Home Is Where The Heart Is
Considering my two favourite childhood books were about Italy and opera respectively, travelling to Italy to study 19th century guitar was not a surprising move. After all, so much of the music was written by Italian composers, and so much was inspired by Italian opera.
BD: what were the books?
CAB: The two books...one was an old old edition of opera synopses, the other equally old was a book about Italy with many black and white photos, but I honestly can't remember the names of either. We moved when I was 13 and they didn't come.
Although I could hardly have imagined it as I leafed through endless pages of drama and piazza photos in the family log cabin halfway up Mt Wellington in Tasmania.
BD: Did you really live in a log cabin halfway up a mountain?
CAB: Yes, I did live in a log cabin halfway up Mt Wellington, among fern glades and bush, the place is called Fern Tree but I don't think I have any photos of it I'm afraid. My life has been a never-ending series of moves and few material elements have remained.
So in 2012 I bought a plane ticket to Italy, and came to find out what the 19th century guitar was all about from the two players who knew the most about it, the Duo Maccari-Pugliese.
Fast forward 11 years, and I find myself buying plane and train tickets to share what I learnt from them about this music and instrument that I love so much - and about the composers that created it, and the times that they lived in
BD: Do you think that it was that peripatetic lifestyle from 13 onwards that drove your interest in this form of music or was it that your musical interest drove your lifestyle?
CAB: we kept moving, seemingly without any logic, particularly from when I was 13. I had just started to teach myself the guitar, and it was the one constant in my life. Maybe it did influence my musical interests later though.
And so, this project 'Home - Lost and Found, came into being, with the notion of exploring the universal experiences that connect us to a world so utterly different to our own.
A quick word about the 19th century guitar. It is the predecessor of the modern classical guitar, but in many ways they couldn't be more different.
The older guitar not only looks different (it's smaller and comes in a variety of styles), but it is played differently: without the capacity to technically reproduce music, people in the 19th century invented other ways to enjoy their favourite tunes over and over again - in particular the most beloved opera arias of the day.
And the guitar was the perfect vehicle: cheap to build, portable, and with an infinite variety of timbres and effects. Guitarists found ways to imitate the orchestra and vocal soloists, through the way they wrote for and played the instrument. So this wonderfully rich and melodic repertoire was born for the 6 string guitar - a relatively new instrument at the turn of the 19th century.
Rich and melodic and deeply human. I discovered one didn't have to scratch the surface much to find the whole gamut of human experience here. Love, sorrow, loss, joy and everything in between and beyond.
Far from being elite, hard-to-understand music, it is music that speaks to our hearts and to the experiences that we all share, no matter the century or country that we live in.
Studio Journal Entry by Claire Angel Bonner (with some additional questions by Bruce Davies) | September 2023
Full details of the music that Claire will be playing on this day can be found on her project page at https://basementartsproject.com/claire-angel-bonner
Come and join us by Jacob’s Ladder, Tunstall Road, Leeds, LS11 for a free community concert on Thursday 28th September at 1:30pm
There will be a second concert with a different set of songs at BasementArtsProject, 28 Back Burton Terrace, Beeston, Leeds, LS11 5JH. This set will be in support of the artist’s inclusion of Leeds as part of her tour. Tickets are available for £11.01