Contemporaneously with Napoleon’s rise, “Guitaromanie” reached its height in salons throughout the French capital.

Whether for Fernando Sor’s new fantasia or Louis-Ange Carpentras’s arrangements of operas, new guitar works were entusiastically embraced, opening a new world of repertoire to the freshly empowered bourgeois musicians of post-Revolutionary era. 

Thanks to its clarity, precision, richness, and diversity, its dramatic twists and turns, this Parisian music is as fresh today as it was to the post-Ancien Régime world.

This concert is made possible in part by the generous co-sponsorship of NYU Maison Française.