Isaac Albeniz ll

Albeniz wrote many songs – often to words by Money-Coutts – and continued his operatic work with first performances in Spain, though now he and his wife and three children were living in Paris. Later the family moved back to Spain, living in Barcelona and becoming associated with the movement to promote the performance of Catalan lyrical works. His music had unequal support from critics and the public, and he became a focus for the recurrent issue of what is a truly Spanish composer. His efforts to elevate the artistic content of the zarzuela (a form of operatic music peculiar to Spain) repeatedly faced deep-rooted prejudices. Traditionalists believed his growing international reputation was a liability. He was described as a Spaniard ‘in foreign attire’, and not only did this affect the support he received from the public, he also became the victim of intrigues and jealousies. At the end of 1902, Albeniz – his health a continuing problem (he suffered from Bright’s disease)-, he returned to France and to the warmer climate of Nice, in some disgust at his inability to get his lyrical works performed in Spain.

Beginning but never finishing several big projects for the stage, he took the advice of friends and began to concentrate on composition for the piano and from 1905 to 1908 he wrote what is regarded as his masterpiece, Iberia, a collection as he called it of twelve ‘impressions’ in four books, capturing the sounds and rhythms of his native country. This is a stunning work of such virtuosity that at one time he thought to destroy the mss. because it was so fiendishly difficult to play. A recent recording from the English company Hyperion has had rave reviews. (CD A67476/7) The Gramophone critic said ‘Where others fight to stay afloat, Marc-Andre Hamelin rides the crest of every formidable wave with nonchalant ease and poetry’. You can hear two 6 minute extracts of his performance on the Hyperion website. The performance I have – and I am listening to as I write - is by the legendry Alicia de Larrocha on a 1973 Decca 2 disc set (448 191-2), full of style and wit (and almost half the price of the new set!).

…..a final post about Albeniz next time.

B.R.

Spanish romantics: Isaac Albeniz

We once had a lovely family holiday in the wonderful rolling country of Camprodon on the Spanish side of the Pyrenees. There, in 1860, Isaac Manuel Francisco Albeniz was born. I find him a fascinating character and want to use my euroresidentes space to outline his life and music in more detail than usual.

He led an eventful and sometimes hard but immensely productive life. When still only a baby, his family moved to Barcelona where, at a very early age, he began to have piano lessons. These were so successful that he made his first public appearance when only five years old and later when his father lost his government position, he, together with his sister Clementina, toured the Spanish provinces to support the family. So began his many travels as a performer in his own country and beyond. His tour of Cuba and Puerto Rica at the age of fifteen presaged later visits to Spanish speaking American countries, and he spent some years in Paris and in London.

The London connection is interesting. His manager - a man called Henry Lowenfeld -was associated with musical theatre and, at his suggestion, Albeniz – he and his family now living in London - agreed to compose music for a comic opera, ‘The Magic Opal’ which opened at the Lyric Theatre in January 1893 and enjoyed some success. It brought him into contact with Francis Burdett Money-Coutts, heir to the vast banking fortune of Coutts & Co. Money-Coutts (well named!) was a keen amateur poet and playwright. He became Albeniz’s sole patron and persuaded him to extend his operatic work, the only possible disadvantage being that Money-Coutts wrote the somewhat clumsy librettos! ‘Henry Clifford’ was one such opera and was premiered in Barcelona in 1895. But the great project with his mentor was a triology based on the Arthurian legends. One of these ‘Lancelot’ was unfinished when he died and he never began the third opera, ‘Guenevere’. But after four years of struggle he was able to complete the first of the three, ‘Merlin’ .

There has only ever been one performance of the opera which took place in 1960 in Barcelona, improbably sponsored by the cultural section of the junior Football Club of that fine city. However, through the enthusiasm of the Spanish conductor Jose de Eusebio, Decca published a recording of the work in 2000 with the incalculable advantage of the great Placido Domingo as one of the cast. Reviewing the CD in the December edition of ‘Gramophone’ of that year, the veteran music critic Edward Greenfield wrote ‘the recording is a revelation and hugely enjoyable’ .

…more about Albeniz next time.

The Romantics

The Romantic period in Europe is generally regarded as between the years 1830-1900. For music and literature this was an era of heightened reality, full of emotion, colour and drama; a time of intense feeling and attitude that was widely popular, especially in Germany and France, and even in time affected the U.K. where poets and gothic writers more than musicians gave vent to their imagination.

Although of Spanish origin, the soprano and composer Pauline Viadot-Garcia was born in France of a musical family (her father was Rossini’s first Barber of Seville). A gifted and evidently powerful woman, her life almost personifies the period. She inspired Chopin, Berlioz, Meyerbeer, Gounod, Saint-Saens, Liszt, Wagner and Schumann who dedicated his cycle of Heine songs to her. She appeared in London, Berlin, Dresden, Vienna and St. Petersburg, where she met the novelist Ivan Turgenev who fell in love with her and lived ‘in close proximity’ (NGDM) to her and her husband for the rest of his life.

In 1863 at the age of 42 she retired, leaving France for political reasons (her husband was a republican at a time when it was dnagrous to be one), and the family settled in Baden-Baden where she taught singers from around the world. There she built an art gallery and a small opera house where the family performed some of her works, including little operettas and ‘pantomimes’. She transcribed twelve of Chopin’s mazurkas (with his approval), setting them to poems by Louis Povey, and other works by Schubert and Brahms. A collection of her songs has recently been issued by the Canadian label Analekta on AN 2 9003, sung by Isabel Bayrakdarian, and enthusiastically reviewed.

A Berlin critic said of Viadot-Garcia, that she was ‘ truly the daughter of Kings descended from the gods’. The picture of a rather dumpy, sober woman in N.G.D.M. hardly bears that out, but she must certainly have been some lady!

B.R.

Art Music of the Renaisance II

There would be no musical inheritance from the great composers of Europe without patronage. In wealthy homes, as we noted last time, and even more with support from the Church, musicians worked to provide new sounds for the diet of regular worship in the chapels of noble families and in the great new gothic Cathedrals of the continent and the New World.

Cristobal de Morales (1500?-1553) was one such man. Born in Seville, trained there as a boy singer, he became chapel master of the Avila Cathedrals and of Plasencia. Already a priest, he entered into the Papal Chapel in Rome in 1535, leaving there ten years later to become chapel master of the Cathedral at Toledo, moving to Marchena and then in 1551 to Malaga where he died. He was known throughout Europe, his music published and performed in the major countries of the West. He composed ‘in a coloristic and austere style for the express purpose of honouring God’ ( See http://www.carolinaclassical.com/ where you can hear some of his music – ‘austere’ indeed if not a trifle mournful and played there on a rather nasal organ! – look for ‘Spanish Early Music’ on their website).

De Morales was one of the teachers of Francisco Guerrero (1528-1599), the greatest representative of the Andalusian School. His music has been described as one of ‘serenity and gentle lyricism’ and his Spanish roots are more evident than the earlier music of this period. You can hear some of it on the website mentioned above and at once there is a lift and melodic shape to it compared to his more severe mentor.

His professional life centred around the Cathedrals of Jaen, Seville and Malaga, and his work - designed , he said, to enlighten souls and not to induce flattery – was published beyond Spain and included more than 100 motets and 20 masses. His music is described as spiritual and mystical. Some of his secular songs can be found in the Songbook of Medinaceli and his discography can be seen on the Goldberg Music Portal website.

…we will no doubt return to this golden age of music, but I am impatient to move on to a period nearer to our own experience…

B.R.

The Art Music of the Rennaissance

From the plethora of music that flooded Europe during this rich period of flowering culture, Spain made its contribution in mainly secular music associated with various wealthy families. The composer Juan del Encina (1468-15.30) is a good example. He served Don Fadrique de Toledo, entertaining the ducal family with ‘poetic compliments, amorous solo songs, egologas ( short plays) with part songs for three or four voices’. They belong ‘in the quiver of a hot blooded youth but not that of the staid eccelsistic that he has become’ said someone (I don’t remember the reference). Ordained priest in 1519 he doubtless had other things on his mind – or perhaps not; the Renaissance had its colourful influence on the culture of the Church, as in a very different way the Reformation had.

In a later period of the Renaissance, Tomas Luis de Victoria (c.1548 –1611), who was born in Avila began and ended his adult life in the Church, is a major composer. Ordained priest in1575 and trained in Rome, most of his work was in Italy - so much so that often the Italian version of his name is more common than the Spanish. After several appointments as organist and choirmaster, he moved to the Convent of Descalzas Reales in Madrid where in the same capacity he remained until his death, having the additional responsibility of being Chaplain to the Dowager Empress Maria, the sister of Philip ll.

His music is of and for the Church, in contrast to the prevailing secularism of such earlier composers as del Encino. He was influenced by Massimalliano Neri , the originator of the oratorio and earlier may have been a pupil of the great Palestrina. Certainly he is regarded, with Palestrina, as one of the supreme contrapuntalists of his age, his music having the ‘dramatic vigour and colour which reflects his nationality’ (Oxford Dictionary of Music). There are several of his compositions on disc and his music is still played at concerts and in worship around the world today.

B.R.

Early Art Music in Spain

A quibble first. NGDM makes a distinction between ‘Art’ music and folk music. I don’t much like this – it suggests to me that one sort of music is of the people and so-called classical music is elitist and of the mind rather than the heart. For many composers there is no such separation. Beethoven wrote arrangements of Irish, Welsh, Scottish songs and Zoltan Kodaly ( whose house I have visited in Budapest) together with his compatriot Bartok, wrote music not only inspired by an Hungarian idiom but often based upon it ( Kodaly’s ’Peacock Variations for example). In the end, there is just music, from whatever source. End of quibble!

For the Iberian Peninsula, our earliest knowledge of a music tradition goes back to the needs of the Church, as is so often the case. Our first known source is Isidore (c559-636), Archbishop of Seville. The 4th. Council of Toledo in 633 ordered that there should be a single order of prayer and singing throughout the Visigoth Kingdom, and the Mozarabic Chant was still used in Toledo in the late eleventh century, when the Council of Burgos imposed the Roman rite on the whole Spanish Church.

The Muslim invasion of 711 brought a host of new instruments to the Spanish cities and many of these were used in Christian worship. Seville became the centre of Moorish instrument making. A miniature in El Escorial includes a Moorish player following the King in procession. There is an irony in the fact that the Moors were making such a contribution when music was completely banned in their mosques! The Valledolid Council of 1322 ended the practice and forecast the growing conflict between the two religions and cultures when for so many years Jews, Moslems and Christians had lived creatively together.

B.R.

Spanish regional music: Castile

Castile is named after the many castles built by Christian nobles in the 8th. and 9th. centuries. This is a large, sparsely populated region set on the great plateaus of Spain surrounding the highly industrialised area of Madrid. Alfonso the Wise (or ‘Learned’) 1221-84 ruled the then kingdom of Castile-Leon. (Some time in the future we shall meet the excellent Castile and Leon Symphony Orchestra which records on the fabulous Naxos label).

Alfonso’s rule was pretty bloodthirsty and at one time he had ambitions to become Holy Roman Emperor, but he is remarkable too for the way he stimulated the cultural life of his time. Under his patronage the schools of Seville, Murcia and Salamanca flourished, and Muslim and Jewish intellectual and scientific culture flowed into Western Europe. And music too.

The Dufay Collective is an English group specialising in the rediscovery of early music and of the instruments likely to have been used to play it. They have just issued a CD, ‘Music for Alfonso the Wise (Harmonia Mundi HMU 907390), played one review said, ‘with great gusto’. A highlight of the disc, apparently, is a sequence of seven Cantigas de Arnigo by the Galician troubadour Martin Codax. The songs are a sequence tracking the emotions of a woman awaiting the return of her lover from the sea. You can hear a sample of the disc on the Dufay’s website.

Today Arongese Jota is popular in this region, but uniquely slow. The instrumentation also varies, and Galician influences are common especially in northern Leon with the appearance of the gaita.

The ‘tuna’, a serenade played with guitars and tambourines often by students dressed in medieval clothing, is typical of Salamanca, one of my very favourite Spanish cities.

…so we are back in the middle ages where we started. Next time we will look at more early music.

B.R.