Tribute to Abel Carlevaro, my Maestro. "A Farewell to a Father"

Tribute to Abel Carlevaro, my Maestro (English version)

“El adiós a un padre”

Recuerdos de Abel Carlevaro (1918-2001)

Three Friends Remember the Maestro

Published in Magazine: “Soundboard”.

“Guitar Foundation of America”

fall / Winter 2001/2002, vol. XXVIIII, NO. 2&3.

 

I spoke with him on the telephone about four days before his death. He was in Montevideo preparing for his last trip. We talked particularly about the details of our next meeting in London, for a concert in his honor they were organizing for him on July 31. As we talked, he said something to me that he never said before, that surprised me and which of course I will never forget. He said to me that he considered me a friend and, furthermore, that he loved me very much. It was a beautiful farewell. It was strange to hear from him –a very shy person- this declaration of affection in words and phrases like this. He ordinarily showed his feelings in a different manner. I remember his classes with [his] deep dedication, never withholding secrets, and [treating] all his pupils equally. The gifted and the not-so-gifted found in him a deeply dedicated maestro, truly more like a physician or a priest. There are guitar teachers everywhere, but Maestros are few, and he was one of those.

Also, he showed his affections by giving me advice when life had struck me hard. He could always see the positive side of things. I particularly remember that, in ´79, concerning my divorce and when everything seemed to be falling apart, he told me things that greatly helped me recover my hope for the future. I met him in ´77 because of my intention to explore new paths that would help me overcome a guitar crisis that had already lasted long enough, and that surely was going to end up with my abandoning my career as a guitarist. [My] physical pain and tensions were of such magnitude that I had lost all enjoyment in playing the guitar. And when I let myself practice for two or three days, I then required at least ten to recuperate. It was like a marriage with a strong dose of slavery. I knew the technique books of Carlevaro from a student who had given them to me. In them I discovered a new way of understanding the phenomenon of the guitar. He said very important and original things which were consistent with my manner of thinking [including]-among others things-the scientific method practiced in universities. And fundamentally I discovered a methodology and a system. He refuted many concepts which were accumulating and being passed on to other generations and which the majority repeated without much analysis. Given my hopeless situation in regard to the guitar, I concluded that I urgently needed a radical change as if to begin again, and furthermore I was determined to do it.

I cancelled all my commitments and concerts and began to figure a way to study with Carlevaro. And I accomplished this at the beginning of `77, becoming part of [that] group of students who studied a few years with him. I recall the names of some and beg pardon from those [whose names] I have surely omitted: Roberto Barragan, Lucia Saab, Vicente Russo, Maximo Pujol, Miguel Angel Girollet, Dina Galvan, Maria Isabel Siewers, Eduardo Castañera, Ernesto Bouvier, Alfredo Gascon, Patricia Lavadie, Raul Pantano, Graciela Laszezak and Osvaldo Sanchez among others, later, along with others of this group, we founded what was the Sociedad de Integracion Guitarristica Argentina (SIGA). With this we intended-among other things- to open channels of expression and in this way to counteract a little the devastating effects al all levels produced by the rigid and inhuman military dictatorship that had ravaged Argentina in those years. Carlevaro went to Buenos Aires fairly often and we took advantage of these visits to take lessons. They were years of incredible productivity; not only did he demonstrate all of his capabily and wisdom but also his generosity. Many times-in the periods of acute economic crisis in Argentina-he came to give us classes even though he was losing money. He said nothing but we ourselves knew that the money we collected did not cover his expenses. Teaching was everything to him.

There is a popular saying that “It is always darkest before dawn”. And I was living this saying. When all appeared lost, I found in Carlevaro the road which offered me a rebirth. Not only did I overcome my technical problems, but I also learned to change the way I think about music. Carlevaro was very free in his thinking. He was not tied to a single philosophy. He was not even bound by his own conclusions. He did not generalize. He adapted according to the student who faced him.  He sought solutions consistent with potentials of each individual. Carlevaro created an open path. He taught us to question. Not to conform. And above all, he never made a distinction between so-called “popular music” and so-called “classical music”. He did not get involved with categories. Had he lived then, he might well have belonged to the group of romantic anarchist at the end of the 19th century. He would have possessed the virtue of humility in a world in which Napoleons were abundant and Quixotes scarce.

And how can one not remember Carlevaro´s sense of humor? Always a joke or an anecdote to embellish a class or a guitar-gathering or to easy a tense situation with a student.  I always remember the story he told when at a party in Montevideo-I believe it was in the house of his brother Agustin- to which they had invited Atahualpa Yupanqui to anasado [cook-out]. They were playing guitar in an enclosed courtyard and suddenly there entered a dog that no one recognized and he listened to Atahualpa with them, staring fixedly at him for a long time. Atahualpa had a strange feeling and said that certainly this dog was some friend of his, now deceased, who had taken the form of his animal and was paying a visit. Then the animal left, and was never again seen in the area.

During that last telephone chat I was then able to say, overcoming my shyness, that I thought of him like a father and that I loved him very much. It was a happy and sincere farewell. Some days a bird perches in the window of my studio, staying there for a few minutes. Can it be Don Abel who comes to visit me?

Jose Luis Merlin, El Escorial

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