Sonate

Neue Schreibart – 19th Century Guitar Music from Austria and Germany
It gives me great pleasure to launch this new series dedicated to 19th century music for guitar from Austria and Germany. The term “Neue Schreibart” (new style of writing) dates back to Simon Molitor (1766-1848) and the preface to his Sonata Op. 7 (1806), in which he demands this new approach to composition, orthography, and music notation leading to a “solid” playing style. Molitor, a composer, guitarist, and musicologist from Neckarsulm, wanted to bring the latest developments in harmony and counterpoint to the relatively new idiom of the 6-string guitar.
This series aims to introduce many of the wonderful, but as yet little-known, works for guitar from 19th century Austria and Germany. It will provide a platform to offer critical performance editions to today’s guitarists, and create a new impulse for the extension of today’s repertoire for our instrument.

Adam Darr – a Franconian composer
Adam Darr was born in Schweinfurt, in the north of Bavaria in 1811, where he first started to play the violin and flute. Aged 18, he picked up the guitar, which would become his favourite instrument. Before long, he had success as a touring musician in countries across Europe: Russia, Sweden, France, Belgium, and Holland. After 16 years of extensive touring, he returned to his native Bavaria, where he started to work as a composer and music-teacher. During this time he undertook many successful regional tours in a duo with the guitarist Friedrich Brand. In addition to his work with the guitar, Adam Darr is also the author of one of the most important methods for zither. His broad musical knowledge, across several instruments and as a composer, grant him a special role amongst guitar composers. He can be considered more as a composer than as a guitarist. Adam Darr, most likely due to a complicated relationship with his fiancée Carolina Lierheimer, committed suicide on 2nd October 1866. He drowned himself in the waters of the Wertach and Lech river, which meet in the city of Augsburg.