2023-11-16 19:00:17
The Paraguayan composer Agustin Barrios, in 1922. WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
Under the title The Bohemian, the Toulouse guitarist Thibaut Garcia devotes a rare and precious album to the Paraguayan composer Agustin Barrios (1885-1944), ignored outside of Latin America and practitioners of the instrument. Doubled as a romantic character, since this heir of romanticism drawing on folklore changed his identity in 1932 to become Nitsuga Mangore, by combining the reversed anagram of his first name and the name of a Guarani Indian chief. From the melancholy Dream in the forest (“dream in the forest”), with “this tremolo that flows like water”as Thibaut Garcia describes it, the beauty of his music is transporting.
Read the portrait: Article reserved for our subscribers Thibaut Garcia, modern classical guitarist
When did you encounter the music of Agustin Barrios?
I grew up with him, since my father, a guitarist, played this masterful work which is Cathedral. When I was very young, I heard the music of Spanish composers Isaac Albeniz, Francisco Tarrega and that of Barrios through a legendary recording by John Williams in 1977. While my friends, when I entered the conservatory at the age of 10, knew Beethoven , Chopin or Brahms.
I came back to Barrios thanks to the biopic [Mangore, por amor al arte] from 2015. I listened to its complete piece again – it was recorded in the 1910s – and realized that this was what I wanted to play and share. In Paraguay, Barrios appears on 50,000 guarani notes [un peu plus de 6 euros]. With the exception of the guitarists, who have all played at least one piece of his, he is little known in our country, even though his music is very accessible. In my record company, no one knew who he was. This is why I wanted to do a monothematic.
How did you do it?
Total immersion, to the point that Barrios ended up rubbing off on me. These two years of work brought me closer to the essence of the guitar. We don’t play Barrios like Johann Sebastian Bach. I add more vibrato and rhythmic flexibility. I enjoyed sometimes finding sounds that were a little naughty, percussive, aggressive.
I also struggled to find the few biographies that exist on him, in Spanish and English, and which were no longer republished. I had to contact libraries in Asuncion, or the authors. And I learned from the notes of his concert programs that he created works that have never been found.
Read the review: “Nueva York, a musical history of Latin New York”, on Arte.tv: the extraordinary epic of Latin music
What did you discover about his life?
I didn’t know that he almost always lived with others, who gave him shelter. And penniless: he gave the little money he earned to the poor. He traveled a lot, he left Paraguay when he was 25 to travel through South America, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Venezuela… Barrios was a performer and composer in equal parts. He had started playing guitar with his father, chords and rhythms, a bit like learning from Georges Brassens today. Then he had a teacher and met an Italian violinist who taught him harmony and counterpoint. He composes music for himself: everything he writes, he plays.
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