Guitar Works Vol 3

Napoléon Coste was France's greatest guitar composer, and, together with Mertz, the guitar composer most representative of the Romantic style. Born in the village of Amondans in western France, Coste was named after the new Emperor and groomed for a military career by his father, the village mayor and a former infantry captain. From the age of six, young Napoléon also began to play guitar, taking his first lessons from his mother. At the age of eleven, Coste suffered an extended illness, and the plans for his military career were abandoned. Instead, he won local fame as a performer and teacher of the guitar, and in 1830, the year of the July Revolution, he moved to Paris to pursue a musical career. The French capital, one of the great cultural centres of the era, had also become home to the guitaromanie, a rage for the guitar. Coste, who had received little formal training in music, was able to study theory and composition in Paris and also to he friend the likes of Fernando Sor (1778-1839), the esteemed Spanish composer and guitarist.