Classical Guitar
Discover the story that brought me from my first steps to my most recent works.
Leonardo De Marchi is a classical guitarist, researcher and teacher based in Venice. This is the story of how a campfire guitar course became a career in chamber music, contemporary repertoire and period instruments, told in 22 turning points from 1999 to today.
A guitar course "for a campfire"
Ever since I was a child, I could have pictured myself as a literature teacher, a journalist, a doctor, a Formula 1 driver, maybe a lawyer or a judge, but never a musician. Then my life was decided by a guitar course my father signed me up for almost as a joke: "That way you can play songs on the guitar around a campfire!" One hour with my hands on the instrument was enough to understand that a passion had been born, and that I would carry it with me for a long time.
Entering the Venice Conservatory
During middle school, a classmate in an afternoon course told us her mother wanted to enrol her at the Conservatory in Venice. That is when the idea first crossed my mind. Did I like more the idea of keeping on seeing that girl at the conservatory, or the idea of playing the guitar? Hard to say. The fact is that I decided to try the entrance exam, and I got in.
Winning in Mondovì
Winning my age category at the Mondovì guitar festival made me see clearly that what had been a kind of game until then could become something more serious, perhaps closer to a vocation.
Languages at Ca' Foscari, guitar at the conservatory
After five years at a science-oriented high school (maths, I found out later, was not for me!), I enrol at university. Studying languages, which I attend alongside my guitar course at the conservatory, is a fairly natural choice: languages have always been a strong subject for me, certainly stronger than maths. I begin a bachelor's degree in German and Russian at Ca' Foscari University, and in this period a particular interest in literary translation and in twentieth-century culture is born. It is the same interest I bring to my research on the guitar and to my discovery of contemporary repertoire.
Chamber music and period instruments
I am nineteen. Until then my interest in the guitar had been mainly as a soloist; thanks to the chamber music courses at the conservatory, I discover that I feel particularly at ease in ensemble playing.
A chance meeting at Milan's civic music school with the Maccari–Pugliese duo, among the world's leading specialists in nineteenth-century guitar music, makes me fall in love with the idea of playing music of that period on copies of period instruments. I reconnect with my deep love for Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, feeling part of a tradition wider than that of the guitar alone.
Diploma with honours at the Venice Conservatory
On 29 September (a date I remember well, not least because it is the title of an Equipe 84 song I loved) I graduate with highest honours from the Conservatory of Venice, completing the path I followed under the guidance of Giuseppe Pepicelli and Florindo Baldissera.
New music, and a DAAD scholarship in Berlin
At the Venice Conservatory, where student composers and performers regularly collaborate on new works, I am involved for the first time in the writing of a new piece for my instrument. It is an electrifying experience: the moment when, together with a composer, you become the parent of a new musical creature. Shared creativity, with its osmosis of viewpoints and common interpretive tension, becomes the most important training ground for my personality as a musician.
At university, an important opportunity arrives. The DAAD, the German federal agency for academic exchange, awards me a scholarship for the summer German studies courses at the Freie Universität Berlin. During my four weeks there I write my bachelor's thesis on the Nobel laureate Günter Grass. I refine my research method and develop a rigour that I will always carry with me.
Novara, pedagogy and psychology
I complete my bachelor's degree in Languages and move to Novara to continue my guitar studies. There I attend the two-year course with a teaching orientation, and the pedagogical subjects make me rediscover an interest in psychology that until then had been marginal.
Live electronics with the SON Ensemble
As a member of the SON Ensemble I take part in the Fonology Studies Marathon of the Veneto region, promoted by the Venice Biennale Musica, performing Stefano Alessandretti's "Persistenza della memoria" for ensemble and live electronics. It is my first significant experience of the interaction between acoustic instruments and digital sound processing, an aspect that will return often in the years to come.
Krenek's Suite and the turn to contemporary music
I complete my two-year course at the Conservatory of Novara. I begin to specialise with Andrea Dieci and Bruno Giuffredi, and I start my path on the ten-string guitar.
That year I also take an interest in twelve-tone literature for the guitar. Recording Ernst Krenek's Suite, a masterpiece of this repertoire, marks a turning point: my commitment to second-half-twentieth-century and contemporary music becomes the beating heart of my work as a musician.
First solo album, and first year of teaching
It is the year of my solo recording debut, with the complete Quattordici studi sulla creatività (Fourteen Studies on Creativity) by Sergio Sorrentino (Sinfonica). I understand that the recording studio is a fundamental dimension for me, because it lets me make known the pieces I love most.
It is also my first year teaching in a middle school with a music curriculum. Working with the students makes me realise how important the relational side of teaching is, something my teacher training had not yet prepared me for.
Giacomo Manzoni and Dedica 2015
Giacomo Manzoni, a friend of Maderna and of the same generation as Donatoni, Berio and Nono, one of the most significant Italian composers of the second half of the twentieth century, entrusts me with the revision of his second piece for guitar, Dedica 2015. For me it is not only an honour but an intense exchange between generations.
It began by chance: I found Giacomo Manzoni's email address online. Should I write to him or not? He is a huge name, an important composer. Would he answer? It was a gamble. He answered. Since then I have understood the importance of replying to messages: from an off-the-cuff request, decisive connections can be born, not only for me but above all for the person who writes.
A partnership with clarinettist Sauro Berti
The human and professional partnership with the clarinettist Sauro Berti, bass clarinet of the Rome Opera, begins. From him I learn the importance of constant, attentive listening in chamber music. The following year we make our recording debut with an album entirely devoted to contemporary music, with numerous world-premiere recordings.
That year I also publish an article on Bruno Maderna's writing for the ten-string guitar in the journal Il Fronimo.
Editing, teaching and listening guides
I obtain a permanent position in a middle school with a music curriculum in Pavia, where I have moved.
I edit 24 Preludi e ricercari for guitar by the Turin-born composer Alfredo Franco. Editing, the care and revision of a new piece, is essential to make it playable by other guitarists. My work is one of mediation between the composer's intentions and the expressive possibilities of the guitar.
I write my first series of listening guides for the Piedicavallo festival. It is a decisive experience: it teaches me how important it is to find the right words to introduce music to people who are not professional musicians.
Two-year degree and a thesis with living composers
I earn my two-year degree in guitar (performance track) at the Conservatory of Pavia. My thesis grows out of collaboration with living composers, among them Giorgio Colombo Taccani, Marco De Biasi, Marco Ramelli and Stefano Taglietti, whom I ask to write for the ten-string guitar. A constant of my projects emerges in this work: the osmosis of skills between performer and composer. The performer shows composers the qualities of the instrument; the composer pushes the performer beyond their limits.
Lieder with Maria Eleonora Caminada, and two albums
In the soprano Maria Eleonora Caminada I find an indispensable duo partner who shares my drive for twentieth-century music. It is my entry into the world of Lieder, a world in which to discover how music and words interact, two of my great passions.
Two albums are released: Enantiosemie, in duo with Sauro Berti, and Parade. Selected guitar works by Giorgio Colombo Taccani. On both I explore the most unusual timbral and harmonic aspects typical of contemporary repertoire.
Founding Ensemble _Codec
I am one of the founders of Ensemble _Codec, the group that more than any other pushes me into unknown musical territory. We study above all the interaction between acoustic and electronic instruments. We are five friends who, between one glass of wine and another, talk about contemporary music.
The name comes from computing: a codec is a program that decodes an audio or video signal. That is what we do: we decode new, demanding scores that push the limits of our "classical" instruments. We record cornerstones of the contemporary repertoire for our instruments and publish them on our YouTube channel, and every year we promote an international Call for Scores.
Members: Stefano Alessandretti (live electronics and artistic direction), Ettore Biagi (clarinet), Giacomo Piermatti (double bass), Gaston Polle Ansaldi (piano) and Leonardo De Marchi (guitar).
Impressions, the guitar works of Livio Torresan
Thanks to the pandemic and the time it gave back, I devote myself to completing the album Impressions. Selected guitar works by Livio Torresan. Torresan's neoclassical language leads me to make peace again with the traditional repertoire of my instrument. Livio's and my shared Venetian origins add an irresistible call of home.
Back to Venice
I move back to Venice: it is vital for me to reconnect with my roots and to rediscover the slowness of life in the Lagoon. A few months after my return, E se sei corde vi sembran poche, my second book on the ten-string guitar, is published.
Z. Echi per Giacomo and the origins of the ten-string guitar
For the journal Il Fronimo, my study Alle origini della chitarra a dieci corde (On the origins of the ten-string guitar) is published, in which I try to take stock of the birth of this instrument, based on the few reliable sources then available.
At the same time I record the album Z. Echi per Giacomo, which contains both Giacomo Manzoni's Echi and the first recording of his Dedica 2015. The album also includes thirteen compositions by as many contemporary composers in tribute to Manzoni. I edit this anthology, which is published, like the album, by Accademia 2008.
Segovia's twentieth century
Many years of contemporary music push me to rediscover another deep love of mine: the Segovian twentieth century. These are early twentieth-century pieces that join the Spanish tradition, impressionism and late Romanticism and that, thanks to the diffusion Andrés Segovia gave them, indelibly shaped the sound identity of the guitar.
A new article of mine appears in Il Fronimo, on Giacomo Manzoni's works for and with guitar: the musicological counterpart of the recording work done in 2022.
Duo with flautist Federica Lotti, and _Codec on record
I begin a collaboration with Federica Lotti, flautist and professor at the Conservatory of Venice. Our repertoire runs from the nineteenth century to contemporary music. The guitar, an instrument I find underrated, has a large chamber-music repertoire and, like the piano and the harp, it is also an accompanying instrument: one that supports a voice or a solo instrument and converses with it.
Ensemble _Codec's first recording is released within the collection Le Purgatoire by the French-American composer Gérard Pape.
Liuteria Narrata and the Fernando Sor album
My passion for guitar making leads me to found, with my friends and luthiers Umberto Cevoli and Marco Golfieri, the blog Liuteria Narrata. We tell the story of the great Spanish tradition of guitar making and the construction of modern instruments inspired by it. We do so within Touch the Sound, a collective that studies the link between the history of guitar making and the performance practices of the instrument.
A monographic album on Fernando Sor is released by Brilliant Classics, played on a copy of a nineteenth-century guitar. The delicacy of the nineteenth-century instrument, unlike today's sturdier guitars, demands a great lightness of touch: a dimension I love to explore.
Go to AlbumsTeaching at the Dall'Abaco Conservatory
My experience as a higher-education teacher in the Italian AFAM system begins, with a position at the Evaristo Felice Dall'Abaco Conservatory in Verona.
