To warm you up on this cold winter weekend, here's a burst of Spanish sun.
Track One: Los
Pacos Els Pacos, Vincente Perez LLedo
This is Classical Break, on
Somer Valley FM, and I’m Rupert Kirkham.
Today’s music is from Spanish composers attracted to the theme of
Granada and the region of Andalusia. You
have just heard Los Pacos Els Pacos,
a festive ‘Moorish’ March associated with Christian Spain’s age-old driving out
of its borders of the Arabian and Moroccan invader. The composer was Vincente Perez Lledo. The performers are the Sociedad Musica “La Alianza”
de Muchamel (a town near Alicante).
The timbre of the trumpets possesses
the almost explosively effortful vibrato common to much of Spain.
They came to Andalusia, the
Southern Kingdom of Spain, in force,
in 811AD: the Moors of North Africa. Their influence did not end with the Catholic
reconquest of the Kingdom in 1492, when joint rulers of Spain, Ferdinand and
Isabella passed laws requiring Muslims to convert to Christianity or
leave. Andalusia had been occupied for
over 6 centuries, and had been a place of trade with the whole of the
Mediterranean for far longer than that.
The influence of North Africa and the Middle East was strong (incidentally,
Sephardism was almost as important as Islam, before the Inquisition closed in),
and Andalusians have been suspected of divided loyalties as well as a people of
great cultural fascination for poets, musicians, artists of all kinds, proud
and distinct.
Spanish music has often been
aped by Germans, Russians, Frenchmen,
Englishmen; it was á la mode throughout the 19th Century, and
- via South America to some extent - added to the melting-pot of popular music
in the 20th. Frequently, just
as Hungarian and zigeuner sounds have been confused, so Andalusian music
has coloured our idea of Spanish music plus non ultra standing for music of the other just as distinct regions. Many of the catchy rhythmical patterns of
what we take to be Spanish music originated in Moorish
and Gypsified Andalusia. Zapateados, Sevillanas, Alegrias, Bulerias,
Tarantas, Malaguenas, Polos – many, flamenco steps - belong to the
Andalusians, to a limestone-rocky, mountainous country of tropical vegetation
that is lush near water, dusty and barren elsewhere, a land of cities such as
Granada, Malaga, Alicante, Seville, and of villages perched on vertiginous
slopes connected by high bridges or steep, dusty tracks, where water must be
carried from a spring-head. A land of
religious processions, ferias, corrida, municipal bands, and folk-musicians.
Here is a typical example of
‘Moorish’ Romantic-Nationalist music, a dance written by Enrique Granados (1867-1916),
one of his Danzas Espagnolas. It contrasts dusky, almost stealthy measures
and a simple lilting and extremely touching song-theme developed from
them. The dance was composed for
piano-solo. Here, Edouado Fernandez
plays his arrangement of it for guitar.
Track Two: Andaluza,
No 5, from Danzas Espagnolas,
Granados
Above Granada stands a
monastery. By an irony that suits the
occasion, the water of the fountains, waterfalls and pools of the celebrated
and most lavish Moorish palace in Spain, the Alhambra, is ducted from its
spring. Let’s hear some characteristic
Gregorian chant from the Mass. Gloria.
Track Three: Gloria
The Andalusian School of music
of the Moors was just one loss to Spain brought about by the reconquest of
Andalusia. Arabian music derives much of
its hypnotic quality from short, self-repeating phrases and a firm, regular
beat emphasized by percussion. The
vocalist or pipe-soloist is encouraged to perform straight or embellish a
simple line above a bare instrumental background of sparse harmony. The Sufic style that originally inspired
Dervishes to entranced worship remained to colour Christian Andalusian hymns,
secular songs and dances, and performance practices. For ourselves, here in the 21st
Century, we may feel ourselves to be in realms of psychedelia – though not
those of the contemporary Costa Del Sol.
Here’s the anonymous hymn to Allah, Jalla
Man.
Track Four: Jalla
Man, the traditional Andalusian School
Flamenco-toque is a busy style
of guitar-playing associated with Andalusia.
Its origins are said to be in Moorish and gipsy wedding-dances. The costumes are bright and fussy, the dance-steps
complex, the intensity of displays is known throughout the world, but, even in
Andalusia, not always as is claimed to be authentic! Fandango, for instance, a form imposing
accelerando and crescendo, may be a South American import. A famous gipsy family perform flamenco at
inhabited caves not far from the famous Moorish Alhambra and Generaliffe
palaces of Granada. Of the Alhambra,
more anon! Flamenco takes many forms,
some sung; in the case of the Tangos, which is emphatically not to be
associated with the Argentinian dance, it is traditionally built on its own
Phrygian modal scale. Here is a Tangos
by the great Spanish guitarist, Juan Martin – entitled simply Malaga.
Track Five: Malaga
(Tangos), Martin
Tomas Breton was born in the
city of Salamanca in the Western region of Spain, Castile y Leon. He wrote fluently in many forms, in
particular, in opera, zarzuela – a Spanish folk-form of the genre – and chamber
and pictorial orchestral music. His Andalusian Scenes are justly famous, a
suite of four numbers, including a Bolero and Zapateado, and Polo. Polo is an accompanied and sung form of
flamenco. Here’s Breton’s Polo, a beautiful example of scoring in
which the sounds of string-pizzicato (ending on the cellos) seem to resonate as
solo or tiered woodwind and even brass.
The sinuous phrases found in scalic figures, narrow melodic intervals
and arabesques may be heard as Moorish – not far-removed from the Granados Andalucia we heard earlier.
Track Six: Polo, Breton
Track Six: Polo, Breton
(FX Collage: Evening frogs, nightingale, Jalla Man – fades
out before:)
The Alhambra was first built
as a fortress, the Alcazaba, overlooking Granada. Sultan Yusuf 1st chose it for his
home in 899. Over hundreds of years,
additions were made until it became an unrivalled example of the superb palatial
residences of Sultans and Governors in Moorish Spain. After the expulsion of the Moors, it was
added to largely by Christian royalty in the 16th Century – a whole
new palace built within the gounds. In
reality, it is like a small town unto itself, with a huge pleasure-garden. In buildings, the dominant colours are red,
blue and yellow. Art consists of
non-representational geometrical patterns. Filled with plainly adorned rooms and courts,
fountains, cascades, its features also include tiled walls, colonnades,
myrtle-, orange-trees, vines, roses...
In the park, there stands a copse of elms, dating back to 1812, and gifted by the Duke of
Wellington after the Peninsular War. It
is a place for tourists, dancers and musicians, a place of solemn contemplation
of time and the greatness that lives on after its sponsors.
 |
| Andres Gaos-Berea |
Andres Gaos-Berea, born in A
Coruna, Galicia in North-West Spain, was a protégé of Pablo Sarasate, a violinist of high reputation in South
America - in especial, Argentina, where he lived for most of his life. Our last work for today is his orchestral
tone-poem of 1916, Granada – An Evening In The Alhambra. It is scored for double woodwind, plus
cor anglais and piccolo, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba,
full strings, and percussion that includes the dry festivity of castanets and
tambourines. The piece attracted
accolades in Buenos Aires, A Corunna, Vigo and even Paris – there, in 1937, the
famous Lamoureux Orchestra were conducted to great effect by the composer,
himself, at the Salle Gaveau, and his masterwork of Alhambrismo was given once
more the following year.
Gaos’ piece begins in
Debussyan whole-tone harmonics and level woodwind depth of twilight, a
viola-shaded arabesque that fixes one’s attention, a tritone hinted-at in the
relationship between arabesque and accompaniment; the cor anglais, accompanied
by imitational alto and bass strings, sings a highly elegant and yet plangent
song – piccolo and lower woodwind
suddenly providing brief bird-calls over this appealing sound. The Alhambra is famed for its nightingales as
well as walkers in the mild Summer twilight.
The tone lightens and builds bewitchingly in bassoon, brass and strings
– castanets – and with clever play of rapidity over slowness – a Sibelian or
Schubertian trick that precludes the audible ‘gear-change’ that disrupts impressions
of expressive unity, we have a beautifully scored flamenco of syncopated beat,
with tambourines and much exhilarating high woodwind detail, a variation
deservedly repeated! There is something
autobiographical in the form of this dance.
It begins as Farruca.
Farruca is a kind of danced flamenco thought to have come from Galicia – As a rule, it is characterized
by minor key tonality rather than by a modal scale; the dancer comes in on a
strong first beat, and syncopation - reinforced by clapping -gives rise to quick,
unexpected twists and turns amid a complex step-pattern. Significantly, it is associated with Galician
travellers who feel far from home.
Farruca is a ‘male’ dance.
The ‘feminine’ reply that ensues is modal, regular, skippingly light in
comparison, responsible for much of the exhilarating woodwind detail! The birds comment on this dance almost in
parenthesis. A new theme on cellos adds
its own commentary, about it, the bird-song plays. It is the big, romantic tune in the piece,
developed from the cor anglais tune of the introduction. The lead is turned
over to violins for their higher-pitched fervour, and a quiescent, modal chant follows its subsidence, wound about by
flute and piccolo. A guitar-like, deep
pizzicato leads to a new, Moorish development
on clarinet, the strings providing a bolero-like tread, and viola-shading. It returns, and the modal chant frames this austere, narrowly lyrical episode. Abruptly, the flamenco is on us again, as
high-spirited as before. Instead of a
two-fold repetition, Gaos plays what is surely his masterstroke in continuity –
as the secondary crescendo launches straight into his passionate big tune, full-throated in its fervour. This seems the heart of Spain herself
singing. Extended, it is as though
lifted higher by its own afflatus, ending
in the modal chant. This muses lullingly,
with great pathos and brings us back to the music of the rapt introduction,
minus the opening tritonal passage – the strings draw out this lovely melody with
Griegian harmonies which suggest that Gaos is more than loath to leave his
dreamworld. The birdcalls and dusky strings muse on this sublime, humane song
of regret until it finds something of its own consolation, after which the
birds sing more freely again. The
harmonics return, the ghostlier for what we have heard. Flute and muted horn sound stealthily, almost
mockingly, before the neither loud nor quiet last, repeated and extended chords
of cadence on lower strings.
The success of this piece in Paris
came as Spain endured the bloodiest Civil War in European history, the invader from
North Africa and Canary Islands, this time, being the Spanish Army under the
Fascistic, avowedly Christian General Franco.
This was Classical Break on
Somer Valley FM, and I’m Rupert Kirkham.
Today’s programme was researched and written by Mike Burrows. We hope that you enjoyed our musical tour of
Southern Spain, and will join us again soon.
Adios!
Granada, Un
Creposculo En La Alhambra, by Andres Gaos-Berea.
Track Seven: An
Evening In The Alhambra, Gaos-Berea
