June 2008

The Sublime Barbarian, Trinitario Huerta, and the Guitar as Concert Instrument in the 19^th Century

In his Grand traité d'instrumentation et d'orchestration modernes, Hector Berlioz names three guitarists whose works must be studied to have an idea of what the guitar is capable of: the Italian Marco Aurelio Zani de Ferranti (1802-78), and the Spaniards Fernando Sor (1778-1839) and Trinitario Huerta (1800-74). Every guitarist these days has played something by Sor, many know Zani de Ferranti, but Huerta is almost completely unknown. Who was this guitarist that merited being mentioned as one of the top guitar players of his time?

The guitar and the concert hall have had a conflicted relationship since the early 19^th century. The characteristics of the instrument combined with the associations it provoked have precluded the guitar from being embraced wholly as a concert instrument. On the other hand, the critical mass achieved by the guitar as an instrument of the popular classes and the efforts and talent of dedicated individuals made possible the careers of professional guitarists. Trinitario Huerta was one of them, right at the intersection between a popular musician and a concert musician, between barbarism and culture.

The role of the guitar as a courtly instrument during the 17^th and 18^th C where largely over but it had always remained as a favorite of the lower classes. During the last third of the 18^th century this success transferred to the fashionable salons and the domestic sphere of the bourgeoisie. A market for methods and didactic pieces as well as for guitar teachers developed. The best of these soon attempted careers as professional musicians converging mainly in two European capitals: Vienna and Paris. The first guitarists to reach Paris came from Italy: Ferdinando Carulli (1770-1841) and Francesco Molino (1775-1847). Soon other guitarists would compete for the favor of the Parisians: Mateo Carcassi (1792-1853), Fernando Sor (1778-1839), Dionisio Aguado (1784-1849) and Trinidad Huerta (1800-74) would also crowd the city. The most enigmatic character of the pack is Trinidad Huerta. Very few of his works have survived, and what we have does not seem to merit the enthusiasm he seems to have aroused, but his strength seems to have been his skills as a performer with a unique style and not as a composer. Huerta was musically illiterate but managed to have a successful career, which led the much more refined composer and guitarist Fernando Sor to call him a "sublime barbarian."[1] How was Huerta received? What does his reception tell us about the status of the guitar as a concert instrument?

 A short biography

Trinitario Pasqual Francisco Agustín Pedro Miguel María Huberto Buena Ventura Huerta was born in Orihuela, Spain, on 6 June 1800. His aristocratic family sent him to study in the Colegio de San Pablo in Salamanca where he remained until 1819. At around that time he joined the republican movement led by Colonel Rafael de Riego. A song that would become the Spanish national anthem in 1822-23, the Himno or Marcha de Riego, has been attributed to Huerta. After the defeat and execution of Riego in 1823, Huerta left Spain and settled in Paris under the protection of the Spanish tenor Manuel García, beginning a life of a touring virtuoso and moving to a different country every few years.

In 1824 Huerta became the first guitarist to tour the United States. He arrived in April in the port of New York and very soon met and married Sabina Meucci, the daughter of an Italian painter. In his first concert under the patronage of the Philharmonic Society on May 15, Mrs. Huerta was already announced as assisting Trinitario on the piano. In the United States Huerta sustained himself by giving concerts and teaching guitar. In addition to New York, he also performed in Philadelphia, Saratoga, and Baltimore. In 1825 Sabina deposed a divorce libel accusing Huerta of adultery and of beating her up. That same year Huerta apparently assisted Manuel García in the first performance of Rossini's The Barber of Seville in New York.

In 1826 he apparently went to Havana but in March 1827 arrives in London, where he would stay until 1830. Soon after arriving into London Huerta published Three Waltzes for guitar, which were deemed "fugitive trifles," abounding in "errors of the engraver, or its author has suffered many things to escape him."[2] During this London period Huerta would participate in multiple concerts sharing the stage with artists such as violinists Charles de Bériot and Nicolas Mori, harpist Théodore Labarre, and pianist Ignaz Moscheles. He came under the patronage of Louisa Montefiore and apparently toured the Middle East with her (Malta, Istanbul, Egypt, Lebanon, and Jerusalem) in 1827-28. In 1828 Huerta married Angiolina Panormo (1811-1900), the daughter of the famous English luthier Louis Panormo. Angiolina frequently appeared playing the piano and singing in Huerta's concerts.

In October 1830 Huerta is back Paris. In 1833 Hector Berlioz organized a concert in benefit of Harriet Smithson, who had broken a leg and had fell into debt. Berlioz was also able to get Chopin and Liszt to perform a duo, as well as Chrétien Urhan, who performed a fantasy for viola d'amore, but was very upset because Paganini did not want to participate. During the next ten years Huerta would be at the peak of his career, alternating residence between Paris, Spain, England and Ireland, and touring frequently. In 1846 he is still referred to in the Parisian press as "M. Huerta, le célèbre guitariste"[3] but after his relocation to Spain in 1846 his decline is certain. Around 1848 he marries for the third time to Salvadora Viguria of Pamplona. In 1857 he is begging for help: "my position is so completely disgraced, that I beg you to contribute some aid" (letter to Francisco Asenjo Barbieri). Nonetheless, he would continue to tour, mainly through Spain, but also performing in Marseille, Paris, and Lisbon. In 1865 he once more moves to Paris. In 1871 Huerta performs in Brussels before the queen, but a newspaper article in 1874 says he "has been reduced these last years to the sad condition of a street musician through the streets of Paris"[4]. Huerta died in Paris on 19 June 1874.

 Huerta's style as seen by his contemporaries

Trinitario Huerta was musically illiterate. In this day and age, with the ubiquity of the recording, reproduction, and broadcasting technologies, such a fact is not a serious problem for a musician: we all know how Django Reinhardt or Jimi Hendrix sounded like. But in Huerta's time, it was essential for a composer to be able to capture in paper his musical imagination if he wanted to be appreciated by the public beyond the audience at his recitals. Huerta had to rely almost exclusively in his live performances. The few published works by Huerta that we know are "trifles" or are clearly missing performance instructions. Perhaps Huerta was not really interested in revealing his secrets. It is not a coincidence then that Huerta frequently proclaimed that he was "the Paganini of the guitar," a nickname often used also by the press when referring to him. As Paganini, Huerta was not really interested in allowing other performers access to the palette of tricks that seems to constitute an important part of his style. Moreover, publishing his works was just a way to promote his career as a performer and to get his name known, but it appears he did not think of it as the main means for income or prestige. His career was in his concertizing.

The reviews of his performances reveal some aspects of his style. The earliest review appeared in the Baltimore Patriot in 1824: "In the hands of Mr. Huerta the guitar is as it were, multiplied. It becomes a bugle, a trumpet, a drum. The delicacy of his touch, the rapidity and at the same time the accuracy of his execution are truly wonderful" (1 July 1824). These characteristics of Huerta's style-imitation of other instruments, delicacy of touch, and agility-are repeated in many reviews throughout his career. The first of these, the description of the guitar as a small orchestra, is still used today as an argument to defend it as a 'serious' instrument. Some of the effects used by Huerta were not exclusive of or invented by him; it is clear that it was a goal also for fellow guitarists. Dionisio Aguado dedicates a whole chapter in his Método para guitarra (1837) to the "Riqueza de la guitarra" (Richness of the guitar) in which he explores the timbral possibilities of the instrument: natural and artificial harmonics, trémulo (vibrato) to extend the duration of notes, sounds produced with the left hand only, muffled sounds, imitation of an ensemble of violin, viola and bass (three-part writing), exploitation of the differences in timbre between different strings, playing with or without nails, and campanelas. Aguado furthermore indicates how "with some degree of propriety the guitar can imitate the effect of some instruments,"[5] proceeding to describe how to approximate the sound of a drum (tambora), a trumpet, or a harp. Napoléon Coste (1805-83), in his edition of the guitar method by Fernando Sor some years later, describes how to imitate a horn, a trumpet, an oboe, or a harp on the guitar (Coste 1846, 14-16). The works by Huerta that we know have few indications regarding these effects. Some of the preferred devices that we do have in his written music are natural harmonics (as single or double stops), glissandi, repeated notes in tremolo and repeated chords, vibratos, fast scales and arpeggios. In any case they hardly convey a style that time and again was described for its timbral richness and its nuances. To have a sense of how he sounded like we need to look beyond the written music and into the style of his delivery.

The reviews of Trinitario Huerta's performances almost invariably talk about two things: the performer and his merits and the suitability of the guitar as a concert instrument. In some reviews the former is put aside while most of the space is dedicated to a discussion of the latter:

Mr. Huerta executes on the guitar the greatest difficulties, but when I hear a distinguished artist deploy an unusual talent on the guitar, the feeling that dominates in me is of regret of not seeing such faculties applied in a more useful manner. As a fact it may be disputed, but the guitar is destined to remain constantly in a state of complete inferiority to the other instruments. (Revue Musicale, 21 July 1832)

The guitarist is criticized precisely for showing his talent on an instrument considered inferior. What is questioned is not the merit of the performer but the dedication to such a poor instrument, unsuitable for the concert stage:

The obsession of trying to make of the guitar a concert instrument and to impose on it ideas for which it does not have sufficient and adequate means of expression, is precisely the cause of its oblivion and abandonment, which will last for a long time if no attempt is made to keep it in line with what corresponds to it among the great family of instruments, writing in accord to its true nature and its natural means of expression.[6]

The guitar is also described as an ingrate instrument and Huerta is praised for overcoming the instrument's shortcomings: "The most celebrated artist of the evening was Mr. Huerta, Spanish guitarist who extracts prodigious effects from an ingrate instrument."[7] A very similar comment is made by the influential critic Henri Blanchard twelve years later: ""The famous guitarist was worthy of his previous improvisations on his ungrateful instrument." [8] Why is the guitar ungrateful? I assume it is for its low volume. It is a deficiency that haunts the guitar to this day. Even after the improvements introduced by Antonio de Torres in the 1860s or Hauser, Ramírez and Smallman in the 20^th century, the volume of the guitar is well below the average of other concert instruments. As a reviewer put it: "Grand Waltz, by A. T. Huerta ... is perhaps as 'grand' as the instrument can make it, and very pleasing; but that anything coming from the guitar should merit the epithet 'grand', is a little surprising" (The Harmonicon, March 1831, p. 70). Guitarists have used any possible means to improve the status of the guitar as a serious instrument. One of the preferred devices has been to exaggerate the interest of famous composers on the guitar. According to the guitar mythology Chopin or maybe Schubert said "nothing sounds more beautiful than a guitar, save perhaps two guitars," Debussy was just about to write a work for guitar when he died, and you can trace the influence of the guitar even in Berlioz's most advanced compositions. On the other hand, critics from Tovey to Boulez have also used Berlioz's association with the guitar to denigrate his music, overestimating its influence in his orchestral writing (Ellis 1986); in a move that says more about the status of the guitar as an outsider than about the actual music.

Not all reviews of Huerta's concerts deal with the guitar as the poor relative of the family of instruments; from about 1832 consider Huerta as an ascending virtuoso: "Mr. Huerta then finally was heard in a piece for guitar and has surprised his listeners with the agility of his execution."[9] "This gentleman, the Paganini of the guitar, attracted a large audience to Willis's Room on the 26^th ult., when he gave his friends and patrons an excellent programme, and performed several fantasias on his instrument in the most admirable manner" (The Musical World, no. 27, 5 July 1838, p. 166). Hector Berlioz was also enthusiastic:

This man has found the means not only of making the guitar sing, but also to draw from it plaintive cries and true moanings. Nothing is more deliciously crazy than his Andalusian gaiety; but there is also nothing more touching than his melancholy, especially when he murmurs these Irish ballads, which seem to have been composed for some sylphid by Ariel, suffering from love."[10] (Journal des débats, 16 February 1840)

Huerta's repertoire consisted of the standard mixture of salon dances (minuets, waltzes), variations, fantasies on operas and miscellaneous pieces. A favorite of Huerta was his arrangement of the Marcha de Riego, which appears in the programs as early as his performances in the United States in 1824, remaining in his repertoire through his last years. Huerta used the march to display all his arsenal of effects, from bugles and flutes to cannons and drums.

He seems to have incorporated more and more Spanish popular music toward his later years. The guitar was slowly returning to its popular origins. It was "still a favourite with the lower classes" (The Musical World, Madrid, 12 December 1839) when its appeal as a concert instrument was waning. Huerta moved with the times incorporating more Spanish music to his repertoire as time went by: "Huerta's favorite genre is without a doubt the national airs, in which the grace and self-confidence of his style excel."[11] But at the same time this was a dangerous outcome for his career because it slowly removed him from the main concertizing venues. Even though nationalistic music and Spanish music in particular were becoming a favorite of French composers, neither them, nor audiences were that interested in the real thing, in the low-class guitar music performed on the instrument, but wanted distilled, stylized versions of folk music. Huerta's appeal as a Spanish musician brought him the admiration of an élite of Parisian artists, such as Delphine Gay (1804-1855), who dedicated a poem to him, or Victor Hugo. In a letter attributed to the latter and addressed to Huerta the author summarizes all the praise the guitarist would receive through his life:

The guitar, such a limited instrument, knows no bounds in your hands. You make it produce all sounds, all chords, all melodies. You know how to draw from those few strings the most varied notes: those that speak to the soul, to the mind, to the heart. Your guitar is an orchestra. I love Spain and the Spaniards very much, Señor Huerta, and therefore the guitar as well-but especially in your hands. There it is not only a string that breathes; it is a voice, a true voice that sings, that speaks, and that weeps: one of those deep voices that makes those who are happy think and brings those who are sad to meditation. (16 February 1834, in Saldoni II:522)

Was flamenco part of Huerta's style on the guitar? Some comments seem to hint at this. In his guitar method Aguado discusses the advantages and disadvantages of the use of nails versus fingertips. He recommends to play without nails, mentioning Sor as an example of what is possible with such a technique, but then adds:

Nevertheless, there is a certain genre of guitar execution in which, because of the speed of the notes, it is convenient to attack the string with a body that offers less surface and that does not grab it: this is, to my judgment, the case when it is appropriate pluck with nails. The brightness with which my compatriot Mr. Huerta makes everything heard is due, in great measure, to the fact that he plucks with his nails, and on that depends a great proportion of the particular effects that his way of playing produces in the audience. (Aguado 1837)

Some reviews, especially of concerts in Spain, emphasize Huerta's proficiency at Spanish music. This review sounds pretty much like a description of a flamenco guitarist: "But where Mr. Huerta caused the greatest enthusiasm was in the last piece, because he played motives of jaleo, with that grace only available to an Andalusian soul, at the turn of diverse rasguidos and runs as capricious as sparkly and graceful."[12] A photographic portrait by Nadar shows Huerta with his instrument. The top of the guitar shows the signs of wearing that would not happen with a regular classical guitar technique. It seems that, at least in his later years, Huerta incorporated profuse strumming to his style. This contrasts with a description of the guitar given by Fétis twenty years before, where, after praising the refinement of Sor, Aguado, Huerta, and Carcassi, he adds that the guitar in Spain "is not used but to accompany boleros, tiranas, and other national airs, and those who make use of it play as by instinct, strumming the string artlessly, by the back of their fingers."[13]

Fernando Sor had realized that to have a chance of succeeding as a concert guitarist he had to get rid of the associations of the guitar with the lower classes and folk music. The guitar was too close to the roots to be medium for nationalistic music in a concert hall. Sor had started his career writing boleros and seguidillas, but even though he remained a fervent Spanish nationalist, he wrote in an international style once he left his country. Sor knew that to have a chance at competing with pianists and violinists as a touring virtuoso he had to remove the associations of the guitar with popular music.[14]

 Conclusion

In a recital by Huerta in 1863 not everything went well, but it was not the quality of the performance or even the suitability of the guitar at a concert what triggered a negative response from the public; it was the repertoire:

Huerta played, among other Spanish airs, some variations on the popular anthem of Riego, which so much applause has brought him here and abroad. These reminiscences of better days, to be excused from an old person, were received with coughs and whistles from a few spectators from the boxes and seats, who thus exhibited their courtesy and tolerance. Mr. Huerta, disturbed for a moment, had the good taste to continue the anthem, which concluded with the profuse applause of the audience, protesting in this way against the tendencies of the whistlers. We allow ourselves to give a warning, and that is that those who believe that for the reason that the anthem and other patriotic songs as this are not in fashion, they can ridicule them with impunity..."

The March of Riego had fallen out of fashion in 1863, but in 1931 it would once again become the Spanish National Anthem until 1937. Who knows? Maybe Huerta will have the same fate as the march that he help disseminate. Perhaps one day we will find a way to recapture his unique style and his name and his music will be better known, at least in the small and peculiar world of the classical guitar.

 Bibliography

Aguado, Dionysio. Método para guitarra. Paris: S. Richault, ca. 1837.

Berlioz, Hector. Evenings with the Orchestra. Chicago, Ill: University of Chicago Press, 1999.

Berlioz, Hector. The Memoirs of Hector Berlioz. New York: A.A. Knopf, 2002.

Bloom, Peter, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Berlioz. Cambridge, Ma: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

Coelho, Victor, ed. The Cambridge Companion to the Guitar. Cambridge, Ma: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

Coste, Napoléon. Méthode compléte pour la guitare / par Ferdinand Sor: rédigée et augmentée de nombreux exemples et leçons, suivis d'une notice sur la 7e corde. Paris ; Bruxelles: Henry Lemoine & Cie., ca. 1846.

Dallman, Paul Jerald. Influence and Use of the Guitar in the Music of Hector Berlioz. Master's Thesis, University of Maryland, 1972.

Ellis, James. "Review: The Musical Language of Berlioz by Julian Rushton ." Music Analysis 5, no. 2/3 (October 1986): 270-280.

Holoman, D. Kern. Berlioz. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1989.

Huerta, A T, Javier Suárez-Pajares, and Robert Coldwell. A. T. Huerta: Life and Works. DGA Editions, 2006.

Radomski, James. "Some Notes Towards the Biography of Trinidad Huerta." Soundboard, vol. 31, nos. 2/3, 39-50.

_______. "Trinidad Huerta y Caturla (1804-1875): First Spanish Virtuoso Guitarist to Concertize in the United States." Inter-American Music Review 15, no. 2 (June 1996): 103-121.

Saldoni, Baltasar, ed. Diccionario biográfico-bibliográfico de efemérides de músicos españoles, 4 vols. Madrid: Baltasar Saldoni, 1861-1881, facsimile ed. by Jacinto Torres. Madrid: Ministerio de Cultura, 1986.

Temperley, Nicholas. "Review: Brian Jeffery. Fernando Sor, Composer and Guitarist." Music & Letters 59, no. 4 (October 1978): 490-492.