XIII. “X.X.X.—Romanza.” Moderato, G major, 3-4. The story is that “X.X.X.” was at sea when Elgar wrote this variation. We quote from Mr. Daniel Gregory Mason’s essay on Elgar: “Violas in a quietly undulating rhythm suggests the ocean expanse; an almost inaudible tremor of the drum gives the throb of the engines; a quotation from Mendelssohn’s Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage (clarinet) completes the story. Yet ‘story’ it is not—and there is the subtlety of it. Dim sea and dreamlike steamer are only accessories, after all. The thought of the distant friend, the human soul there, is what quietly disengages itself as the essence of the music.”[26] Ernest Newman speaks of the “curious drum roll, like the faint throb of the engines of a big liner.”[27]
XIV. “E.D.U.—Finale.” Allegro, G major, with an introduction. There are various modifications of tempo; the final section is a presto. The organ part was added after the first performance. “The finale is an elaborate movement, starting pianissimo, but soon developing strength and brilliancy in a richly scored marchlike strain, with which anon the ritmo di tre of Variation IX, ‘Nimrod’ (but in augmentation) is combined in a grandiose and triumphant passage, which virtually forms the climax of the work.” There is also a reminiscence of the opening strain of Variation I, pianississimo.
MANUEL
DE FALLA
(Born at Cadiz, November 23, 1876)
BALLET-PANTOMIME: “EL AMOR BRUJO”
The suite derived from de Falla’s “choreographic fantasy,” Love, the Sorcerer, does not suffer so much by its separation from the theatrical situations, action, and stage settings as other suites arranged from ballets. There are many pages that are enjoyable as pure music without thought of a plot and the evolutions of a ballet, without the question of whether this number or that is illustrative of an episode in the ballet. If de Falla expresses the wildness of Spanish gypsy music in a fascinating manner, he is equally fortunate in the expression of gentle emotions. There is little that is sensuous or voluptuous in the suite. The music for the scene of the appearance of a ghost which cools the amorous ardor of Candelas when her new lover would approach her—here one is reminded of the chief theme of Anatole France’s amusing and satirical Histoire comique—is, perhaps, imbued with passionate fervor for performance on the stage.
This Gitaneria (Gypsy Life) in one act and two scenes, a choreographic fantasy with voice and small orchestra, book by Gregorio Martinez Sierra (known in this country by the plays A Romantic Young Lady, Cradle Song, The Kingdom of God), was produced at the Teatro de Lara, Madrid, April 15, 1915, with the Señora Pastora Imperio assisting. A concert version was performed at Madrid in 1916, E. Fernandez Arbos conductor, at a concert of the Sociedad Nacional de Música. According to G. Jean-Aubry, “De Falla drew from the music certain symphonic excerpts, in which he suppressed the spoken or sung parts and enlarged the instrumentation.... But this did not alter the essential character of the work, which is to be found in its particular color, or the semi-Arabian style of its idioms.”
This suite was performed for the first time in London on November 23, 1921.
Sierra based the libretto of de Falla’s ballet pantomime on an Andalusian gypsy story. Brujo means a wizard, a male witch. Mr. Trent, in his Manuel de Falla and Spanish Music, writes: “L’Amour sorcier has misled both audiences and English translators. Love the Wizard gives an entirely wrong impression; Wedded by Witchcraft, proposed as an alternative, is a description, more or less, of what happens; and even that would be better as Wedded in Spite of Witchcraft.”