2nd part - Special edition - Abel Carlevaro Centenary (1916-2001)

 Grateful collaboration of Alfredo Escande – disciple

and biographer of Abel Carlevaro
(brief interview)

(TP) The effectiveness of Abel Carlevaro's school is already established and concrete - it is the ideal of technique at the service of music, in general matter. However - more specifically - do you have news of writings by Abel Carlevaro, which were dedicated directly to so called "extended techniques"?

Or have you ever seen any application of techniques in specific, published or not, steered to contemporary / experimental repertoire?

(AE) Carlevaro had had within his plans, to write a paper about non-traditional technical resources, which often is called "extended technique" nowadays. Indeed, we started writing drafts, but more urgent things made postpone this goal and he didn’t crystallize it. He was always exploring different sound possibilities, and often I witnessed his exemplifications on various techniques (either alone in his studio as for several international courses). Moreover, a deep conversation about these subjects with Maurice Ohana in Paris, in 1974, forged a work, in fact, made by "two heads and four hands", that is "Estelas" (I've wrote the story of this work together with Ruben Seroussi, as part of my book about Carlevaro).

(TP) Although has been admitted the presence of dissonances, creating works such as Cronomías and others, implies a paradigm shift in such way to understand / feel the guitar, as an openness to new points of view, from a traditional listening to another diverse, from the technique already acquired to the extended one – How it was for Carlevaro? Would it be by contact with colleagues and pieces or we can speak of a kind of "zeitgeist" at those years 60/70 motivating him?

(AE) I think these motivations in Carlevaro are before the date you mention: the contact with Villa-Lobos in the first half of the 40s has started to open his mind, and the same can be said of his contact with Ohana at the end of that decade, and Santórsola in the 60s, and - what is most important - your own restless spirit and open-minded for search and experience.

(TP) Admitting the Carlevaro's school, in the strict sense, comparisons are inevitable ... Sor, Tárrega, the ancient methods by writers like Sanz ... and these with a strong connection to their own compositions, it means that do a "school" involves do pieces, play these studies and works.

In Carlevaro would we have to do the same? Must we go beyond his technical books? So, although compare them would be imperfect, the idea is: doing his technique already would clarify and reduce the problems, however do your school in total ... technique, exercises and – above all - his works, so would the meaning of the Carlevaro's school be done, in full?

(AE) I think the school sense created by Carlevaro cannot be ended in his technical books. It will not be understood, if it doesn't link directly to an aesthetic conception of the guitar, conceived in real terms (and easily noticeable by listening carefully his recordings) as a "small orchestra". Technique books are only a help to lay the foundation to acquire the mechanical fundamentals that can lead to a proper application of these aesthetic criteria. Just by themselves, they have no value (and may even result in negative way: as he has told me, almost literally, when he talked me of his urge to write a theory book: "In Europe they are using my books (Cuadernos de Técnica) without any idea of how to do it and what it is for, and this can be a disaster" – he told me, and concluded:" I have to write the book of theory", and it was when he asked me to help him to do this).

To really get into the Carlevaro school is very important to study and deeply understand his five books of "Applied Technique" (Sor, Villa-Lobos and Bach master classes, already published and unpublished studies about Carcassi).

It is also important to study and understand entirely – his right hand use criteria, your search for (tone) colours, etc. – the music created by him, and also deeply analyse how he did fingerings, arrangements and performance of other authors and be able to understand the reasons for why he did it.