The Music of Spain

by Carl Van Vechten

Bretón is largely self-taught, and there is a legend that he devoured by himself Eslava's "School of Composition." He further wrote the music and conducted for a circus for a period of years. In the late seventies he conducted an orchestra, founding a new society, the Unión Artística Musical, which is said to have been the beginning of the modern movement in Spain. It may throw some light on Spanish musical taste at this period to mention the fact that the performance of Saint-Saëns's Danse macabre almost created a riot. Later Bretón travelled. He appeared as conductor in London, Prague, and Buenos Ayres, among other cities outside of Spain, and when Dr. Karl Muck left Prague for Berlin, he was invited to succeed him in the Bohemian capital. In the contest held by the periodical "Blanco y Negro" in 1913 to decide who was the most popular writer, poet, painter, musician, sculptor, and toreador in Spain, Bretón as musician got the most votes.... He is at present the head of the Royal Conservatory in Madrid.

No Spanish composer (ancient or modern) is better known outside of Spain than Isaac Albéniz (born May 29, 1861, at Comprodon; died at Cambo, in the Pyrenees, May 25, 1909). His fame rests almost entirely on twelve piano pieces (in four books) entitled collectively Iberia, with which all concert goers are familiar. They have been performed here by Ernest Schelling, Leo Ornstein, and George Copeland, among other virtuosi.... I think one or two of these pieces must be in the répertoire of every modern pianist. Albéniz did not imbibe his musical culture in Spain and to the day of his death he was more friendly with the modern French group of composers than with those of his native land. In his music he sees Spain with French eyes. He studied at Paris with Marmontel; at Brussels with Louis Brassin; and at Weimar with Liszt (he is mentioned in the long list of pupils in Huneker's biography of Liszt, but there is no further account of him in that book); he studied composition with Jadassohn, Joseph Dupont, and F. Kufferath. His symphonic poem, Catalonia, has been performed in Paris by the Colonne Orchestra. I have no record of any American performance. For a time he devoted himself to the piano. He was a virtuoso and he has even played in London, but later in life he gave up this career for composition. He wrote several operas and zarzuelas, among them a light opera, The Magic Opal (produced in London, 1893), Enrico Clifford (Barcelona, 1894; later heard in London), Pepita Jiménez (Barcelona, 1895; afterwards given at the Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels), and San Antonio de la Florida (produced in Brussels as l'Ermitage Fleurie). He left unfinished at his death another opera destined for production in Brussels at the Monnaie, Merlin l'Enchanteur. None of his operas, with the exception of Pepita Jiménez, which has been performed, I am told, in all Spanish countries, achieved any particular success, and it is Iberia and a few other piano pieces which will serve to keep his memory green.

Juan Bautista Pujol (1836-1898) gained considerable reputation in Spain as a pianist and as a teacher of and composer for that instrument. He also wrote a method for piano students entitled "Nuevo Mecanismo del Piano." His further claim to attention is due to the fact that he was one of the teachers of Granados.

The names of Pahissa (both as conductor and composer; one of his symphonic works is called The Combat), García Robles, represented by an Epitalame, and Gibert, with two Marines, occur on the programs of the two concerts devoted in the main to Spanish music, at the second of which (Barcelona, 1910; conductor Franz Beidler) Granados's Dante was performed.

E. Fernández Arbós (born in Madrid, December 25, 1863) is better known as a conductor and violinist than as composer. Still, he has written music, especially for his own instrument. He was a pupil of both Vieuxtemps and Joachim; and he has travelled much, teaching at the Hamburg Conservatory, and acting as concertmaster for the Boston Symphony and the Glasgow Orchestras. He has been a professor at the Madrid conservatory for some time, giving orchestral and chamber music concerts, both there and in London. He has written at least one light opera, presumably a zarzuela, El Centro de la Tierra (Madrid; December 22, 1895); three trios for piano and strings, songs, and an orchestral suite.

I have already referred to the Valverdes, father and son. The father, in collaboration with Federico Chueca, wrote La Gran Vía. Many another popular zarzuela is signed by him. The son has lived so long in France that much of his music is cast in the style of the French music hall; too it is in a popular vein. Still in his best tangos he strikes a Spanish folk-note not to be despised. He wrote the music for the play, La Maison de Danses, produced, with Polaire, at the Vaudeville in Paris, and two of his operettas, La Rose de Grenade and l'Amour en Espagne, have been performed in Paris, not without success, I am told by La Argentina, who danced in them. Other modern composers who have been mentioned to me are Manuel de Falla, Joaquín Turina (George Copeland has played his A los Toros), Usandizaga (who died in 1915), the composer of Las Golondrinas, Oscar Esplá, Conrado del Campo, and Enrique Morera.

Enrique Granados was perhaps the first of the important Spanish composers to visit North America. His place in the list of modern Iberian musicians is indubitably a high one; though it must not be taken for granted that all the best music of Spain crosses the Pyrenees (for reasons already noted it is evident that some Spanish music can never be heard to advantage outside of Spain), and it is by no means to be taken for granted that Granados was a greater musician than several who dwell in Barcelona and Madrid without making excursions into the outer world. In his own country I am told Granados was admired chiefly as a pianist, and his performances on that instrument in New York stamped him as an original interpretative artist, one capable of extracting the last tonal meaning out of his own compositions for the pianoforte, which are his best work.

Shortly after his arrival in New York he stated to several reporters that America knew nothing about Spanish music, and that Bizet's Carmen was not in any sense Spanish. I hold no brief for Carmen being Spanish but it is effective, and that Goyescas as an opera is not. In the first place, its muddy and blatant orchestration would detract from its power to please (this opinion might conceivably be altered were the opera given under Spanish conditions in Spain). The manuscript score of Goyescas now reposes in the Museum of the Hispanic Society, in that delightful quarter of New York where the apartment houses bear the names of Goya and Velasquez, and it is interesting to note that it is a piano score. What has become of the orchestral partition and who was responsible for it I do not know. It is certain, however, that the miniature charm of the Goyescas becomes more obvious in the piano version, performed by Ernest Schelling or the composer himself, than in the opera house. The growth of the work is interesting. Fragments of it took shape in the composer's brain and on paper seventeen years ago, the result of the study of Goya's paintings in the Prado. These fragments were moulded into a suite in 1909 and again into an opera in 1914 (or before then). F. Periquet, the librettist, was asked to fit words to the score, a task which he accomplished with difficulty. Spanish is not an easy tongue to sing. To Mme. Barrientos this accounts for the comparatively small number of Spanish operas. Goyescas, like many a zarzuela, lags when the dance rhythms cease. I find little joy myself in listening to La Maja y el Ruiseñor; in fact, the entire last scene sounds banal to my ears. In the four volumes of Spanish dances which Granados wrote for piano (published by the Sociedad Anónima Casa Dotesio in Barcelona) I console myself for my lack of interest in Goyescas. These lovely dances combine in their artistic form all the elements of the folk-dances as I have described them. They bespeak a careful study and an intimate knowledge of the originals. And any pianist, amateur or professional, will take joy in playing them.

Enrique Granados y Campina was born July 27, 1867, at Lerida, Catalonia. (He died March 24, 1916; a passenger on the Sussex, torpedoed in the English Channel.) From 1884 to 1887 he studied piano under Pujol and composition under Felipe Pedrell at the Madrid Conservatory. That the latter was his master presupposed on his part a valuable knowledge of the treasures of Spain's past and that, I think, we may safely allow him. There is, I am told, an interesting combination of classicism and folk-lore in his work. At any rate, Granados was a faithful disciple of Pedrell. In 1898 his opera María del Carmen was produced in Madrid and has since been heard in Valencia. Barcelona, and other Spanish cities. Five years later some fragments of another opera, Foletto, were produced at Barcelona. His third opera, Liliana, was produced at Barcelona in 1911. He wrote numerous songs to texts by the poet, Apeles Mestres; Galician songs, two symphonic poems, La Nit del Mort and Dante (performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for the first time in America at the concerts of November 5 and 6, 1915); a piano trio, string quartet, and various books of piano music (Danzas Españolas, Valses Poéticos, Bocetos, etc.).