Part 8
P. 18. "Where are they?": Pedrell's _La Celestina_ has found many admirers. Camille Bellaigue in "Notes Brèves" recommends it warmly to the director of the Opéra-Comique in Paris: "Aussi bien, après tant de 'saisons' russes, italiennes, allemandes, pourquoi ne pas en avoir une espagnole?"... Manuel de Falla's _La Vida Breve_ was produced in Paris before it was heard in Madrid. G. Jean-Aubry praises it highly.... And José María Usandizaga's _Las Golindrinas_ has proved immensely popular in Spain.
Pianists have not been slow to realize the value and beauty of Spanish music which they have placed on their programs, if not in profusion, at least in no niggardly manner ... but so far as I know no Spanish music has yet been played by our New York symphony societies, although works of Granados, and possibly those of other Spanish composers, have been heard elsewhere in America. This neglect is not only lamentable; it is stupid. Whether the music is good or bad, interesting or dull, New York should be permitted to hear some of it. I should suggest, to begin with, Albéniz's _Catalonia_, Joaquín Turina's _La Procesión del Rocio_, Conrado del Campo's _Divina Comedia_, Pérez Casas's _Suite Murcienne_, and Manuel de Falla's _Noches en los Jardines de España_. Of these I should prefer to hear the second and last.
P. 18. "It is doubtful, indeed, if the zarzuela could take root in any theatre in New York": No longer doubtful. Now that we have heard _The Land of Joy_ it is certain that a group of zarzuelas, presented by a good company with a good orchestra in the Spanish fashion, would be greeted here with enthusiasm.
P. 18. "in Spain Italian and German operas are much more popular than Spanish": This situation must be quite familiar to any American or Englishman, for neither in America nor in England has English opera any standing. See note to Page 70.
P. 24. "_Don Quixote_": Anton Rubinstein wrote a tone-poem with this title.... This list could be made much longer. The second of Debussy's _Estampes_ for piano, _La Soirée dans Grenade_ should certainly be mentioned here.... Pablo Casals ('cellist) and Ruth Deyo (pianist) played Loeffler's _Poème Espagnol_ at a concert in Boston March 24, 1917.
P. 25. "Raoul Laparra": This composer, of Basque blood, has been almost constantly obsessed with the idea of Spain and has probably written more consistently Spanish music than some Iberian composers who might be mentioned. There is to be another dance-opera, he writes me, to add to _La Habanera_ and _La Jota_, to be called _Le Tango et la Malagueña_, thus completing the series of "three dramas suggested by three dances." Mr. Laparra married an American and is at present living in America. He has completed an opera entitled _Le Conquistador_, which obviously has do with the Spanish occupation of America. He has also written a book, "La Musique Populaire en Espagne" (Delagrave; Paris). "The best Spanish composer _is_ the people," is his phrase.
At a concert in Aeolian Hall, January 6, 1917, Harold Bauer played Laparra's _Rhythmes Espagnols_ (announced as the first performance in New York). These proved to be a series of characteristic dance impressions. The composer supplied the following comment:
"There exists a world in Spain, little known outside the Iberian peninsula itself, made up of these people with their schools, their traditions. That is what I have tried to seize, that is what I am passionately interested in. Without the use of native tunes I have moulded my music on the native rhythms and forms and thereby endeavoured to interpret the spirit of the people. Thus _Petenera_ is conceived in the characteristic style and rhythm created by the singer of that name, an Andalusian woman, who lived in the last century. Old singers who had heard her told me that she sang 'like an angel.' Nobody could tell the date of her birth or death, and she has become a legendary character for whom all Andalusia wept and still weeps, although her beauty and her voice caused many men much unhappiness.
"_Tientos_ reproduces the impression of those mysterious comments of the guitar before or during the singer's sobbing melodic figures. The singer and the guitar-player improvise together and, strangely enough, always in harmony, as though animated by a single impulse.
"The _Sevillanas_ is authentic in form. Its four figures portray the dance. In the Sevillana two dancers, one in red, the other in yellow, chase each other like two big butterflies, amidst the rattle of the castanets. It is at once the most graceful and the _proudest_ dance I know.
"_Rueda_ is built up on the rhythm of the Castilian dance of that name in 5-8 time. We are no longer in Andalusia, but in another scene: high plateaus, where, grave as the natural surroundings, massive beings dance who seem to have come out of the past. It is a dance of dead cities, Ávila, Burgos and many others sleeping in the sublime sadness of old Castile where the great winds weep.
"_Solea_ belongs to a world of magic, a world of gipsies. Each of these gipsies seems to have in his heart and in his eyes some grief, some unrecognized fatality. Hence the motive of my _Habanera_ and the character of its hero, Ramón.
"_Paseo_: sun, copper, red, gold--such are the vibrations of sound and sight of the Spanish fête. It is especially at the bull-fights that they dazzle you, when, amid the wild acclamations of an excited assembly the _Cuadrilla_--the troop of combatants and caparisoned horses and mules--makes its entry into the arena. Such is the subject of this musical 'note.'"
Mr. Laparra elaborated this suite, adding other piano pieces and songs and on April 24, 1918, in Aeolian Hall, with the assistance of Helen Stanley, soprano, he gave a concert at Aeolian Hall, New York, which he entitled "A Musical Journey Through Spain." "They are not songs as they are sung in Spain," said Mr. Laparra, "but they are the musical forms of that country expressed through the vision of a French traveller and treated by him with complete imaginative freedom."
Mr. Laparra was born May 13, 1876, and studied at the Paris Conservatoire with Massenet and Gabriel Fauré. He secured the Prix de Rome in 1903.
P. 26. "the dances and entr'actes are Spanish in colour": According to M. Sterling Mackinlay, Manuel García, who attended the first performance of _Carmen_ in London, June 22, 1878, was "astounded and delighted at the Spanish colour in the music."
P. 28. "Clément et Larousse give a long list of _Don Quixote_ operas, but they do not include one by Manuel García": This opera is mentioned in Hugo Riemann's "Opern Handbuch" together with others on the same subject by Purcell, Paesiello, Salieri, and Piccinni.
P. 29. "El Sombrero de tres Picos": This amusing novel of Alarcón, translated by Jacob S. Fassett, jr., has recently been published by Alfred A. Knopf.
P. 29. "_Il Trovatore_": We are not accustomed to think of Verdi's opera as Spanish today. But read Henry Fothergill Chorley ("Thirty Years Musical Recollections"): "One of the points in _Il Trovatore_,--which may be found worthy of remembering--after this or the other tune has passed into the limbo of old tunes--is Signor Verdi's essay at vocal Spanish gipsy colour. The chorus of waifs and strays opening the second act has an uncouthness,--a bar or two of Oriental drawl,--before the Italian anvils begin,--which must remind any one of such real gipsy music, as can be heard and seen in Spain.--Thus, also, is the monotonous, inexpressive narration of the gipsy mother, Azucena, to be animated only by her own passion,--all the more truthful (possibly) from its want of character. No melody really exists among those people,--and the wild cries which they give out could not be reduced to notation, were it not for the dance which they accompany.--Signor Verdi may have comprehended this--though with insufficient means of expression; at all events, some notion of the kind is to be found in what may be called the characteristic music of _Il Trovatore_."
P. 29. "_Don Giovanni_ and _Le Nozze di Figaro_": "Seville, more than any city I have ever seen, is the city of pleasure ... and in living gaily, and in the present, it is carrying on a tradition: it is the city of Don Juan, the city of Figaro." Arthur Symons in "Cities."
P. 30. To this list of operas add Cherubini's _Les Abencérages_, Donizetti's _La Favorita_, Camille Erlanger's _La Sorcière_, Lecocq's _Giroflé-Girofla_, Wallace's _Maritana_, d'Albert's _Tiefland_, Verdi's _Don Carlos_, Sir Arthur Sullivan's _The Chieftain_, and Julius Eichberg's _The Doctor of Alcántara_.
P. 36. Probably Pastora Imperio is the foremost of all contemporary Spanish dancers. She is a gipsy, the daughter of the dancer, La Mejorana, and Víctor Rojes, a tailor to bull-fighters, and she married the _torero_, El Gallo. She made her début at the Japonés, the best variety theatre in Madrid, opened in 1900. In 1902 she went to the Novedadés in the Calle Alcala, where La Argentina, then known as Aidá, and the famous Amalia Molina first appeared in Madrid. The Brothers Quintero have inscribed a sonnet to Pastora Imperio and they wrote their "Historia de Sevilla" for her use. Julio Romero de Torres has painted her. And Benavente, himself, the greatest, perhaps, of modern Spanish writers, has written a description of her dancing: "Her flesh burns with the consuming heat of all eternity, but her body is like the very pillar of the sanctuary, palpitating as it is kindled in the glow of sacred fires.... Watching Pastora Imperio life becomes more intense. The loves and hates of other worlds pass before our eyes and we feel ourselves heroes, bandits, hermits assailed by temptation, shameless bullies of the tavern--whatever is highest and lowest in one. A desire to shout out horrible things takes possession of us: _Gitanaza!_ Thief! Assassin! Then we turn to curse. Finally, summing it all up, in a burst of exaltation we praise God, because we believe in God while we look at Pastora Imperio, just as we do when we read Shakespeare." Recently La Imperio has been appearing in a one act piece, the music of which was arranged from de Falla's _El Amor Brujo_.
Amalia Molina, mentioned above, was in her prime ten years or so ago.... Zuloaga has painted several portraits of Anita Ramirez and other Spanish dancers. One of his most admired pictures is of a gipsy dancer in _torero_ costume.
Here, too, I may speak of La Goya, a delightful music-hall singer who has won fame not only in Spain but in South America as well. She has made a special study of costumes. Of a more popular type, but not more of a favourite, is Raquel Meller.
P. 43. "the tail of a peacock": In Catulle Mendès's song, _La Pavana_, set to music by Alfred Bruneau, he compares the pavane to a peacock.
P. 46. "its origin in the twelfth century": Tomás Bretón writes me that he considers it ridiculous to attribute any such age to the jota. His researches on the subject are embodied in a pamphlet (1911) entitled "Rápida ojeada histórica sobre la música española."
P. 49. Curiously enough in a music critic's account of a voyage in Spain (H. T. Finck's "Spain and Morocco") only a single page is devoted to a discussion of Spanish music or dancing. The author is not sympathetic. The rhythmic and dynamic features of the performance which so aroused the delight of Chabrier only annoy Mr. Finck. I quote his account which begins with an experience at Murcia: "In the evening I came across an interesting performance in the street. A woman and a man were singing a duet, accompanying themselves with a guitar and a mandolin, making a peculiarly pleasing combination, infinitely superior to the performances of the Italian bards who accompany themselves with hand-organs or cheap harps, not to speak of the horrible German beer-bands which infest our streets. It was indeed so agreeable that I followed the couple for several blocks. But with the exception of a students' concert in Seville, it was almost the only good music I heard in Spain. Madrid and Barcelona have ambitious operatic performances in winter, and the Barcelonese go so far as to claim that they sing and understand Wagner better than the Berliners; but as the opera-houses were closed while I was there, I have no comments to offer on this boast. In a café chantant which I visited in Seville I heard, instead of national airs, vulgar French women singing a French version of 'Champagne Charley' and similar vulgar things; no one, it is true, cared for these songs, whereas a rare bit of national melody in the program was wildly applauded; but fashion of course must have her sway. At another café the music was thoroughly Spanish, with guitar accompaniment; but, according to the usual Spanish custom, there were a dozen persons on the stage who clapped their hands so loudly, to mark the rhythm, that the music degenerated into a mere rhythmic noise accompanying the dancing. These dances interest the Spanish populace much more than any kind of music, and I was amused occasionally to see a group of working men looking on the grotesque amateur dancing of one or two of their number with an expression of supreme enjoyment, and clapping their hands in unison to keep time."
Seeing indifferent dancing performed, he affirms, by women who were no longer young, in the early part of his Spanish sojourn, Théophile Gautier, too, at first was inclined to treat Spanish dancing as a myth (P. 31): "Les danses espagnoles n'existent qu'à Paris, comme les coquillages, qu'on ne trouve que chez les marchands de curiosités, et jamais sur le bord de la mer. O Fanny Elssler! qui êtes maintenant en Amérique chez les sauvages, même avant d'aller en Espagne, nous nous doutions bien que c'était vous qui aviez inventé la cachucha!"... This was at Vitoria. In Madrid he writes: "On nous avait dit à Vitoria, à Burgos et à Valladolid, que les bonnes danseuses étaient à Madrid; à Madrid, l'on nous a dit que les véritables danseuses de cachucha n'existaient qu'en Andalousie, à Séville. Nous verrons bien; mais nous avons peur qu'en fait de danses espagnoles, il ne nous faille en revenir à Fanny Elssler et aux deux soeurs Noblet."... In Andalusia he capitulated: "Les danseuses espagnoles, bien qu'elles n'aient pas le fini, la correction précise, l'élévation des danseuses françaises, leur sont, à mon avis, bien supérieures par la grâce et le charme; comme elles travaillent peu et ne s'assujetissent pas à ces terribles excercises d'assouplissement qui font ressembler une classe de danse à une salle de torture, elles évitent cette maigreur de cheval entrainé qui donne à nos ballets quelque chose de trop macabre et de trop anatomique; elles conservent les contours et les rondeurs de leur sexe; elles ont l'air de femmes qui dansent et non pas de danseuses, ce qui est bien différent.... En Espagne les pieds quittent à peine la terre; point de ces grands ronds de jambe, de ces écarts qui font ressembler une femme à un compas forcé, et qu'on trouve là-bas d'une indécence révoltante. C'est le corps qui danse, ce sont les reins qui se cambrent, les flancs qui ploient, la taille qui se tord avec une souplesse d'almée où de couleuvre. Dans les poses renversées, les épaules de la danseuse vont presque toucher la terre; les bras, pâmés et morts, ont une flexibilité, une mollesse d'écharpe dénouée; on dirait que les mains peuvent à peine soulever et faire babiller les castagnettes d'ivoire aux cordons tressés d'or; et cependant, au moment venu, des bonds de jeune jaguar succèdent à cette langueur voluptueuse, et prouvent que ces corps, doux comme la soie, enveloppent des muscles d'acier...."
P. 50. "the malagueña": Gautier thus describes this dance: "La _malagueña_, danse locale de Málaga, est vraiment d'une poésie charmante. Le cavalier paraît d'abord, le _sombrero_ sur les yeux, embossé dans sa cape écarlate comme un hidalgo qui se promène et cherche les aventures. La dame entre, drapée dans sa mantille, son éventail à la main, avec les façons d'une femme qui va faire un tour à l'Alameda. Le cavalier tâche de voir la figure de cette mystérieuse sirène; mais la coquette manoeuvre si bien de l'éventail, l'ouvre et le ferme si à propos, le tourne et le retourne si promptement à la hauteur de son joli visage, que le galant, désappointé, recule de quelques pas et s'avise d'un autre stratagème. Il fait parler des castagnettes sous son manteau. A ce bruit, la dame prête l'oreille; elle sourit, son sein palpite, la pointe de son petit pied de satin marque la mesure malgré elle; elle jette son éventail, sa mantille, et paraît en folle toilette de danseuse, étincelante de paillettes et de clinquants, une rose dans les cheveux, un grand peigne d'écaille sur la tête. Le cavalier se débarrasse de son masque et de sa cape, et tous deux exécutent un pas d'une originalité délicieuse."
P. 51. "the _Romalis_": Arthur Symons has written a very beautiful passage to describe a gipsy dancing. If you have seen Doloretes you may think of her while you read it: "All Spanish dancing, and especially the dancing of the gipsies, in which it is seen in its most characteristic development, has a sexual origin, and expresses, as Eastern dancing does, but less crudely, the pantomime of physical love. In the typical gipsy dance as I saw it danced by a beautiful Gitana at Seville, there is something of mere gaminerie and something of the devil; the automatic tramp-tramp of the children and the lascivious pantomime of a very learned art of love. Thus it has all the excitement of something spontaneous and studied, of vice and a kind of naughty innocence, of the thoughtless gaiety of youth as well as the knowing humour of experience. For it is a dance full of humour, fuller of humour than of passion; passion indeed it mimics on the purely animal side, and with a sort of coldness even in its frenzy. It is capable of infinite variations; it is a drama, but a drama improvised on a given theme; and it might go on indefinitely, for it is conditioned only by the pantomime which we know to have wide limits. A motion more or less and it becomes obscene or innocent; it is always on a doubtful verge, and thus gains its extraordinary fascination. I held my breath as I watched the gipsy in the Seville dancing-hall; I felt myself swaying unconsciously to the rhythm of her body, of her beckoning hands, of the glittering smile that came and went in her eyes. I seemed to be drawn into a shining whirlpool, in which I turned, turned, hearing the buzz of water settling over my head. The guitar buzzed, buzzed, in a prancing rhythm, the gipsy coiled about the floor, in her trailing dress, never so much as showing her ankles, with a rapidity concentrated upon itself; her hands beckoned, reached out, clutched delicately, lived to their finger-tips; her body straightened, bent, the knees bent and straightened, the heels beat on the floor, carrying her backwards and round; the toes pointed, paused, pointed, and the body drooped or rose into immobility, a smiling, significant pause of the whole body. Then the motion became again more vivid, more restrained, as if teased by some unseen limits, as if turning upon itself in the vain desire of escape, as if caught in its own toils; more feverish, more fatal, the humour turning painful, with the pain of achieved desire; more earnest, more eager, with the languor in which desire dies triumphant."
P. 54. Another account of this dance in the cathedral may be found in de Amicis's "Spain and the Spaniards."... H. T. Finck saw this dance and he devotes a short paragraph to it on P. 56 of his "Spain and Morocco." Arthur Symons's description in his essay on "Seville" in "Cities" is charming enough to quote: "There was but little light except about the altar, which blazed with candles; suddenly a curtain was drawn aside, and the sixteen boys, in their blue and white costume, holding plumed hats in their hands, came forward and knelt before the altar. The priests, who had been chanting, came up from the choir; the boys rose, and formed in two eights, facing each other, in front of the altar, and the priests knelt in a semi-circle around them. Then an unseen orchestra began to play, and the boys put on their hats, and began to sing the _coplas_ in honour of the Virgin:
'O mi, O mi amada Immaculada!'
as they sang to a dance measure. After they had sung the _coplas_ they began to dance, still singing. It was a kind of solemn minuet, the feet never taken from the ground, a minuet of delicate stepping and intricate movement, in which a central square would form, divide, a whole line passing through the opposite line, the outer ends then repeating one another's movements while the others turned and divided again in the middle. The first movement was very slow, the second faster, ending with a pirouette; then came two movements without singing, but with the accompaniment of castanets, the first movement again very slow, the second a quick rattle of the castanets, like the rattling of kettle-drums, but done without raising the hands above the level of the elbows. Then the whole thing was repeated from the beginning, the boys flourished off their hats, dropped on their knees before the altar, and went quickly out. One or two verses were chanted, the Archbishop gave his benediction, and the ceremony was over.
"And, yes, I found it perfectly dignified, perfectly religious, without a suspicion of levity or indecorum. This consecration of the dance, this turning of a possible vice into a means of devotion, this bringing of the people's art, the people's passion, which in Seville is dancing, into the church, finding it a place there, is precisely one of those acts of divine worldly wisdom which the Church has so often practised in her conquest of the world."
P. 55. "the fandango": I found the following reference to the fandango in Philip Thicknesse's remarkably interesting and exceedingly curious book, "A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain" (London; 1777): "In no part of the world, therefore, are women more caressed and attended to, than in Spain. Their deportment in public is grave and modest; yet they are very much addicted to pleasure; nor is there scarce one among them that cannot, nay that will not dance the _Fandango_ in private, either in the decent or the indecent manner. I have seen it danced both ways, by a pretty woman, than which nothing can be more _immodestly agreeable_; and I was shewn a young lady at _Barcelona_ who in the midst of this dance ran out of the room, telling her partner she could _stand_ it no longer;--he ran after her, to be sure, and must be answerable for the consequences. I find in the music of the _Fandango_, written under one bar, _Salido_, which signifies _going out_; it is where the woman is to part a little from her partner, and to move slowly by herself; and I suppose it was at _that bar the_ lady was so overcome, as to determine her not to return. The words _Perra Salida_ should therefore be placed at that bar, when the ladies dance it in the high _goût_."