Introduction

My motivation for research as an Early Musician has always been based on practical reasons. One of the main tasks we can do is to bring forgotten works and composers back to the limelight. 

In 2018, when I was finishing my studies at ESMUC, I was researching Gaetano Brunetti and making an edition of his Op.1 String Quintets. Of course, this was because I had an ensemble that could bring these scores to life.

Felipe Libón's name first crossed my path while investigating about this Italian fellow of Boccherini at the court of Charles IV. I did a lot of reading about the musicians surrounding Brunetti, and sure enough, Libón's name stood out in a list full of Italian names. He was a violinist who had gone to London to study with Viotti, and after his brief stay in Madrid at the Court, he made his way to France.

However, in the summer of 2022, I received the news that the edition of Brunetti's Op.1 quintets had been commercially released, and, in addition to that, some colleagues were working on a recording of the very same work, benefiting from the current Brunetti boom in Spain at the moment. After the initial shock, this event made me remember the name of Libón, and finally gave me the courage to take the decision to investigate Libón and his Violin Concertos.

During my modern violin studies, I always loathed the virtuosic showoff pieces, and never felt that was my particular strength. However, my perspective completely changed after getting into Historically Informed Performance. Coming from an in-depth study of the 18th century in my Early Music Studies gave me a very different perspective of the early 19th century. Especially in France, this was a very turbulent yet deeply exciting time, in which the world as it was known was being torn apart, and everything was being built on a new foundation.

With this new light, I tackled the reading of Baillot's writings, in which he stated that to interpret the "heroic character" of the French Violin Concerto, Baillot had to have a certain maturity of spirit. Perhaps Historically Informed Performance was about transforming oneself and embodying different tempers, like the good actors. Perhaps I had confined myself to be an agreeable, pleasant person, but I could also embody a heroic, epic character if I wanted to. Perhaps all I needed was, after all, some maturity.

This has been the explanation of my more personal journey, but I sincerely think that Libón deserves a more important place both from a musical and musicological point of view. It was striking that he is very unknown, even though it looked like he achieved notable fame in France while he was alive. Unfortunately, this was something that seemed to happen also in Libón's time, as his obituary in a Spanish newspaper testifies: Spain was, and still is, not very good at valuing their own heritage, as they tend to idolise and favour the more Northern European cultural figures.
To counterbalance this, I would be very happy if my research could direct some interest and esteem toward his figure and his work, which has been unjustly overlooked throughout history.

The research questions in my research would be the following: 

• Is it possible to find similarities between his Viotti's Concerto styles and Libón’s? 

• How can we apply the vast literature of the French Violin School of the performance of Libón’s Concerto No. 6? 

• How did the post-revolutionary changing values influence the consolidation of the new early-romantic aesthetics, and how did it help the boom of the soloist concertos?