John Schneider: Pastiches
MicroFest Records

Pastiches, the latest recording from renowned microtonal guitarist John Schneider, enchants in a number of ways. Start with a set-list that includes pieces by Manuel Ponce, Lou Harrison, and Benjamin Britten, all executed exquisitely by the guitarist, and then factor in enhancing guest contributions from percussionist Matthew Cook and harpsichordist Gloria Cheng. Add to that the arresting sound worlds created by Schneider's use of different tonalities and you've got a recording that repeatedly rewards. His musicianship is such that one comes away from the album less focused on the technical aspects and simply won over by the material. Schneider helpfully colour-coded the pieces to indicate whether they're played in Well-Temperament, Meantone, and Just Intonation, though the trained ear might be able to identify the tuning from the performance, Just Intonation most easily.

He initiated the project by asking, “How would the guitar's early music pastiches sound if performed in their historically accurate temperaments?” and proceeded from there. Citing the influence of baroque material on the writing of Schoenberg's first twelve-tone composition Suite for Piano (1923) and Stravinsky's foray into neo-classicism as examples of artists creating work ‘in the style of' their predecessors, Schneider notes that earlier composers utilized an array of tunings, such that, in his words, “many modern listeners condemn the application of contemporary equal temperament to J. S. Bach, for example, as a blatant anachronism, guilty of withholding a vital and intentional aesthetic layer from that canonical repertoire.” For Schneider, pastiche is “the art of paying homage to music of the past via mimicry of both style and content.” The pastiches on the album are performed, then, in historically accurate intonation on a variety of refretted guitars.

Pastiches is framed by two treatments of Manuel Ponce's Preludio in E (1931), the first featuring solo guitar and the last guitar and harpsichord. Deemed a “born pasticheur” by Schneider, Ponce took mimicry to a high art when his Preludio and the also-included Suite in A minor (1929) were for decades attributed to Bach's contemporary Sylvius Leopold Weiss until guitarist Andrés Segovia revealed the truth to Frets magazine years later. The first of the two “faux Bach works in an authentic Baroque well temperament,” as Segovia described them, captivates immediately for the precision of Schneider's execution and the tune's enrapturing lilt. Ponce composed the five-part suite at the request of Segovia and as pastiches of Baroque, Classical, and Romantic music. After the silken “Prelude” draws one in, the spell remains in place for the tender “Allemande,” poetic “Sarabande,” lively “Gavotte,” and spirited “Gigue.”

Shifting gears, Alonso Mudarra wrote Fantasia X (1546) for the vihuela, a sixteenth-century Spanish guitar-shaped lute, to imitate the harp in the manner of Italian harp virtuoso Luduvico, the piece therefore not created to echo an earlier style but instead a different instrument. Schneider performs the piece with delicacy and sensitivity to texture but with passion too. In commenting on the writing of his Three Renaissance Micropieces (2014), Dusan Bogdanovic cites Borges' short story “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote” with respect to notions of interpretation and authorship as they pertain to his own re-interpretations of two pieces by Dowland, “Melancholy Galliardette” and “Variations on L. H. Puffe,” which for this beguiling work are completed by the opening “Fantasia.” In contrast to the blink-and-you'll-miss-it character of Bogdanovic's micropieces, Mauro Giuliani's Variations on a Theme by Handel (1827) stretches across ten minutes. Based on the theme from the final movement of Handel's 1720 publication Suite #5 in E Major, HWV 430, for harpsichord, the work builds on its stately opening with subtle changes in tempo, dynamics, and tone.

Harrison's represented by six settings on the album, the first two in Well-Temperament and the others Just Intonation. The Sonata #5 and Sonata #6 (both 1943) are in, respectively, Spanish and Native American Indian dance styles, the fifth a mystery-laden nocturnal excursion and the sixth an intense, high-velocity statement. It's the Just Intonation pieces that are the album's most ear-catching however. The addition of finger cymbal punctuations to Usul (1978) adds to its quasi-psychedelic allure; the slow central Jahla aside, its bookending partners (1972-74) benefit from the inclusion of hand percussion, which bolsters momentum.

To create The Courtly Dances from Gloriana (1953), Britten extracted seven dances from his opera Gloriana months after its apparently disastrous debut. With Cook's percussive touches complementing Schneider's guitar, the pieces barrel forth with energy and enthusiasm. Contrast emerges, however, between the vigour of the “Coranto” and “Morris Dance” and the sober march of the “Pavane” and the graceful dignity of the “Galliard”; Britten's also present as the arranger of Dowland's soothing Come Heavy Sleep (1597/1963). At album's end, Ponce's re-appearing Preludio in E jolts the listener to attention when Cheng's harpsichord adds layers of radiance to Schneider's guitar.

September 2024