1805–1883 · France · Classical
Napoléon Coste (1805–1883) was a French guitarist and composer, a pupil of Fernando Sor. He was born into the family of an army captain and named after the emperor. He wrote mostly for guitar, adapted old lute music for it and issued a new edition of Sor's method. His collection of studies, Op. 38, is still played today.
Napoléon Coste was born on 27 June 1805 in Amondans, in the Doubs department near Besançon. His father was an army captain and a convinced Bonapartist, so the boy was named in honour of the emperor. The future musician's full name was Claude Antoine Jean George Napoléon Coste.
In 1809 the family moved to Ornans, also in the Doubs. During the siege of Delfzijl in 1813–1814 the boy was inside the fortress where his father served. In 1815 his father retired, and the family settled in Valenciennes.
Coste's first guitar teacher was his mother, Anne-Pierrette Dénéria, who played the instrument well herself. The lessons began when he was six. He progressed quickly and soon began teaching others.
Even before leaving for Paris, Coste was teaching and performing. He gave three concerts in the Franche-Comté, and in 1828 he played as a duo with the Italian guitarist Luigi Sagrini. Concerts and teaching began for him in the second half of the 1820s.
Coste then settled in Paris. There he met the best-known guitarists of the day, among them Carulli, Carcassi and Aguado.
His teacher was Fernando Sor. With him Coste studied not only guitar playing but also solfège, harmony and counterpoint. Later teacher and pupil appeared as a duo, and in 1838 their playing won unanimous approval.
Before long Coste was regarded as the foremost guitarist in France, and his compositions began to appear in print.
From the late 1830s public interest in the guitar fell noticeably. No publisher could be found for his new pieces, so Coste had to print his works at his own expense. He did not stop composing, though.
In 1856 a guitar composition competition organised by Nikolai Makarov was held in Brussels. Coste entered his Grande Sérénade and won the second prize. The first prize went to Johann Kaspar Mertz.
In 1863 Coste was injured. He later took a civil service post in Paris, where he issued receipts, while he carried on teaching and composing.
Coste belonged to the masonic lodge Les Frères Unis Inséparables. He died in Paris in 1883, at the age of 77.
After Sor's death Coste prepared a new edition of his guitar method. He worked out the fingering afresh and added many examples and lessons. He also arranged some of Sor's duets for two guitars and included in the method twenty-six of his teacher's studies, revised and fingered.
Coste was among the first to transcribe lute music of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries for the guitar. His work includes pieces by Robert de Visée, which he turned from old tablature into modern notation: six of them appear in his method and nine in the collection Op. 52, the Livre d'or du guitariste.
Coste played the ordinary six-string guitar, but also newer experimental instruments. He was especially fond of the seven-string guitar, whose extra bass string was usually tuned to D or C. The instrument was known as the Lacôte Heptachord: the added string answered in sympathy when the others sounded, which gave a deeper tone.
Almost all of Coste's music is written for guitar. His output also includes duets for two guitars, pieces for oboe and guitar and for oboe and piano, and songs for voice and piano. He wrote the oboe pieces for his friend Charles Louis Triébert, a professor at the Paris Conservatoire, and often played them with him.
Coste's style took shape under Sor's influence and rests on the ideas of Romanticism, in both harmony and structure. His harmonic foundations are classical, drawn from Haydn and Beethoven, but his melodic sense, forms and even modulations lean towards Mendelssohn, Schubert and Chopin. La Source du Lyson, Op. 47, is inspired by nature, much as Berlioz's programme music is.
Among his pieces are fantasies and variations on themes from operas and dance tunes: for example a divertissement on a theme from Lucia di Lammermoor (Op. 9), a fantasy on two themes from Norma (Op. 16) and sixteen favourite waltzes by Johann Strauss the elder (Op. 7). There are also original sets: Récréation du Guitariste, fourteen pieces (Op. 51), Six Pièces Originales (Op. 53) and Four Marches and Six Preludes (Op. 48 and 49). His collection of 25 studies, Op. 38, remains popular.
Coste also arranged other composers' music: his arrangements fill the Op. 52 collection, and he set six Schubert songs for voice and guitar. His pupil Soffren Degen wrote second-guitar parts for duet versions of several of his teacher's pieces.
The site has three editions for solo guitar under Coste's name: Guitar-Skole no. 24: Gavotte, fra det 17de Aarhundrede (level Beginner+), Guitar-Skole no. 10: Menuett, fra det 17de Aarhundrede and Guitar-Skole no. 23: Allegro (both level Intermediate). It is best to begin with the gavotte and then move on to the minuet and the allegro.