"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."