The Italian Fernando Carulli (1770 – 1841) was born in Naples and started his musical career on cello. At the age of twenty, he discovered the guitar and developed to a famous guitarist, being an autodidact. As soon as he settled down as a guitarist, het started composing and produced almost four hundred works for guitar solo and ensemble.
In 1809, he moved to Paris, the then World capital of Music. There he performed on stage, wrote compositions and enjoyed himself perfectly amongst a crowd of fans and upper-class guitar students. His presence in Paris attracted other guitarists such as Matteo Carcassi en Fernando Sor.
Besides a lot of programmatic music, Carulli composed a great number of small pieces that were perfectly suited for beginners on the guitar. Further he devised his Méthode Complète, a guitar study method that has been in use up to this time. In this way he found the gap that he experienced himself, the lack of professional guitar teaching. He founded his own publishing company in order to get his works published.
His cooperation with the luthier René Lacote led to the design of a six-string guitar that was immensely popular in those days.
Music
Carulli has quite a set of guitar duos to his name, with the well-known Duo in G, and Serenade Op. 96 that were played by Julian Bream and John Williams on their Together albums. Additionally, you will find on this page the duos from Three Romances for Guitar Op. 333. Note that this work includes five pieces.