Henri de Curzon, who translated La Celestina into French, has an exhaustive and extremely interesting account of Pedrell in "La Nouvelle Revue," Vol. 25, P. 72, under the title "Un maître de la Musique Espagnole." A highly laudatory essay on La Celestina by Camille Bellaigue may be found in his book entitled, "Notes Brèves." Bellaigue tells how he received the score in 1903 but only found time to study it during the rainy summer of 1910. His enthusiasm is unrestrained although he has not heard the work performed. The title of the essay is "Un Tristan Espagnol" and he says: "la joie et la douleur, l'amour et la mort partout se touchent et se fondent ici. De leur contact et de leur fusion, jamais encore une fois, depuis Tristan, l'art lyrique n'avait aussi fortement exprime le sombre mystère." He calls the work "le plus originale et le plus admirable peut-être, après Boris Godunow, qui, depuis les temps déjà lointains de Falstaff, nous soit venu de l'étranger."
[P. 78.] "La Bruja": Manrique de Lara says of this work: "This score of our greatest composer broke abruptly with the Italian tradition which, in form at least, had enslaved our musical productions until that time. A new influence, having its high origin in works of pure classical style whether symphonic or dramatic, led our steps down fresh pathways in La Bruja."
[P. 80.] "La Verbena de la Paloma": Raoul Laparra told me that Saint-Saëns admired this work so much that he had committed it to memory and played and replayed it on his piano.
[P. 81.] A name that should be inserted here is that of Emilio Serrano, born in the Basque city of Vitoria. He went early to Madrid, where he studied the piano under Zabalza and composition, at the Conservatory, with both Eslava and Arrieta. While very young he began to write zarzuelas, the best of which belonging to this period is probably El Juicio de Friné. His opera, Mithradates, in the Italian manner, was produced in 1882 at the Teatro Real in Madrid. Later he produced at the same house Doña Juana la Loca and Irene de Otranto, for which José Echegaray supplied the libretto. He wrote his own book for Gonzalo de Córdoba, an opera in a prologue and three acts (1898). His latest opera, La Maja de Rumbo, designed for the Lírico (now the Gran) has been performed only in Buenos Ayres. He has written a quartet, a symphony, a piano concerto and at least two symphonic poems, La Primera Salida de Don Quijote and Los Molinos de Viento. Emilio Serrano succeeded Arrieta as professor of composition at the Madrid Conservatory and there are few Spanish composers of the past two decades who have not been his pupils.
[P. 82.] "Albéniz": G. Jean-Aubry writes of this composer: "One and all the young composers of Spain owe to him a debt. Albéniz is Spain, as Moussorgsky is Russia, Grieg Norway, and Chopin Poland.... Iberia marks the summit of the art of Albéniz. Albéniz alone could venture to place this title, both simple and proud, at the head of the twelve divisions of this poem. One finds here all that emotion and culture can desire. The composer here reached a sureness of touch and grasped an originality of technique which demand much attention and which have no ulterior object. He even at times sacrificed perfection of form. There are no doubt fastidious critics who will find blemishes, but such blemishes as exist are not detrimental to expression, and this alone is important. In music there are many excellent scholars but few poets. Albéniz has all the power of the poet—ease and richness of style, beauty and originality of imagery, and a rare sense of suggestion.... The Preludes and Studies of Chopin, the Carneval and Kreisleriana of Schumann, the Years of Pilgrimage of Liszt, the Prelude, Choral and Fugue, and the Prelude, Aria and Finale of Franck, the Islamey of Balakirew, the Estampes and Images of Debussy, and the twelve poems of Iberia will mark the supreme heights of music for the pianoforte since 1830."
[P. 82.] "Catalonia": Henry J. Wood conducted a performance in London, March 4, 1900.
[P. 84.] Tradition and often necessity have driven many Spanish composers out of the peninsula to make their careers abroad. Victoria went to Rome; Arrieta to Milan; Albéniz, Valverde, de Falla (and how many others!) to Paris. Of late, indeed, Paris has been the haven of ambitious Spanish composers who have been received with open arms by their French confrères and where their music has been played by Ricardo Viñes, the Spanish pianist, and by J. Joachim Nin, the Cuban pianist. Viñes, indeed, has been friendly to the moderns of all nations. His programs embrace works of Satie, Albéniz, and Ravel ... doubtless, indeed, Leo Ornstein.
As a result some of the zarzuela writers who have stayed at home have produced more characteristic Spanish music than some of their more ambitious brethren. One of the reasons is explained by Mr. Underhill in his essay on the Spanish one-act play: "Spaniards are very particular about these things (the strict Spanish tradition without foreign influence). They insist upon the national element, upon the perpetuation of indigenous forms of expression, both in the matter of literary type and convention, and in mere questions of speech as well. Few writers of the first rank belonging to the past generation have escaped reproach upon this score. They were expected not only to spring from the soil but to taste of it." Equal demands are made upon the zarzuela writers. As a consequence the zarzuela, although scarcely taken seriously by either Spanish musicians or public, and always, according to the pedants, in a tottering decadent stage, may be considered the most national form of Spanish musical art.
I have referred to Joaquín Valverde in the text and his music has become comparatively familiar to Americans through The Land of Joy. José Serrano is another of the popular zarzuela writers. Perhaps his best-known work is El Mal de Amores for which the Brothers Quintero furnished the book. Serrano's home is in Madrid where he belongs to Benavente's tertulia. In the season of 1916-17 he organized a company for the purpose of presenting his operas and zarzuelas and conducted a campaign in the provinces. He was especially successful in Valencia. His three-act opera, La Canción del Olvido, was first performed during this tour. He recently rented the Zarzuela Theatre in Madrid and has continued to give his own and other composers' works there, including Usandizaga's posthumous La Llama. Other works of Serrano are La Reina Mora (zarzuela in one act, book by the Quinteros) and La Canción del Soldado.