Here's a filmed performance of the great Marcin Dylla performing Matiegka's Op. 23 guitar sonata, whose movements I and II are adaptations of movements from a Haydn piano sonata
Which piano sonata? The one in B minor. There's a performance of that at this link with a read-along score
Since I genuinely love the music of Haydn and the guitar sonatas of Matiegka I'm working to put together an analysis of Op. 23 that I hope will not just show what Matiegka did in his sonata but how he changed the Haydn material he drew from. I've alluded to a concept mentioned in biblical scholarship called "transformative imitation" and that's what I think we can (eventually) use as a thread to understand Matiegka's work. His work is derivative in relationship to Haydn in overt ways but since I love Haydn's music I have no issues with a guitarist composer having gone to the trouble to adapt the elements of Haydn, Beethoven and Mozart into his own distinct approach to sonatas.
But the thing I have liked most about Matiegka's sonatas as I have studied them in the last ten years is discovering how many of "the rules" were norms he didn't bother about. It can be so very easy for undergrad music students to never find out that a lot of the so-called rules applied to 18th century music were really post-hoc 19th century summations that tell you what the composer did more than showing you what actual composers did in actual pieces. Or, at least, that was kind of my own experience, something I hope I can partly rectify in my analytical work on Matiegka.
Realistically I don't think I may have that post ready to run until early 2026. Op. 23 is gloriously public domain via IMSLP.org and so is the Haydn. There's also a number of recorded performances of the Op. 23 by Giulio Tampalini, Diego Milanese, and Massimo Agostinelli.
I have thought about blogging about a few things but I don't feel that inspired to blog lately. If you read my analysis of Grand Sonata I or Grand Sonata II then you'll have an idea, regular reader, if why this next installment of Matiegka 2023 might be taking so long. The Matiegka 2023 project might get done by the end of 2026, heh. I know he's niche but I think his music deserves a detailed and serious analysis. Going through his guitar sonatas has certainly helped me discover a lot, such as that V7/V to V7 to IV regressions happened in early 19th century guitar literature, which blows away the canard that V-IV changes "never" happen in classical music on the classical snob side and that blues "broke all the rules" on the blues mafia side.
We live in an exciting era (in good and very bad ways) where we have a chance to revisit and interrogate some of the scholastic supermyths in musicology and music theory that educational paradigms have given us. I know 18th century music can be hard for people to get into and appreciate and I think it's good to be honest about those challenges. George Oldroyd had a great comment in his book on the technique and spirit of fugue where he complained that too many music theorists who teach counterpoint act as though 18th century counterpoint were the only kind worth teaching, as though Josquin, Palestrina, Byrd, Tallis, Dufay, Monteverdi, Buxtehude or Hassler never happened before J. S. Bach and as though no counterpoint worth studying came after Bach. As Kyle Gann put it once, theorists have a propensity to favor teaching the musical works that exemplify their theories and music that doesn't can be shunted aside.
I'm going through a book on how 19th century theorists shunted Haydn way, way off to the side because the gap between what they claimed he did and what he actually did was too big, as the late Richard Taruskin noted.
But I'm rambling here.
Before I dug into 18th century music I could not have known that it was full of self-recycling and recontextualization. To translate this idea into poptimist terms, 18th century music was full of sampling and reworking known riffs to create new music. The concept and practice was pervasive in church music from the sixteenth century into even the present day.
Which a late 18th-C to 19th C canon centric approach would easily miss. But I digress, again.
Happy holidays from Wenatchee The Hatchet. Not sure how much/if I bother blogging I'll do between now and 2026. I may just let a few things incubate rather than publish. Take care.
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