John Williams: an Evaluation of His Impact Upon the Culture of the Classical Guitar
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Technological University Dublin ARROW@TU Dublin Doctoral Applied Arts 2018 John Williams: An Evaluation of his Impact Upon the Culture of the Classical Guitar Michael O'Toole Technological University Dublin Follow this and additional works at: https://arrow.tudublin.ie/appadoc Part of the Composition Commons, and the Musicology Commons Recommended Citation O'Toole, Michael (2018* John Williams: An evaluation of his impact upon the culture of the classical guitar. Doctoral thesis, DIT, 2018. doi:10.21427/D70129 This Theses, Ph.D is brought to you for free and open access by the Applied Arts at ARROW@TU Dublin. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral by an authorized administrator of ARROW@TU Dublin. For more information, please contact [email protected], [email protected]. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 License John Williams: An evaluation of his impact upon the culture of the classical guitar Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Dublin Institute of Technology Conservatory of Music and Drama Supervisor: Dr Maria McHale January 2018 Michael O’Toole Declaration I certify that this thesis which I now submit for examination for the award of PhD, is entirely my own work and has not been taken from the work of others, save and to the extent that such work has been cited and acknowledged within the text of my work. This thesis was prepared according to the regulations for graduate study by research of the Dublin Institute of Technology and has not been submitted in whole or in part for another award in any other third level institution. The work reported on in this thesis conforms to the principles and requirements of the DIT's guidelines for ethics in research. DIT has permission to keep, lend or copy this thesis in whole or in part, on condition that any such use of the material of the thesis be duly acknowledged. Signature __________________________________ Date _______________ Candidate ii Table of Contents Title page [i] Declaration [ii] Table of Contents [iii] List of Musical Examples [v] Acknowledgements [vi] Abstract [vii] Introduction [viii] Chapter One: The Impact of Andrés Segovia upon the popularity of the classical guitar 1.1 Career, tributes and reception [2] 1.2 Other contributions to classical guitar culture in the early twentieth-century [9] 1.3 Attitudes to other musical styles [17] 1.4 Teaching [25] 1.5 Interpretation of the Segovia legacy [28] Chapter Two: John Williams and the Segovia legacy 2.1 Andrés Segovia and John Williams [38] 2.2 Contrasting approaches to popular and folk music styles [44] 2.3 Williams and politics [48] 2.4 Shifting attitudes about classical guitar [55] 2.5 Conclusion [60] Chapter Three: John Williams’ approach to the classical guitar 3.1 Following the pulse [63] 3.2 Performance anxiety [73] 3.3 Approach to J.S. Bach’s Chaconne in d minor [76] 3.4 Contrasting approaches to Mauro Giuliani’s Guitar Concerto in A Opus 30. [81] 3.5 Ensemble playing [83] 3.6 Amplification and other manipulations of the natural sound [87] iii 3.7 Squeaks [95] 3.8 Guitar design [99] 3.9 Williams and guitar teaching [105] 3.10 Summary [112] Chapter Four: ‘Putting the guitar out of classical music’ 4.1 Cavatina and other film projects [113] 4.2 Sky [117] 4.3 Africa [126] 4.4 Venezuela – El Diablo Suelto [134] 4.5 John Williams and jazz [142] 4.6 Summary [151] Chapter Five: New directions in classical guitar 5.1 Sculthorpe [154] 5.2 Takemitsu [164] 5.3 Dodgson [169] 5.4 Performing with Julian Bream [174] 5.5 Richard Harvey [181] 5.6 Williams’ own compositions [184] 5.7 Programme choices [190] 5.8 Leo Brouwer [197] 5.9 Agustin Barrios Mangoré [204] 5.10 Summary [215] Conclusion [217] Bibliography [228] Webography [240] Discography [244] iv List of Musical Examples Ex. 3.1.1 Joaquin Rodrigo, Concierto de Aranjuez II (Piano Reduction), 7-10 [69] Ex. 3.3.1 Johann Sebastian Bach. Chaconne in d minor, (Ed. Carl Flesch 1931), 1-10 [79] Ex. 4.4.1 Vicente Emilio Soho, Aguinaldo, 1-4 [139] Ex. 4.5.1 André Previn, Concerto for Guitar and Orchestra, 1-4 [143] Ex. 4.5.2 André Previn, Concerto for Guitar and Orchestra, 1st violin, 73-74 [144] Ex. 4.5.3 André Previn, Concerto for Guitar and Orchestra, 77-78 [144] Ex. 4.5.4 André Previn, Concerto for Guitar and Orchestra, 88-90 [145] Ex. 5.1.1 Sculthorpe, Nourlangie, Figure 7 [157] Ex. 5.1.2 Sculthorpe, Nourlangie, Figure 21 [160] Ex. 5.1.3.i Sculthorpe, From Kakadu, 129 [163] Ex. 5.1.3.ii Sculthorpe, From Kakadu, 153 [163] Ex. 5.6.1 Hello Francis, John Williams, 1-4 [186] Ex. 5.6.2 Hello Francis, John Williams, 26-30 [186] Ex 5.6.3 Hello Francis, John Williams, 36-41 [187] Ex. 5.6.4.i Hello Francis, John Williams, 50-57 [187] Ex. 5.6.4.ii BWV 1000, Fugue in A minor, JS Bach, 40-43 [187] v Acknowledgements I would like to express my deepest gratitude to Dr Maria McHale who, with her insight, generosity and professionalism, has been absolutely indispensible in guiding me through the process of completing the study. I would like to thank Dr McHale, both for her critical expertise and for educating me in the field of musicology. I would also like to thank Dr John Feeley for his help, counsel and friendship in the first year of this study. I would also like to express my sincere thanks to John Williams for agreeing to be interviewed as part of the study. His open spirit and honesty as well as his unerringly accurate memory, was extremely helpful and he provided a valuable extra layer of depth to the research. I am also grateful to Kathy Panama, for her generosity and for allowing me into her home. John and Kathy were so welcoming in London and made the interview process both informative and personally gratifying. I would like to thank Dr Kerry Houston for initially allowing me the opportunity to pursue this course of study. I am grateful to Mark Delpriora for providing me with an illuminating early review of John Williams from 1953 (which appears in Chapter Two) and to Dr Frank Lyons, for his encouraging advice. Additionally, I thank Jennifer Hartery for sending me two books, which provided very useful information, particularly with regard to Barrios. I would like to thank my parents Cora and Michael, for their continuing love and support. I would also like to thank Dawn Kenny for her companionship, love, expertise and advice throughout the process. I dedicate the thesis to my children, Morgan, Faith andCameron, who have been a continuous source of inspiration and optimism throughout this study. vi Abstract This thesis examines the career of the Australian guitarist John Williams and his impact upon the culture of the classical guitar. Williams has been a celebrated guitarist for more than six decades and has performed and recorded extensively during that period. He has made a remarkably varied contribution to guitar culture, performing in a wide variety of different styles, highlighting the guitar’s unique strength as a versatile and adaptable instrument. Williams’ career is in marked contrast to that of many of his contemporaries, including his mentor Andrés Segovia. Segovia believed the classical guitar must assert its individuality in order to be accepted as a concert instrument. Although Segovia attempted to disassociate the classical guitar from its usage in more popular and folk genres, John Williams’ approach has been more inclusive and his work has forged links between the various musical styles into which the guitar has adapted. His work reflects the diversity of the guitar and has helped to develop new voices within the realm of contemporary guitar repertoire. This study examines reception of Williams’ work, and explores the impact of his career up to the present time. His own reflections on music are studied with the inclusion of an extensive interview, conducted in 2017 in London. The various strands of music drawn together by his career are examined and reviewed as a singular and significant contribution to guitar culture. vii Introduction In the guitar world now, the boundaries between styles are thankfully disappearing. Groups like the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet and the Assad Duo have considerably broadened their audience base; they are marketed as groups that belong as much to the formerly defined pop world as they do to the classical one. Perhaps the strongest vision in this direction came from the Kronos Quartet, which forever changed the landscape of the string quartet, but Williams had anticipated all of this, doing what he wanted and crossing over stylistic borders freely. The guitar, now played by more peoples of the world than any other instrument, belongs happily to different stylistic and cultural worlds. The nylon-string guitar certainly has a tradition of crossover players, such as Charlie Byrd and Laurindo Almeida, but they did not have as powerful an effect as did Williams, who was already at the top of the classical guitar field.1 In this statement, David Tanenbaum alludes to changes in guitar culture brought about by the career of Australian guitarist John Williams (b.1941). His comments date from 2003 and appeared in his survey essay of twentieth century classical guitar trends in The Cambridge Companion to the Guitar. Although he mentions many other crossover artists, the particular significance of Williams in this account, lies in his enormous impact upon the attitudes of researchers, practitioners and audiences of the classical guitar.