Castelnuovo-Tedesco: The Well Tempered Guitars Op. 199 Vol. 1 – Mono Guitar Duo

Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s autobiography (Una vita di musica [Florence: Cadmo, 2005]) is an essential source of information regarding the composer’s daily life, as well as the genesis and fate of his works. It ends with the account of July 1961. This interruption leaves us without first-hand information about an important section of his oeuvre, i.e. the works he wrote, between 1961 and 1962, for the guitar duo constituted by the genius guitarist Ida Presti and by her husband, Alexandre Lagoya. Both musicians enriched their repertoire with elegant and colourful transcriptions realized by Lagoya himself. Moreover, they never lost an opportunity for widening that same repertoire, soliciting the composers with whom they got in contact to write new works for them. So they did with Castelnuovo-Tedesco, who immediately responded to their request, dedicating, in 1961, his shining Sonatina Canonica op. 196 to the couple. This piece is reminiscent, not only in its title, of the eponymous piano work written in 1942-3 by Luigi Dallapiccola, with whom Castelnuovo-Tedesco had an enduring friendship.
The two guitarists’ satisfaction encouraged the Florentine maestro to undertake one of the most arduous endeavours in his fecund compositional career: this would lead him to create, in 1962, the powerful cycle by the title Les guitares bien tempérées: 24 Préludes et Fugues pour 2 guitares.