Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, July 21, 1995 TAG: 9507210015
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: SETH WILLIAMSON SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES
DATELINE: RADFORD LENGTH: Medium
But whether or not he gains that exalted plateau, last month he grabbed a little musical immortality by giving the world premiere of the original versions of several songs by Franz Schubert.
OK, so maybe it's not quite the same as being Segovia or Christopher Parkening. But whatever else happens to his reputation, Trent can be sure that some scholar of the future will footnote his name in a catalog of Schubert first performances.
The 38-year-old Trent, along with tenor Thomas Gregg, performed the six Schubert songs at the International Schubert Festival in Princeton, N.J., in mid July. The best-known of the six is Schubert's eerie "Der Erlkonig."
All the songs are well known to Schubert fans, but what wasn't realized until Trent and other scholars did some digging was that the great composer originally wrote the songs with guitar accompaniment. Almost all of Schubert's songs are customarily heard with pianist and singer.
"The evidence is building that, early in the 19th century, the larger number of songs were for voice and guitar. When you look through citations of performances, there are more notices of performances with guitar" than with piano, Trent said.
Trent, who is director of guitar and lute studies at Radford, was conducting research at the Aston Magna Academy two years ago when he began to suspect that some Schubert songs actually had been written first for a singer with a guitar. His suspicion was confirmed when he discovered some hitherto unknown first editions published in Vienna.
Schubert is universally regarded as one of the world's greatest composers, with outstanding works to his credit for symphony orchestra, keyboard and voice. It's not often that a discovery of this magnitude is made about a composer whose life and work has been minutely dissected by thousands of scholars for well more than a century.
Trent said earlier researchers simply weren't looking in the right place.
"Some earlier historians did wear blinders, but that's changing. It started with researchers and performers who actually play the guitar. PlusThere's a greater interest these days in the social context of music. You're gonna look into diaries, newspaper accounts of private concerts, and then you have to say, `Gee, look at all the performances by guitarists.'''
He said the number of published songs with guitar outnumber those with piano until about 1830, when technology began to alter the musical landscape.
"Prior to that time, the guitar was the portable accompaniment instrument that was inexpensive. What spelled the end of the guitar [song] was the rise of the piano in larger production numbers."
Schubert fans, whose enthusiasm for their favorite composer is legendary in classical music circles, are accustomed to hearing the master's songs almost exclusively with piano accompaniment. Has Trent encountered any keyboard chauvinists who resist his discoveries?
"Yeah, I have. I heard one objection at one of the original private performances of `Erlkonig.' Of course, it was spoken by a pianist.
"So I asked him: Do you ever get tired of making all those triplets? Does that feel like it's a `natural' piano piece? Well, I don't feel tired on the guitar, because the guitar excels at repeated notes," Trent said.
It was noticing such patterns, which are clumsy to reproduce on a piano but which flow naturally on the guitar, that led Trent and other scholars to suspect that the well-known piano accompaniments actually were transcriptions of guitar originals.
When Trent accompanied Thomas Gregg on the premieres of the original versions of the songs, he used a small guitar built in 1830. The historical instrument, with its shorter scale length, different overtone characteristics, and characteristic sustain and rate of decay, is perfect for the intimate character of the songs, the guitarist said.
by CNB