The Music of Spain

by Carl Van Vechten

[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."

Philip Thicknesse is one of the undeservedly forgotten figures of the eighteenth century. He wrote twenty-four books, including the first Life of Thomas Gainsborough, whom he claims to have discovered and which contains accounts of pictures which have disappeared, "A Treatise on the Art of Decyphering and of Writing in Cypher with an Harmonic Alphabet," and the aforementioned account of a journey through France and Spain which contains one of the earliest sympathetic descriptions of Montserrat. Thicknesse led far from a dull life and its course was marked by a series of violent quarrels. Born in 1719 he was in Georgia with General Oglethorpe in 1735. Later he fought wild negroes in Jamaica and cruised in the Mediterranean with Admiral Medley. In 1762 he had a dispute with Francis Vernon (afterwards Lord Orwell and Earl of Shipbrooke) then Colonel of the Suffolk militia; and having sent the Colonel the ridiculous present of a wooden gun became involved in an action for libel with the result that he was confined three months in the King's Bench Prison and fined £300. He was married three times. For his son, by his second marriage, Baron Audley, he conceived a deep hatred of which there is an echo in his will wherein he desires his right hand to be cut off and sent to Lord Audley to remind him of his duty to God after having so long abandoned the duty he owed to his father. The title of his last book also bears witness to this feud: "Memoirs and Anecdotes of Philip Thicknesse, late Lieutenant Governor of Land Guard Fort and unfortunately father to George Touchet, Baron Audley." In 1774 his twenty year friendship with Gainsborough ended in a wretched squabble. In 1775 a decree of chancery ratified by the House of Lords, to which he appealed, deprived him of what he considered his right to £12,000 from the family of his first wife. Feeling himself driven out of his country, accompanied by his third wife, two children and a monkey, he went to live in Spain, but he was back in England in a year and published the book from which I have quoted. His third wife, Anne Ford, was celebrated as a musician and you may find some account of her in the old Grove's Dictionary. She played the guitar, the viola de gamba, and the "musical glasses" and sang airs by Handel and the early Italians. The customs inspector at Cette on the way to Spain found "a bass viol, two guittars, a fiddle, and some other musical instruments" in Thicknesse's baggage. Thicknesse died in 1792 and was buried in the Protestant Cemetery in Boulogne. The greater part of his work in Spain is devoted to an account of Montserrat, which he visited before its despoliation.

[P. 56.] "Mr. Philip Hale found the following account of it (the fandango somewhere"): In the anonymous, incomplete, and somewhat incorrect translation of Gaston Vuillier's "La Danse" (Hachette et Cie., 1898). In the original work this description of the fandango seems to be attributed to Tomás de Iriarte although the text is a little ambiguous, In the English translation called, "A History of Dancing," Chapter VIII is mainly devoted to Spanish dancing; in the original work it is Chapter IX. Vuillier derived most of his material from the Baron Charles Davillier's elaborate work, "l'Espagne," which is illustrated by Gustave Doré. Vuillier quotes Davillier very freely. Davillier's chapters on Spanish dancing (Chapters XIV and XV) are extremely interesting and much of their material the Baron gathered himself. There is for example a description of La Campanera dancing to the indifferent music provided by a blind violinist whose tunes prove so uninspiring that Doré seizes the violin from his trembling old fingers and plays it himself with great effect. Davillier describes Doré as a violinist of the first order who had won praise from Rossini. On another occasion Davillier and Doré, stimulated by the dancing of gipsies, enter into the sport themselves, wildly tap their heels, wave their arms, and circle with the gitanas while a large group applauds. This book which was published by Hachette in Paris in 1874 was brought out in New York, in J. Thomson's translation, with the original illustrations, by Scribner, Welford, and Armstrong in 1876. In the American edition the two French chapters are rolled into one, Chapter XIV.

[P. 57.] "cannot be transplanted, but remains local": James Huneker's Spanish experiences as related in the chapter on Madrid in "The New Cosmopolis" seem to have been unfortunate. There are those who would disagree with every separate statement in the following paragraph: "The best Spanish dancing is not to be found in Spain today. You must go to Paris for Otero and Carmencita. Nor is the most characteristic cookery in Spain; at least not in Madrid. The greatest Spanish opera was composed by the Frenchman Bizet."

[P. 62.] "Spanish folk-tunes": The Spanish catalogue of the Victor Phonograph Company offers a splendid opportunity for the study of Spanish and gipsy folk-music. You may find therein even examples of gipsy songs, conceived in esoteric scales, sung by gipsies, accompanied by the guitar. Mr. Caro-Delvaille has brought to my attention Nos. 62365 (Petenaras) and 62289 (Soleares). Nos. 62078 (Sevillanos and Ferruca) and 62077 (Jotas Nuevas), sung by Pozo, are also good. Most of Pozo's records will be found to be interesting.