Guitar Works, Vol. 1

From the age of six, young Napoléon also began to play guitar, taking his first lessons from his mother. At the age of eleven, Coste suffered an extended illness, and the plans for his military career were abandoned. Instead, he won local fame as a performer and teacher of the guitar, and in 1830, the year of the July Revolution, he moved to Paris to pursue a musical career. The French capital, one of the great cultural centres of the era, had also become home to the guitaromanie, a rage for the guitar. Coste, who had received little formal training in music, was able to study theory and composition in Paris and also to he friend the likes of Fernando Sor (1778-1839), the esteemed Spanish composer and guitarist.

The compositions presented on this recording probably date to the late 1830s and 1840s, although several of them survive only in manuscripts of a later date. During those years the guitar virtuosos of the previous generation, including Sor himself, were dying or retiring, and the musical era of Chopin, Berlioz, and Liszt had begun. Coste, having mastered the technical virtuosity of his predecessors, was left to forge a brilliant new guitar repertory reflecting the musical innovations and sensibilities of the age. The pieces presented here-popular dances and airs of the period, two homages to the opera composer Bellini, and an original work evoking the medieval tournament-reveal a composer immersed in the intellectual and artistic mainstream of Paris during the July Monarchy.