William Wordsworth, in the famous preface to his Lyrical Ballads, described good poetry as “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings”. In music, during the first few decades of the 19th Century, the works of Beethoven, Schubert, Weber, Rossini and Hummel started to lift the boil that would overflow in the 1830’s.

Pianist Charles Rosen delimits the Romantic Generation period between Beethoven’s death in 1827 and Chopin’s in 1849; one could likewise establish the French revolutions of 1830 and 1848, whose echoes were deeply felt in musical life, as landmarks. These are convenient beacons to hail the arrival to maturity of a group of composers born between 1805 and 1822; they manage to bracket together an apparently heterogenous musical production which can be observed, in hindsight, as having formulated a number of aesthetic issues today seen as the very definition of musical romanticism – still topical issues displaying analogies with post-modernism.

Inspired by the arts, literature and events of political nature, Schumann, Chopin, Mendelssohn, Liszt, Berlioz, Alkan, Bellini and Meyerbeer managed to transform their personal experience into an independent artistic object, whose aspect was much more ambiguous than the preceding generation. Notions of spontaneity are painfully built over a poetical form, and are contaminated by their own awareness of this process.

The path trodden by the guitar and its composers is not foreign to this movement. The death of Mauro Giuliani in 1929 can be regarded as the end of the so-called Golden Age of the six-string guitar. The revolution of 1830 marks the start of a perceptible decline in popularity and the amount of published music for the guitar; in 1848, the guitar prestige was hopelessly impaired.

The Romantic Generation for the guitar is the backdrop to the turbulent careers of Coste, Mertz, Bobrowicz and Regondi. They share with their eminent contemporaries an interest for the “character piece” and the lied as well as literary fragments, Nature, landscapes and ruins. Sound quality and resonance become part of the composition concept and evoke distance or longing; purely instrumental works draw on dramatic effects devised by Donizetti, Auber or Meyerbeer in their operas; virtuosity mimics operatic voices.

We still cannot be sure of what sort of personal acquaintance Mertz or Coste could have had with the greatest composers of their era, but one cannot deny they were instrumental in making a transition between the still rather classical framework of Sor and Giuliani to a “spontaneous overflow” on the guitar. Napoleon Coste’s (1805-1883) affinity with his contemporary Berlioz is evident (his op.15 is dedicated to the orchestral master, who by the way was also able to play the guitar).

Coste was born in Amondans, in the department of Doubs in western France where his father, an army official who clearly admired the Emperor, was the mayor. He first learned the guitar from his mother and was a pupil of Fernando Sor, the towering guitarist of this epoch, in Paris. With the guitar decline Coste did not enjoy aristocratic support; most of his income came from public concerts and teaching. He was one of the first guitar scholars, making pioneering transcriptions of lute music for the guitar; as a composer, he favoured a 7-string guitar, which seems to have been a sort of standard format in those decades.

There is a tradition of celebrating country life in French art; Coste knew that first-hand. The spring of River Lison, 12 kilometres far from Amondans, is one the most spectacular tourist attractions in the area. Limpid waters emerge from a yawning cave, forming an abundant waterfall. The scenery is complete with a windmill, beautiful mountains and good country food. One can detect a berliozian descriptive character in the tripartite form of La Source du Lyson, op.47: the first part describes the water murmurs, the second is a bucolic idyll and the third a country party, whose character is made the more rustic by the presence of a drone.

Guitarist and scholar Brian Jeffery sees an aesthetic penchant shared with painter Gustavo Courbet, who also came from Doubs and painted the Lison source on more than one occasion; for Jeffery, Caste’s intention is to reflect painting in music, and his departure from the typical sonatas and fantasies of Sor’s generation corresponds to Courbet’s adoption of realistic subjects and consequent rupture with Romanticism in painting.

During the decade following his death in 1828, Schubert’s music was already something to be rescued. His songs, particularly, became staple of social gatherings around Europe, partially thanks to Schumann’s and Liszt’s championing. His music went “viral” to such an extent publishers attributed to Schubert the authorship of spurious works by minor composers to boost sales.

That was the case of the song Adieu!. Next to nothing is known about the real author, August Heinrich von Weyrauch, other than having had it published in German as Nach Osten in 1824. It appeared in Paris as genuine Schubert around 1835 with syrupy lyrics in French, thus gaining popularity with its cavatina aspect. Even Schumann regarded it as authentic Schubert; Liszt transcribed it for the piano; Coste and Tarrega made versions for the guitar. Tarrega’s version is here played with minor adjustments. It is not too far-fetched to sense some influence of it in Gounod’s vocal style or in Fauré’s Après un Reve.

Giulio Regondi’s (1822?-1872) is one of the most formidable cases of repertoire resurrection in the last decades. Virtually unknown until the 1970’s, largely due to the lack of interest of 20th-Century guitar virtuosos for 19th-Century repertoire, a new edition of his few extant works, almost all originally published in 1864 (with the exception of the 10 Etudes), as well as the advocacy of prominent younger guitarists, immediately placed his name in the top drawer. The fact is, in a period where there is a great disparity of artistic standard between guitar compositions and those of best-known composers like Schumann or Chopin, Regondi’s works are some of the few that can be favourably compared to the best of 19th Century, displaying affinity with Mendelssohn’s and occasionally Alkan’s style. In Regondi’s works, an innocent expression and repetitivity are widely compensated by the compositional ingenuity and irresistibly sincere feeling.

His biography jumps from the page as a Dickensian affair. He was probably born in Lyon (other sources say Geneva), around 1822, and his birth is surrounded by controversy. Apparently his German mother died at birth and he was risen by a father of disputable origin; some biographers describe A. Regondi as an impostor with some musical talent, who unscrupulously forced the boy into a precocious career. Before age 10 he had already toured Europe as a child prodigy, often sharing the stage with his foster father.  Fernando Sor dedicated a work to him when he was barely eight-years-old; in 1831 his concerts in London elicited superlative reviews: “this is the most enchanting musical prodigy our epoch has produced”. His exceptional talent seemed to be even more remarkable by an intelligence above his years, politeness, demeanour and angelic appearance.

When he reached his teens and was getting ready for yet another tour, his father left him alone in Brighton with some pocket money, taking with himself some two thousand pounds (a fortune at the time) he had earned with his concerts. He managed to recover with the help of friends and established residence in London. In a dramatic overturn, the devoted Giulio would still tend the old and sick Regondi in his last years. In the 1840’s he still had some success in his European tours, occasionally sharing the stage with celebrities like Moscheles, Clara Schumann or Maria Malibran.

Regondi later became just as well known as a virtuoso of the concertina, a kind of hexagonal accordion; his works are also central to this instrument’s repertoire. At a certain point he was sponsored by the inventor of the concertina, Sir Charles Wheatstone.

Introduction and Caprice, op.24 is Regondi’s best-known work. Written in a favourite form of the time, it conjures the atmosphere and shares many stylistic features with Mendelssohn’s Rondo Capriccioso, op.14; both works generate expectation with a dreamy introduction in E major, from whose depths a lyrical melody emerges; both rondos are written in E minor and ternary rhythm, fairy-like in Mendelssohn, impetuous in Regondi; both proceed to present supple melodies, unfolded from arpeggio textures and amplified by assertive E major episodes. The unprecedented technical demands of the Capriccio become even harder due to the delicacy and inventiveness required by the work’s character. A comparison between both works bears an argument in favour of Mendelssohn’s astonishing technical control as a teenager, manifested in details above all, but Regondi is also projected as an original composer of great emotional intensity, within the naturally narrower scope of the guitar.

The most remarkable case of musical precocity in musical history, Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy was one of the most admired composers of his time; possessing a vast cultural background and excelling himself not only as a composer but also as a pianist, conductor and organizer; he conquered audiences around Europe in his early youth and placed himself in a position where he could determine the vagaries of musical taste and became influential to a whole generation of composer through his educational work. An absolute favourite of the British public and the director of the Gewandhaus Orchestra and of the Leipzig conservatoire, he was respected by his fellow composers; as his reputation grew, he gradually renounced his dashing outlook to remain in the comfort zone of impeccably finished works.

His 48 Songs Without Words define an aspect of musical life in the 1830’s and 40’s : in opposition to a growing extravagant virtuosity, they favour the expression of the deep and inexpressible self in clearly outlined melodies. As they cover all levels of technical accomplishment, a vast market of amateur pianists all over Europe absorbed these miniatures, thus contributing to increase their author’s prestige. Many of them were born as gifts to relatives and friends; every couple of years he gathered half a dozen of them for publication.

Mendelssohn seems to have had a great time during his visit to Venice in 1830. A letter says: “At this moment the gondoliers are shouting to each other again, and the lights are reflected in the depths of the waters; one is playing a guitar, and singing to it. It is a charming night.” Since this is one of the few references Mendelssohn makes about the guitar in his correspondence, the transcription of this mysterious serenade, Venetian Boat Song, acts as an illustration of the ways his imagination worked when he was writing for the piano. Consolation is a title originated with publishers rather then given by Mendelssohn himself, but it seems appropriate to its peaceful character.

An impression of vivid colours jump out of the pages by Johann Caspar Mertz (1806-1856) when compared to the previous generation. They are works of dazzling formal freedom and contrast, full of descriptive effects and expression marks. In his memoirs, the Russian guitarist Makaroff describes his meeting with Mertz and calls him “the great guitar composer I had given up to find.” … ”… the music played by Mertz, to which I listened with ever-growing rapture, contained everything – rich composition, great musical knowledge, excellent development of an idea, unity, novelty, grandeur of style, absence of trivial expression and a multiplicity of harmonic effects”.

Born in Pressburg (today Bratislava, Slovakia) and a son of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Mertz made a career in Vienna. One of Chopin’s early letters described his meetings with the most celebrated musicians, amongst whose Mertz’s name is mentioned, upon his arrival to Vienna. It is unquestionable he had a superior musical culture, possibly aided by his pianist wife. Many of his pieces are modelled after similar works by Schubert, Chopin and Liszt. His Schubert songs transcriptions are also modelled after Liszt’s, published only a couple of years earlier.

His most substantial pieces are 33 fantasies upon opera themes from Mozart to Wagner, collected in his Open-Revue, op.8, but the best-loved today is Bardenklänge, op.13, a collection of poetic miniatures. Here we can better sense his alignment with the Romantic generation, in titles like Fingal’s Cave, Gondoliera, To the Distant Beloved or Evening Song. This Song Without Words clearly evokes Mendelssohn’s works of the same title and exhibits Mertz’s poetics in a sensitive and sober manner.

The reception to Schumann’s (1810-1856) music in his own time was frequently tinged by doubts in relation to his sanity, but today he is indisputably viewed as the towering figure of the first German Romanticism, the Romantic composer par excellence: he was a poet as well as a musician, a lonely manic-depressive who lavished his extraordinary imagination on real life as well as on his music; he was adept of miniatures and open endings as well as a profound reader of classical tradition. Liszt saw Chopin as the “tallest”, while for him Schumann had “wider shoulders”, referring to his achievements in the field of symphonic and vocal music. His music seems to summarize the aspirations of the first Romanticism.

Schumann was married to one of the greatest pianists of his time, Clara Wieck; together, they had seven children who reached adult age. A wedding that had started as a fairy-tale assumed tragic contours as Robert’s mental condition gradually deteriorated, while Clara had to fulfil both the role of mother and international concert artist. Much of Schumann deepest and most original music was written between his wedding in 1840 and his voluntary retirement to an asylum in 1854. Concurrently, nothing was more important for him than parenthood. In a time when paternal authority tended to keep a certain aloofness, Schumann was seen as an eccentric for enjoying playing or creating stories for his children; he kept a diary where he jotted down the main events of their brief lives and was a pioneer activist for the creation of kindergartens (still a novelty in 1840’s Germany).

Few composer of such stature dedicated such a consistent effort to the creation of music for or about children (Villa-Lobos and Bartók are his only serious competitors in that field). Part of that output, like Scenes from Childhood, op.15, look into the emotional universe of children from an adult point of view. The remaining are designed for small hands, notably the Album for the Young, op.68, devised to nurture musical skills as well as to awaken sensibility.

The three Children Sonatas, op.118, are a last gift of love. They were composed in 1853, when Schumann was already victim to paralysing phobias and hallucinations, shortly before his confinement. In that year his three daughters turned, respectively, 12, 10 and 8. Technical difficulty in those pieces is progressive and masterminded to attend each girl’s age group.

The first Sonata’s four movements display a more ambitious architectural arch than the miniatures of op.68; each movement brings enchanting or picturesque details, swinging between sorrow and whoopee. Julian Bream’s transcription is just perfect. He not only preserves most of the original content but also runs it through a “photographic filter”, from which all colours come out more vivid and intense.

While Coste and Mertz are familiar names among guitar students today, one cannot say the same of the Polish patriot Jan Nepomucen “de” Bobrowicz (1805-1881), of whose adventurous biography very little was known until very recently. Born in 1805 in Cracow into a noble family, he probably first learned the guitar from his father. Between 1816 and 18, that is between the ages of 11 and 13, he studied in Vienna with Mauro Giuliani, the most celebrated guitarist in the Germanic world at the time.

It is documented he worked at the Cracow Senate in 1829 and served as a lieutenant in the insurrection for the Polish independency in 1830. When the insurrection was crushed, he tried to escape to France, but health problems (along with an amorous involvement with a local young lady) forced him to remain in Leipzig. This decision had the effect of ruining his musical career; he became a political émigré for 17 years, being constantly monitored by the secret service. He had to renew his visa every three months and was occasionally arrested; he was not allowed to travel or to open up his own business; his problems with the authorities even delayed his wedding. Saxon citizenship was only granted to him in 1848; soon after he opened up his own publishing company, Libraries Étrangère, which released hundreds of books in Polish.

Bobrowicz abandoned his musical career with the mission of preserving Polish literary culture and national conscience during the occupation period. His company, not surprisingly, went bankrupt and he moved to Dresden, where he lived for the remainder of his life still working in the editorial business. Bobrowicz’s musical career in Saxony didn’t last more than five years. He published some 25 works; there are no records of any public appearances after 1834 or new publications after 1837, and there are no records of him ever having played his own works in concert.

His works are predominantly composed of themes with variations and light short works; occasionally they display a military character. One should regret, therefore, the lack of continuity in his production after this First Grand Polonaise, op.24, published around 1836, a piece bearing an uniquely wide scope in the Romantic guitar literature which, in spite of some awkward compositional details, also displays remarkable originality in its tonal structure and an ambitious attempt at rescuing the polonaise genre from its sentimental aspect to draw a heroic and lofty narrative.

The main theme is akin to those of Chopin’s heroic polonaises, which, with the exception of the two Polonaises op.26, were published after Bobrowicz’s op.24. The third episode in the rondo-sonata-form is especially remarkable: it brings successively sections in A minor and A flat major in a long transition of harmonic instability before the second theme reprise. It is a work of extreme technical difficulty as well, rather higher than Giuliani’s and only comparable to Regondi’s works published thirty years later.

Franz Liszt’s (1811-1886) posthumous reputation has suffered swings as extreme as his life’s. While many of his works can be justifiably condemned for shallow bombast, an encompassing overview of his output reveals him as arguably the most complete musician in history: legendary pianist, inventor of the solo recital, forerunner of the superstar mystique, conductor and champion of then-avant-garde music, with an absolute command of all aspects of music making and an imaginative attitude towards the music of his time as well as the masterworks from the past he seemed to know better than their own authors. No musical possibility escaped unscathed by his monumental curiosity; even in some of his more trivial works one can often find a provocative chord or an original musical gesture. He put all of himself in all genres, abandoned himself to artistic and literary influences like no other; in his dramatic fantasies and characteristic pieces of his youth as well as the mature experimental symphonic poems or the vast sacred works of his creative twilight, much of the musical future was foreboded by Liszt.

Only in the 20th Century the private world of the old Liszt – insomniac, depressive and bitter  – came to light and listeners felt in them the germ of the modernity of Bartók and Kurtág. Short, ascetic works never intend for public consumption, sketched in embarrassment, as though they had been jotted down at the margin of a book, those miniatures are, in fact, references to the tradition of the literary fragment and distil the essence of the sombre scales of Magyar music which so affected him.

I’ve chosen Andantino and Nuages Gris to create a bond between the Romantic aesthetic formulations and its reverberations today. The former belongs to a group of short works attempting to rescale the idea of sacred music as instrumental music, in a sparse, raw-boned style teeming with reticence and sursum corde; I see a parallel with the so called mystic minimalist of today. The latter, a micro-masterwork, reflects the deep pessimism of the senior composer, in an only-suggested key of G minor, never completely resolved and constantly dissolved by augmented chords and chromatic sequences; the disturbing final chords allow for an open end.

In a sense, the artists of the Romantic Generation perpetuated themselves forever young. Impetuous, iconoclastic, they also found refuge in escapist imagination, in a longing for lost innocence of childhood, in a reformist attitude, in a longing for the distant and unfathomable.  Those were also lives of poets, truncated still in youth, tinted by tragedy, by disappointment and illness. Poets such as Byron, Keats, Shelley and Musset died far too early; likewise, Schubert died at 31, Bellini at 33, Chopin at 39, all of them after a life marred by severe illness. Happier was Mendelssohn, who, died, though, burned out at 39; Schumann at 46, in a mental asylum; Liszt’s life of a travelling virtuoso also died, and from then on he started a new creative life and an aesthetic detour. Mertz at 50, consumed by illness; Coste, Bobrowicz and Regondi lived long enough to witness such a profound decline of interest for the guitar to the point of artistic death. Coste was forced to finance the publication of his own works; Bobrowicz quit his career in early youth; Regondi still managed to retain some interest as a virtuoso, but he also relinquished his public life at 42.

Around 1850 the guitar had fallen in complete oblivion and had to wait for the rise of Tarrega and Segovia, in the early 20th Century, to recover its prestige. When the next romantic generation, that of Brahms, Bruch, Bizet and Saint-Saëns, reached maturity after 1850, it was clear a new – and newly conformist – attitude had been installed.