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Pietrobono
Jul-30-2006, 2:28am
Mario Monti, my former mandolin teacher, died on last thursday. He was born on Feb, 21st, 1923 and founded in 1950 near Paris the plucked strings orchestra "Estudiantina d'Argenteuil" which he leaded until 1991, when he left the baton to his pupil Florentino Calvo. He was still honor president of the orchestra since then.

He was teaching mandolin at the Argenteuil National Music School from 1969 (guitar from 1966) to 1986 (when he was replaced by Florentino Calvo) and had among his pupils Mathieu Sarthe-Maureou (now teacher at the Argenteuil National Music School beside Florentino Calvo), Julien Martineau (now teacher at the Toulouse Music Conservatory), as well as some ancient mandolin players like Didier Le Roux, Eric Depret and Jean-Paul Bazin, now members of the Ensemble Gabriele Leone.

He was one of the pioneers in researching original early music for mandolin, had good contacts with italian researchers like Alessandro Pitrelli and Ugo Orlandi, and published many modern editions of mandolin sonatas and concertos of the 18th century (from the Paris Bibliotheque Nationale) at Adofe's and Trekel's.

As a former pupil of Mario Maciocchi and Francois Menichetti, he was one of the heirs of the italian/french mandolin school and leaded the plucked instruments committee at the french music amateur society (Confederation Musicale de France).

Jean-Paul Bazin

Eugene
Jul-30-2006, 8:50am
A sad loss, and my condolences to you personally.

Aug-07-2006, 2:04pm
Hi Jean-Paul,
what loss for you and the french mandolin movement, Monti was a great person as a teacher, musician and pioneer for the instrument. Our condolences to you.

Marlo and Marga

mathieu.sarthe
Sep-16-2006, 1:25pm
Good evening,

The "Estudiantina" will perform a concert on october 15th in the memory of Mario Monti, we will try to place some exerpts of it on our website (http://www.estudiantina--argenteuil.org). Meanwhile, some articles will be written on this site about Mr Monti. The first one can be found here (http://www.estudiantina-argenteuil.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=Sections&file=index&req=viewarticle&artid=40&page=1) (in french). If anyone of you is interested by an english translation, please let me know.

As Jean-Paul Bazin said, I must emphasize the importance of Monti's work for the mandolin in France. He pushed the instrument to the way of excellence, as a result we knew in France those past years about a dozen of young mandolinists who became professional musicians and mandolin teachers. Many of them have created their own mandolin classes from scratch, something unbelievable for us just a few years ago. Almost all of them got their degrees at the Argenteuil National Music school.