Napoleon Coste

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Napoléon Coste (around 1870)

Napoléon Coste (pronounced cost ), according to the birth certificate of the "eighth Messidor of the 13th year of the Republic" Claude Antoine Jean George Napoléon Coste (born June 27, 1805 in Amondans ( Doubs department ), † February 17, 1883 in Paris ) was a French Guitarist , guitar teacher and composer . He enriched the guitar literature through the consistent development of the polyphonic possibilities of the guitar and was an outstanding representative of the romantic epoch of the guitar.

Life

Napoléon Coste was born in 1805 in the French Jura, near the Swiss border. The Coste family moved to Ornans in 1809 . His father Jean-François Coste (born April 23, 1754 in Cléron / Doubs; † April 12, 1835), mayor (1803-1807) of Amondans and captain in the French army, envisaged a military career for the son. This plan was abandoned when his son became seriously ill at the age of eleven. Napoléon received his first guitar lessons at the age of six from his mother Anne-Pierrette, née Dénéria (* 1766). Before 1815 the family moved to Valenciennes in northern France. There Coste gave guitar lessons at the age of 18 and gave his first concerts with the local Philharmonic Society. After Fritz Buek he led the Variazioni concertanti Op. In 1828 together with the guitar virtuoso Luigi Sagrini . 130 by Mauro Giuliani .

In 1830 Coste moved to Paris, then the center of guitar music, where a real guitaromania , an enthusiasm for the instrument, had arisen during this time . There he took lessons in harmony, counterpoint and composition and came into contact with the "classics" among the guitarists Dionisio Aguado , Matteo Carcassi , Ferdinando Carulli and especially Fernando Sor , with whom he studied. Coste started composing in the late 1930s. He was able to bring out his first works with Richault and other publishers. However, after 1840 the guitar's popularity declined in favor of the piano. In addition, Coste's works often had high technical requirements, which also limited the sales editions. Therefore, he soon had to self-publish his works.

In 1856 Coste won second prize behind Johann Kaspar Mertz in a Europe-wide composition competition for guitar in Brussels . In 1863 he had to give up his concert activities: he broke his right arm when he fell on a staircase, whereupon his right hand lost mobility. Coste had to limit himself to composition and lessons and was also dependent on a job as an employee of the Paris city administration for a living. Coste died in Paris in 1883.

Coste as a composer

Costes' edition of Fernando Sor's Méthode with a picture of a heptachorde

Coste's compositions are shaped by the influence of his teacher and friend Fernando Sor and are characterized by a consistent polyphony in the melody. Often the melodies are performed in two, three or even four voices in contrapuntal. Besides waltzes, minuets, rondos and sonatas, his musical forms are often free fantasies. In the Romantic style, his compositions often refer to landscapes (Souvenir de Flandres, Le Passage des Alpes, Le Zuyderzée, etc.) , seasons or special moods (Marche funèbre - funeral march) . Like many other composers, he arranged contemporary opera arias, some with variations, for his instrument.

Coste composed around 60 works for guitar and chamber music as well as songs with guitar accompaniment. Of these, 53 have been published with opus numbers. One part is written for a 7-string guitar with an additional, mostly free-swinging low D-string, which was occasionally tuned to C. The preoccupation with the 7-string guitar goes back to the collaboration with the Parisian guitar maker René François Lacôte , who built such an instrument ( heptachorde ) according to Costes specifications in 1835 .

In 1845 Coste Fernando published Sor's guitar school "edited and expanded": He renounced Sor's extensive theoretical explanations of his playing style, some of which had served as a response to contemporary reviews, and added numerous musical examples of his own to the school. He also added six pieces by the French baroque guitarist Robert de Visée , a selection of 26 etudes from Sor's etude works Op. 6, 29, 31 and 35 and an explanation of how to play the 7-string guitar.

meaning

The decline in interest in the guitar in the second half of the 19th century also meant that Coste's works, especially the technically difficult pieces, were forgotten. After Costes death, individual works were repeatedly reissued in Germany and thus remained lively in guitar literature. These included Feuilles d'automne op.41, 12 Valses - Autumn Leaves, 12 Waltzes , Récréation du Guitariste op.51 , Le Livre d'Or du Guitariste - The guitarist's golden book op.52 (arrangements of melodies by Robert de Visée, Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven ao for guitar) and especially the 25 Etudes op. 38 from 1872 for advanced to virtuoso guitar technique. This work is still considered to be one of the best collections of concert studies.

Since the last years of the 20th century, guitarists have been playing more and more of Coste's works at concerts and recordings.

Works and editions of works

  • Napoleon Coste: The Guitar Works , facsimile edition, Vol. I – IX, edited by Simon Wynberg, Editions Chanterelle, Monaco 1981–1983.
  • Fernando Sor, Napoléon Coste: Méthode complète pour la Guitare par Ferdinand Sor, rédigée et augmentée… par N. Coste . Paris, 1845/1851.
  • Livre d'or (The guitarist's golden book), op. 52. 37 popular pieces by Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Weber, Handel, Donizetti, Couperin ,. Visée ao B. Schott's Sons, Mainz (= guitar archive. Volume 14).

literature

  • Fritz Buek: The guitar and its masters , Berlin, 1926.
  • Konrad Ragossnig : Handbook of the guitar and lute , Mainz, 2003.
  • H. Radke: Coste, Napoléon. In: Music in the past and present. Volume XV (Supplement), ed. by Friedrich Blume, Kassel and Basel 1956, column 1616 f.
  • Brian Jeffery: Napoleon Costes Youth. In: Guitar & Laute 4, 1982, No. 5, pp. 252-256.
  • Simon Wynberg: ... to the rescue of Napoleon Costes. In: Guitar & Laute 3, 1981, Heft 5, pp. 29-38.

Web links

Remarks

  1. ^ Brian Jeffery: Napoleon Costes Youth. In: Guitar & Laute 4, 1982, No. 5, pp. 252-256; here: p. 254 f.
  2. ^ Brian Jeffery: Napoleon Costes Youth. In: Guitar & Laute 4, 1982, No. 5, pp. 252-256; here: pp. 253–256.
  3. ^ Guitar mania ; compare the five lithographs by Charles de Marescot, titled “La Guitaromanie” in 1825 in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris
  4. ↑ Erik Stenstadvold: Napoleon Costes contribution to the "20 Etudes" by Fernando Sor. In: Guitar & Laute 6, 1984, Heft 3, pp. 14-17.
personal data
SURNAME Coste, Napoleon
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French guitarist and composer
DATE OF BIRTH June 27, 1805
PLACE OF BIRTH Amondans (Doubs department)
DATE OF DEATH February 17, 1883
Place of death Paris