Europe. The pieces remarkably balances virtuosic elements and expressive moments, with a formal unity that is seldom to be found in contemporary pieces.
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