Fossa. a French Guitarist in Mexico

7/29/2019 Fossa. a French Guitarist in Mexico

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/fossa-a-french-guitarist-in-mexico 1/7

French Guitarist in Mexico

p://www.guitarandluteissues.com/defossa/mexico.htm[20/01/2013 20:30:19]

FRANÇOIS DE FOSSA, A French Guitarist in Mexico(1)

by Matanya Ophee

The purpose of this lecture is to introduce to you a French guitarist-composer who lived at the early part of thenineteenth century—François de Fossa.

The work I chose to open this discussion is theFifth Fantasieon the air “Les Follies d’Espagna” Op. 12 by deFossa. There are two reasons why I chose this piece. The first reason is that this was the work which first attractedme some twenty years ago to find out who this man was. The second variation was always known to me as thefamous Estudio de Campanelasby Francisco Tárrega (1852-1909). I wanted to know who wrote this music first.

The second reason is nothing more than a figment of my imagination. From all the hundreds of sets of variations ontheLa Folia theme, there are two which stand in my mind as the most closely related—this one, and the one byManuel Maria Ponce (1882-1948). I have no reason to suspect that Ponce knew the work of de Fossa. Obviously,





the treatment given to the theme by these two composers is entirely different—one is based on classic formulas, theother is in the specific contemporary language of the Mexican master. Yet, most subjectively I must admit, I feel acommonality of spirit between these two. It is possible that my disposition to regard the two compositions asrelated to one another, is based on my knowledge that in the early years of his life François de Fossa lived inMexico. While we do not know this for a fact, it may have been that he acquired his early knowledge of music andthe guitar here in this country. So who was this man?

François de Fossa was born in Perpignan on August 31, 1775. His father, also

named François de Fossa, was one of the most important historians of theregion of French Catalonia, known as the Roussillon. He was a distinguished

jurist, head of the faculty of law at the university of Perpignan and a prolificwriter.

Not much is known about the education of young François. But having beenabsorbed with the erudition and learning which must have permeated thehousehold in which he grew up, one can only infer that he must have beenexposed to musical culture in his youth.

Shortly after the outbreak of the French Revolution de Fossa emigrated to

Spain where he joined the Spanish army as a Volunteer in a company of French army officers and Gentlemen of the Nobility, called the Legion of thePyrénées. He served there from the creation of the battalion in 1793, and

participated in many of its campaigns. In 1796 he was summoned by Miguel d’Azanza, at the time the Spanish warminister, to serve directly under him. In 1789 d’Azanza was named by Carlos IV as Viceroy of Mexico and took deFossa with him there. After spending some time in Mexico City and Puebla, de Fossa joined the infantry companyin Acapulco as a “Cadete Gentilhombre.” In 1800 he was promoted to second-lieutenant. He returned to Spain onorders of the King in 1803. After several military appointments and promotions, he was assigned to the Ministry of the Indies as a Bureau Chief. Eventually, he rejoined his regiment at the rank of Captain. In the battle of Granada,January 29, 1810, he was taken a prisoner by the French, brought to Madrid where he was paroled by JosephBonaparte and assigned by him to his old post at the Ministry of the Indies. On the fall of Bonaparte in 1813, he

fled to France with the French army which he then joined as a Captain. De Fossa returned to Spain, this time on theFrench side taking part in the 1823 campaign of the Duc d’Angoulème in Catalonia. At the end of this campaign,he was promoted to the rank of Chef de Bataillon, and in 1825 he was made a Chevalier of the Légion d’Honneur.Later he participated in the war against Algeria. He retired from military service in 1844. François de Fossa died inParis on June 3, 1849.

It seems that de Fossa started to compose for the guitar already in 1808. In a letter which he wrote from Madrid tohis sister in Perpignan in that year he relates of his attempts to supplement his meager government salary withcomposing music for the guitar. He even reports that some of his quartets were performed publicly and that he wascalled by his admirersHaydn of the Guitar. But Madrid of 1808 was not a good place to build a musical career andhe soon realized that he should seek his fortunes in other professions. De Fossa indeed never made music a full

time career. That did not stop him from composing, and when the time came, from publishing in France and inGermany a considerable number of musical works.

De Fossa’s taste in musical composition, judging from his known works, was directed towards chamber music withother guitars, and with string instruments and piano. He also wrote a few works for the solo guitar and for the soloharpo-lyre.

His original compositions show a refreshing degree of musical sophistication. His was not a mere repetition of formulas, but an attempt to create original music in tune with its time. He prided himself on being a moderncomposer writing in a modern able, and his work would attest to the fact that he was eminently successful. Since hemade the conscious choice of not using music as a means of earning a living, he was free to write, and later to

publish, music which pleased his aesthetic sense of balance, without having to cater to the commercialconsiderations of a publisher. Typically for de Fossa’s compositions, the original works as well as those based onthe music of Haydn, demonstrate an unusual richness of melodic materials and amusing surprises dispersedthroughout. Syncopated rhythms, often bound together with dissonant pedals, unexpected dynamics, harmonicsleight-of-hand, unusual and frequent modulations and rich dialogue-type texture, all contribute to create a vibrant





and intense music. The composer knew the guitar well, the writing is technically idiomatic and exploits a widevariety of instrumental resources. Certainly, his works exhibit a tasteful treatment of classical patterns and a highlevel of compositional technique.

A major contribution of de Fossa’s to the repertoire of the guitar, besides his own music, is the fact that thanks tohis copy of the guitar quintets of Boccherini, the only existing source for most of the surviving quintets, we areable today to enjoy this superb treasure of eighteenth century chamber music, perhaps the cornerstone of chambermusic with guitar.

De Fossa was very well known to guitarists of his generation. He had a particularly close relationship with DionisioAguado who dedicated to him several of his compositions such as op. 2, Trois Rondos Brillants and Op. 15, LeMenuet Affandangado. Aguado’s Op. 4, Six Petites Pièces, is dedicated to Mme. Sophie de Fossa, our composer’swife. Moreover, when he published hisEscuela of 1825, Aguado invited de Fossa to write the theoretical part of the book. In this book Aguado says:

Don Francisco de Fossa, amigo mio y sugeto de grandes conocimientos musicos, se haservido honrar esta escuela rectificando algunas teorías, y completándola con uncompendio de reglas para modular en la guitarra, cuyo instrumento le es familiar.

(Don Francisco de Fossa, a friend of mine and a man of great musical knowledge, has

consented to honor this Escuela by correcting some musical theories, and by completingwith a Compendium of rules of modulations on the guitar, an instrument with which he isfamiliar)

Elsewhere in this book, Aguado credited de Fossa with the invention of artificial harmonics, a technical device thatguitarists take today for granted. When Aguado was ready to publish a French version of the Escuela in 1826, thejob of translating and annotating it fell naturally on de Fossa. The Aguado-de FossaEscuela is, in my estimation,the most important guitar method to have been published in the early nineteenth century. In his own Method of 1830, Fernando Sor refers to it on more than one occasion.

As I mentioned before, de Fossa lived for a period of almost five years in Mexico. As a military officer under the

protection of the viceroy Miguel d’Azanza, he must have found his way in the upper echelons of Mexican society.At one point, it seems, he fell in love with a young maiden from the city of Querretaro, one Maria GuadalupeDominguez y Alarcón, the young daughter of Don Miguel Dominguez (?-1830), the Corregidor [Justice of thepeace] of Querretaro from his first wife. He asked for her hand in marriage, and her father agreed. The archives of the Spanish Army in the town of Segovia, Spain, contain the full dossier of the affair, including the official petitionde Fossa submitted to the King for a permission to marry, as was required by law, and several supportingdocuments. One of these documents is the official agreement by Don Miguel to this marriage. Here is a facsimileof it





Please notice the signature at the bottom of the document. And here is facsimile of the signature of Don Miguel asit appears in “Resumen integral de MEXICO a través de los siglos. Tomo III) by Julio Zarate. (Mexico, 1969).

As we can see, there is no question about the authenticity of the Segoviamilitary documents. As we can also see, the documents clearly identify not onlythe father and the bride-to-be, but also the young woman’s step-mother, the Corregidor’s second wife, Doña JosefaOrtiz de Dominguez (?-1829), a woman known in Mexican history as la Corregidora, the chief instigator of theInsurgency of 1810.

It seems though, that the marriage never took place. There is no mention of such a marriage in the extensivedocuments about de Fossa which are preserved in several French and Spanish archives. I also have not been able tofind such records in any Mexican archives or historical sources. What I did find, in the Fond Fossa in the ArchivesDepartmentales in Perpignan, is a curious document, written in Spanish, clearly in the hand writing of de Fossahimself.





The document commences with these words:

Consultation with Mr. Parish Priest of A... one of his parishioners under the precise

condition of being treated and answeredSub sacro Confessionis Sacramentalis Sigillo.(2)

My beloved and venerated Pastor. We, the ones who have the glory of being enlistedunder the banner of Catholicism; the ones who serve a God of Peace, Who is twice theFather of mortals, we who are afflicted with the miseries of this human life, we know thatwe have to find in His infinite mercy a safe harbor against the tempests of the century, thatin His extreme kindness, He wished to leave on earth in the person of His Ministers thosewho would serve as representatives of his clemency and Divine authority for theconsolation of the grief-stricken, the solace of the abandoned, the cure of the terribleillness of our passions. With this well-founded confidence I have come to disclose to yourgrace some weaknesses and frailties of my heart, expecting that the Evangelical charityproper to the Sacred Minister and exercised and restricted to your person, will supply mewith the light to guide and assure my steps in the gloomy and winding paths of uncertainty

that mark my errant and confused imagination.

At the beginning of the past year, that of ’98, I met in one city of Spain a virgin girl withwhom I established a particularly close relationship, whom I’ll now call Clotilde: athousand promises of loving each other all of our lives and of never breaking the bonds of





fidelity that we had promised one another lay the foundations, in spoken and writtenwords, of the mutual love that inflamed us. This, far from diminishing with absence, onlygrew: on neither side was there the least sign of coolness in the half-year that passed untilI went to this America, nor up to the end of ’99, when I started to experience a notablelack of letters from Clotilde, ever more astonishing since up to that time I had not had themail pass without taking advantage of it. At the same time, rumors were afloat that she hadmarried, and so has been reported by a Clergy from her own country who lived with me. Icouldn’t believe it at first, neither did I stop writing her every time someone departed forthat Peninsula. After a short while an intimate friend was leaving and I expresslycommissioned him to see the interested party (after having informed him of the truth of therumors that were abound), and learn from her own mouth what were her intentionstowards me and let me know by return mail.

I waited for a long time without receiving a letter from either one; I finally got one fromthat confidant of mine; but after all, he excused himself with frivolous pretexts because hehadn’t been able to do what I had asked him. In any event, he wrote to me from a townthat was only two leagues from the home of Clotilde. I am definitely surprised at hislaziness and negligence. The continuous silence of that girl contributes, in my point of view, a degree of evidence to my already well-founded suspicions. I let myself believe thenews of her move, persuading myself that my friend, knowing the blind love that I felt for

her, didn’t want to knock my feelings down with the confirmation of unfortunate news.

With this firm concept, and finding things to distract me, I started to take notice of themerits of a young, modest, well-educated girl (let’s call her Lucretia), whose virtuesacquire additional brilliance because of the contrasting viciousness of a stepmother wholived with her. This person, whose real name we shall hide under the one of Clemira, whopresented in her dissolute way of thinking an atrocious assembly of depravedcircumstances. Previously she had managed, not without shame or remorse on my part, tomake me surrender twice to her dishonesty, in the immense holocaust of a brutaldebauchery, knocking down the friendship that her husband, Don Juan, felt for me. (Herhusband, by the way, deserved a woman more like his daughter Lucretia.) It seemed to me,

when looking into the eyes of Lucretia, that I saw some stinging but silent agreement(given her natural shyness and virgin status, this was the only weapon against me).Ashamed of a weakness that neared depravity and with a full measure of admiration forthe delicacy with which that girl had let me understand, I strove, from that point on, to cutat its source the infamy that I was beginning to have with the stepmother.

Using pseudonyms in reference to the various persons in his story, de Fossa tells his confessor a long and involvedstory of unrequited love, and the hopes of married bliss to the young woman, dreams which were disrupted byvarious actions taken by the young woman’s step-mother.

Of course, at this point in time, it is not possible to ascertain if the events described

by de Fossa in this confession have any relation to the family of Don MiguelDominguez, or are simply the fruits of a very active imagination. What we do knowfor sure, is that at the end of his confession, de Fossa asked the confessor forpermission to annul the marriage contract. In his response, the confessor, TimoteoGarcia de Solalinde, agreed that under the specific conflicts between the variouspersonages involved, it would be better if the marriage did not take place.

Another thing we do know for sure is that in spite of the fact that he marriedMarguerite Sophie Vautrin in 1825 with whom he had three children, de Fossaalways kept this confession document among his papers. It is still kept at theArchives Departmentales de Pyrenées Orientales in Perpignan until today, 148 years

after his death. That fact tells me one thing: whatever had been the real story of hisproposed marriage into the family of the Corregidor, François de Fossa had neverforgotten Mexico.




Notes

1. This article was presented as a spoken lecture at the IV International Guitar Festival in Cuernavaca, Mexico, inNovember of 1997. Several small modifications have been made to the spoken text to prepare it as an article. I wishto express my gratitude to Roland d’Ornano Esq. Of Marseille, France, a seventh generation direct descendant of François de Fossa, for making the portraits of the composer available to all.

2. Originally translated in 1985 by Mariela Anderson to whom I am grateful. The present translation has beenmodified in places by myself.

Copyright © 1999 by Matanya Ophee. All Rights Reserved.

CATALOGUEG.A.L.I.

Table of ContentsHOME PAGE

Editions Orphée, Inc.,1240 Clubview Blvd. N.Columbus, OH 43235-1226TELEPHONE: (614) 846-9517FAX: (614) 846-9794EMAIL: [email protected]

Last Modified: Friday, February 22, 2008.

mailto:[email protected]

http://www.orphee.com/catalog.htm

http://www.orphee.com/http://www.guitarandluteissues.coml


http://www.orphee.com/index.htm



http://www.orphee.com/index.htm



http://www.orphee.com/catalog.htm


Fossa. a French Guitarist in Mexico

Documents

Transcript of Fossa. a French Guitarist in Mexico