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Title: The Music of Spain
Author: Van Vechten, Carl
Language: English
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the public domain.
The spelling of Spanish names and places in Spain mentioned in the text
has been adjusted to the rules set by the Academia Real Española.
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variants. For the words with both variants present the one more used
has been kept.
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* * * * *
THE MUSIC OF SPAIN
_BOOKS BY CARL VAN VECHTEN_
MUSIC AFTER THE GREAT WAR 1915
MUSIC AND BAD MANNERS 1916
INTERPRETERS AND INTERPRETATIONS 1917
THE MERRY-GO-ROUND 1918
THE MUSIC OF SPAIN 1918
[Illustration: MARY GARDEN AS CARMEN, ACT IV]
_from a photograph by Mishkin_
THE MUSIC OF SPAIN
_Carl Van Vechten_
[Illustration]
New York Alfred A. Knopf
MCMXVIII
COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY
ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
_Pour Blanchette_
Preface
_When the leading essay of this book, "Music and Spain," first appeared
it was, so far as I have been able to discover, the only commentary
attempting to cover the subject generally in any language. It still
holds that distinction, I believe. Little enough has been published
about Spanish music in French or German, little enough indeed even in
Spanish, practically nothing in English. It has been urged upon me,
therefore, that its republication might meet with some success. This I
have consented to although no one can be more cognizant of its faults
than I am. The subject is utterly unclassified; there is no certain
way of determining values at present. It is almost impossible to hear
Spanish music outside of Spain; not easy even in Spain, unless one is
satisfied with zarzuelas. Worse, it is impossible even to see most of
it. Many important scores remain unpublished and our music dealers and
our libraries have not an extensive collection of what is published.
Under the circumstances I have worked under great difficulties, but my
enthusiasm has not slackened on that account. My main purpose has been
to open the ears of the world to these new sounds, to create curiosity
regarding the music of the Iberian Peninsula. When more of this music
is familiar will be time enough to write a more critical and more
comprehensive work._
_As "Music and Spain" is printed from the original plates I have
made only slight typographical changes in the text; some of these
are important, however. But I have added very voluminous notes
incorporating information that has come to me since I wrote "Music
and Spain." There is much new material included therein about Spanish
dancing and modern composers and the index will make it possible for
any one to find what he may be looking for in short order. The essay
on_ Carmen_, too, was written for this book and that on_ The Land of
Joy_, being entirely apposite, I have lifted from "The Merry-Go-Round."
Mr. John Garrett Underhill has suggested many valuable changes and
additions and I am deeply indebted to him._
_The preparation of this book has given me an extraordinary interest
in and a real love for the Iberian Peninsula. If I have succeeded in
communicating a little of this feeling to my reader I shall be content._
CARL VAN VECHTEN.
_New York, June 26, 1918._
CONTENTS
PAGE
SPAIN AND MUSIC 13
_The Land of Joy_ 91
FROM GEORGE BORROW TO MARY GARDEN 105
NOTES ON THE TEXT 145
ILLUSTRATIONS
MARY GARDEN AS CARMEN, ACT IV _Frontispiece_
Facing
Page
TARQUINIA TARQUINI AS CONCHITA 24
LA ARGENTINA 36
TOMÁS BRETÓN 80
DOLORETES 96
ZULOAGA'S PORTRAIT OF LUCIENNE BRÉVAL AS
CARMEN, ACT II 130
OLIVE FREMSTAD AS CARMEN, ACT I 136
AMADEO VIVES 186
Spain and Music
"_Il faut méditerraniser la musique._"
Nietzsche.
SPAIN AND MUSIC
It has seemed to me at times that Oscar Hammerstein was gifted with
almost prophetic vision. He it was who imagined the glory of Times
(erstwhile Longacre) Square. Theatre after theatre he fashioned in what
was then a barren district--and presently the crowds and the hotels
came. He foresaw that French opera, given in the French manner, would
be successful again in New York, and he upset the calculations of all
the wiseacres by making money even with _Pelléas et Mélisande_, that
esoteric collaboration of Belgian and French art, which in the latter
part of the season of 1907-8 attained a record of seven performances
at the Manhattan Opera House, all to audiences as vast and as devoted
as those which attend the sacred festivals of _Parsifal_ at Bayreuth.
And he had announced for presentation during the season of 1908-9
(and again the following season) a Spanish opera called _La Dolores_.
If he had carried out his intention (why it was abandoned I have
never learned; the scenery and costumes were ready) he would have had
another honour thrust upon him, that of having been beforehand in the
production of modern Spanish opera in New York, an honour which, in
the circumstances, must go to Mr. Gatti-Casazza. (Strictly speaking,
_Goyescas_ was not the first Spanish opera to be given in New York,
although it was the first to be produced at the Metropolitan Opera
House. _Il Guarany_, by Antonio Carlos Gomez, a Portuguese born in
Brazil, was performed by the "Milan Grand Opera Company" during a three
weeks' season at the Star Theatre in the fall of 1884. An air from
this opera is still in the répertoire of many sopranos. To go still
farther back, two of Manuel García's operas, sung of course in Italian,
_l'Amante Astuto_ and _La Figlia dell'Aria_, were performed at the Park
Theatre in 1825 with María García--later to become the celebrated Mme.
Malibran--in the principal rôles. More recently an itinerant Italian
opéra-bouffe company, which gravitated from the Park Theatre--not the
same edifice that harboured García's company!--to various playhouses
on the Bowery, included three zarzuelas in its répertoire. One of
these, the popular _La Gran Vía_, was announced for performance,
but my records are dumb on the subject and I am not certain that
it was actually given. There are probably other instances.) Mr.
Hammerstein had previously produced two operas _about_ Spain when he
opened his first Manhattan Opera House on the site now occupied by
Macy's Department Store with Moszkowski's _Boabdil_, quickly followed
by Beethoven's _Fidelio_. The malagueña from _Boabdil_ is still a
favourite _morceau_ with restaurant orchestras, and I believe I have
heard the entire ballet suite performed by the Chicago Orchestra under
the direction of Theodore Thomas. New York's real occupation by the
Spaniards, however, occurred after the close of Mr. Hammerstein's
brilliant seasons, although the earlier vogue of Carmencita, whose
celebrated portrait by Sargent in the Luxembourg Gallery in Paris will
long preserve her fame, the interest in the highly-coloured paintings
by Sorolla and Zuloaga, many of which are still on exhibition in
private and public galleries in New York, the success here achieved, in
varying degrees, by such singing artists as Emilio de Gogorza, Andrés
de Segurola, and Lucrezia Bori, the performances of the piano works of
Albéniz, Turina, and Granados by such pianists as Ernest Schelling,
George Copeland, and Leo Ornstein, and the amazing Spanish dances of
Anna Pavlowa (who in attempting them was but following in the footsteps
of her great predecessors of the nineteenth century, Fanny Elssler and
Taglioni), all fanned the flames.
The winter of 1915-16 beheld the Spanish blaze. Enrique Granados,
one of the most distinguished of contemporary Spanish pianists and
composers, a man who took a keen interest in the survival, and
artistic use, of national forms, came to this country to assist at the
production of his opera _Goyescas_, sung in Spanish at the Metropolitan
Opera House for the first time anywhere, and was also heard several
times here in his interpretative capacity as a pianist; Pablo Casals,
the Spanish 'cellist, gave frequent exhibitions of his finished art,
as did Miguel Llobet, the guitar virtuoso; La Argentina (Señora Paz
of South America) exposed her ideas, somewhat classicized, of Spanish
dances; a Spanish soprano, María Barrientos, made her North American
début and justified, in some measure, the extravagant reports which
had been spread broadcast about her singing; and finally the decree
of Paris (still valid in spite of Paul Poiret's reported absence
in the trenches) led all our womenfolk into the wearing of Spanish
garments, the hip-hoops of the Velasquez period, the lace flounces
of Goya's Duchess of Alba, and the mantillas, the combs, and the
_accroche-coeurs_ of Spain, Spain, Spain.... In addition one must
mention Mme. Farrar's brilliant success, deserved in some degree,
as Carmen, both in Bizet's opera and in a moving picture drama;
Miss Theda Bara's film appearance in the same part, made with more
atmospheric suggestion than Mme. Farrar's, even if less effective as
an interpretation of the moods of the Spanish cigarette girl; Mr.
Charles Chaplin's eccentric burlesque of the same play; the continued
presence in New York of Andrés de Segurola as an opera and concert
singer; María Gay, who gave some performances in _Carmen_ and other
operas; and Lucrezia Bori, although she was unable to sing during the
entire season owing to the unfortunate result of an operation on her
vocal cords; in Chicago, Miss Supervia appeared at the opera and Mme.
Koutznezoff, the Russian, danced Spanish dances; and at the New York
Winter Garden Isabel Rodríguez appeared in Spanish dances which quite
transcended the surroundings and made that stage as atmospheric, for
the few brief moments in which it was occupied by her really entrancing
beauty, as a _maison de danse_ in Seville. The tango, too, in somewhat
modified form, continued to interest "ballroom dancers," danced to
music provided in many instances by Señor Valverde, an indefatigable
producer of popular tunes, some of which have a certain value as music
owing to their close allegiance to the folk-dances and songs of Spain.
In the art-world there was a noticeable revival of interest in Goya and
El Greco.
But if Mr. Gatti-Casazza, with the best intentions in the world,
should desire to take advantage of any of this _réclame_ by producing
a series of Spanish operas at the Metropolitan Opera House--say four
or five more--he would find himself in difficulty. Where are they?
Several of the operas of Isaac Albéniz have been performed in London,
and in Brussels at the Théâtre de la Monnaie, but would they be liked
here? There is Felipe Pedrell's monumental work, the trilogy, _Los
Pireneos_, called by Edouard Lopez-Chavarri "the most important work
for the theatre written in Spain"; and there is the aforementioned
_La Dolores_. For the rest, one would have to search about among the
zarzuelas; and would the Metropolitan Opera House be a suitable place
for the production of this form of opera? It is doubtful, indeed, if
the zarzuela could take root in any theatre in New York.
The truth is that in Spain Italian and German operas are much more
popular than Spanish, the zarzuela always excepted; and at Señor
Arbós's series of concerts at the Royal Opera in Madrid one hears
more Bach and Beethoven than Albéniz and Pedrell. There is a growing
interest in music in Spain and there are indications that some day
her composers may again take an important place with the musicians
of other nationalities, a place they proudly held in the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries. However, no longer ago than 1894, we
find Louis Lombard writing in his "Observations of a Musician" that
harmony was not taught at the Conservatory of Málaga, and that at
the closing exercises of the Conservatory of Barcelona he had heard
a four-hand arrangement of the _Tannhäuser_ march performed on ten
pianos by forty hands! Havelock Ellis ("The Soul of Spain," 1909)
affirms that a concert in Spain sets the audience to chattering. They
have a savage love of noise, the Spanish, he says, which incites them
to conversation. Albert Lavignac, in "Music and Musicians" (William
Marchant's translation), says, "We have left in the shade the Spanish
school, which to say truth does not exist." But if one reads what
Lavignac has to say about Moussorgsky, one is likely to give little
credence to such extravagant generalities as the one just quoted.
The Moussorgsky paragraph is a gem, and I am only too glad to insert
it here for the sake of those who have not seen it: "A charming and
fruitful melodist, who makes up for a lack of skill in harmonization
by a daring, which is sometimes of doubtful taste; has produced songs,
piano music in small amount, and an opera, _Boris Godunow_." In the
report of the proceedings of the thirty-fourth session of the London
Musical Association (1907-8) Dr. Thomas Lea Southgate is quoted as
complaining to Sir George Grove because under "Schools of Composition"
in the old edition of Grove's Dictionary the Spanish School was
dismissed in twenty lines. Sir George, he says, replied, "Well, I gave
it to Rockstro because nobody knows anything about Spanish music."--The
bibliography of modern Spanish music is indeed indescribably meagre,
although a good deal has been written in and out of Spain about the
early religious composers of the Iberian peninsula.
These matters will be discussed in due course. In the meantime it
has afforded me some amusement to put together a list (which may be
of interest to both the casual reader and the student of music) of
compositions suggested by Spain to composers of other nationalities.
(This list is by no means complete. I have not attempted to include
in it works which are not more or less familiar to the public of the
present day; without boundaries it could easily be extended into a
small volume.) The répertoire of the concert room and the opera house
is streaked through and through with Spanish atmosphere and, on the
whole, I should say, the best Spanish music has not been written by
Spaniards, although most of it, like the best music written in Spain,
is based primarily on the rhythm of folk-tunes, dances and songs. Of
orchestral pieces I think I must put at the head of the list Chabrier's
rhapsody, _España_, as colourful and rhythmic a combination of tone as
the auditor of a symphony concert is often bidden to hear. It depends
for its melody and rhythm on two Spanish dances, the jota, fast and
fiery, and the malagueña, slow and sensuous. These are true Spanish
tunes; Chabrier, according to report, invented only the rude theme
given to the trombones. The piece was originally written for piano, and
after Chabrier's death was transformed (with other music by the same
composer) into a ballet, _España_, performed at the Paris Opéra, 1911.
Waldteufel based one of his most popular waltzes on the theme of this
rhapsody. Chabrier's _Habanera_ for the pianoforte (1885) was his last
musical reminiscence of his journey to Spain. It is French composers
generally who have achieved better effects with Spanish atmosphere
than men of other nations, and next to Chabrier's music I should put
Debussy's _Iberia_, the second of his _Images_ (1910). It contains
three movements designated respectively as "In the streets and roads,"
"The perfumes of the night," and "The morning of a fête-day." It is
indeed rather the smell and the look of Spain than the rhythm that this
music gives us, entirely impressionistic that it is, but rhythm is not
lacking, and such characteristic instruments as castanets, tambourines,
and xylophones are required by the score. "Perfumes of the night" comes
as near to suggesting odours to the nostrils as any music can--and not
all of them are pleasant odours. There is Rimsky-Korsakow's _Capriccio
Espagnole_, with its _alborado_ or lusty morning serenade, its long
series of cadenzas (as cleverly written as those of _Scheherazade_ to
display the virtuosity of individual players in the orchestra; it is
noteworthy that this work is dedicated to the sixty-seven musicians
of the band at the Imperial Opera House of Petrograd and all of their
names are mentioned on the score) to suggest the vacillating music of
a gipsy encampment, and finally the wild fandango of the Asturias with
which the work comes to a brilliant conclusion. Engelbert Humperdinck
taught the theory of music in the Conservatory of Barcelona for two
years (1885-6), and one of the results was his _Maurische Rhapsodie_ in
three parts (1898-9), still occasionally performed by our orchestras.
Lalo wrote his _Symphonie Espagnole_ for violin and orchestra for the
great Spanish virtuoso, Pablo de Sarasate, but all our violinists
delight to perform it (although usually shorn of a movement or two).
Glinka wrote a _Jota Aragonese_ and _A Night in Madrid_; he gave a
Spanish theme to Balakirew which the latter utilized in his _Overture
on a theme of a Spanish March_. Liszt wrote a _Spanish Rhapsody_ for
pianoforte (arranged as a concert piece for piano and orchestra by
Busoni) in which he used the jota of Aragón as a theme for variations.
Rubinstein's _Toreador and Andalusian_ and Moszkowski's _Spanish
Dances_ (for four hands) are known to all amateur pianists as Hugo
Wolf's _Spanisches Liederbuch_ and Robert Schumann's _Spanisches
Liederspiel_, set to F. Giebel's translations of popular Spanish
ballads, are known to all singers. I have heard a song of Saint-Saëns,
_Guitares et Mandolines_, charmingly sung by Greta Torpadie, in which
the instruments of the title, under the subtle fingers of that masterly
accompanist, Coenraad V. Bos, were cleverly imitated. And Debussy's
_Mandoline_ and Delibes's _Les Filles de Cadix_ (which in this country
belongs both to Emma Calvé and Olive Fremstad) spring instantly to
mind. Ravel's _Rapsodie Espagnole_ is as Spanish as music could be.
The Boston Symphony men have played it during the season just past.
Ravel based the habanera section of his _Rapsodie_ on one of his piano
pieces. But Richard Strauss's two tone-poems on Spanish subjects, _Don
Juan_ and _Don Quixote_, have not a note of Spanish colouring, so far
as I can remember, from beginning to end. Svendsen's symphonic poem,
_Zorahayda_, based on a passage in Washington Irving's "Alhambra,"
is Spanish in theme and may be added to this list together with
Waldteufel's _Estudiantina_ waltzes.
[Illustration: TARQUINIA TARQUINI AS CONCHITA]
_from a photograph by Matzene_
I
Four modern operas stand out as Spanish in subject and atmosphere. I
would put at the top of the list Zandonai's _Conchita_; the Italian
composer has caught on his musical palette and transferred to his tonal
canvas a deal of the lazy restless colour of the Iberian peninsula
in this little master-work. The feeling of the streets and patios is
admirably caught. My friend, Pitts Sanborn, said of it, after its
solitary performance at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York by
the Chicago Opera Company, "There is musical atmosphere of a rare
and penetrating kind; there is colour used with the discretion of a
master; there are intoxicating rhythms, and above the orchestra the
voices are heard in a truthful musical speech.... Ever since _Carmen_
it has been so easy to write Spanish music and achieve supremely
the banal. Here there is as little of the Spanish of convention as
in Debussy's _Iberia_, but there is Spain." This opera, based on
Pierre Louÿs's sadic novel, "La Femme et le Pantin," owed some of its
extraordinary impression of vitality to the vivid performance given of
the title-rôle by Tarquinia Tarquini. Raoul Laparra, born in Bordeaux,
but who has travelled much in Spain, has written two Spanish operas,
_La Habanera_ and _La Jota_, both named after popular Spanish dances
and both produced at the Opéra-Comique in Paris. I have heard _La
Habanera_ there and found the composer's use of the dance as a pivot of
a tragedy very convincing. Nor shall I forget the first act-close, in
which a young man, seated on a wall facing the window of a house where
a most bloody murder has been committed, sings a wild Spanish ditty,
accompanying himself on the guitar, crossing and recrossing his legs in
complete abandonment to the rhythm, while in the house rises the wild
treble cry of a frightened child. I have not heard _La Jota_, nor have
I seen the score. I do not find Emile Vuillermoz enthusiastic in his
review ("S. I. M.," May 15, 1911): "Une danse transforme le premier
acte en un kaléidoscope frénétique et le combat dans l'église doit
donner, au second, dans l'intention de l'auteur 'une sensation à pic,
un peu comme celle d'un puits où grouillerait la besogne monstreuse
de larves humaines.' A vrai dire ces deux tableaux de cinématographe
papillotant, corsés de cris, de hurlements et d'un nombre incalculable
de coups de feu constituent pour le spectator une épreuve physiquement
douloureuse, une hallucination confuse et inquiétante, un cauchemar
assourdissant qui le conduisent irrésistiblement à l'hébétude et à
la migraine. Dans tout cet enfer que devient la musique?" Perhaps
opera-goers in general are not looking for thrills of this order; the
fact remains that _La Jota_ has had a modest career when compared with
_La Habanera_, which has even been performed in Boston. _Carmen_ is
essentially a French opera; the leading emotions of the characters
are expressed in an idiom as French as that of Gounod; yet the dances
and entr'actes are Spanish in colour. The story of Carmen's entrance
song is worth retelling in Mr. Philip Hale's words ("Boston Symphony
Orchestra Programme Notes"; 1914-15, P. 287): "Mme. Galli-Marié
disliked her entrance air, which was in 6-8 time with a chorus. She
wished something more audacious, a song in which she could bring into
play the whole battery of her _perversités artistiques_, to borrow
Charles Pigot's phrase: 'caressing tones and smiles, voluptuous
inflections, killing glances, disturbing gestures.' During the
rehearsals Bizet made a dozen versions. The singer was satisfied
only with the thirteenth, the now familiar Habanera, based on an old
Spanish tune that had been used by Sebastian Yradier. This brought
Bizet into trouble, for Yradier's publisher, Heugel, demanded that the
indebtedness should be acknowledged in Bizet's score. Yradier made no
complaint, but to avoid a lawsuit or a scandal, Bizet gave consent, and
on the first page of the Habanera in the French edition of _Carmen_
this line is engraved: 'Imitated from a Spanish song, the property of
the publishers of _Le Ménestrel_.'"
There are other operas the scenes of which are laid in Spain. Some of
them make an attempt at Spanish colouring, more do not. Massenet wrote
no less than five operas on Spanish subjects, _Le Cid_, _Chérubin_,
_Don César de Bazán_, _La Navarraise_ and _Don Quichotte_ (Cervantes's
novel has frequently lured the composers of lyric dramas with its
story; Clément et Larousse give a long list of _Don Quixote_ operas,
but they do not include one by Manuel García, which is mentioned in
John Towers's compilation, "Dictionary-Catalogue of Operas." However,
not a single one of these lyric dramas has held its place on the
stage). The Spanish dances in _Le Cid_ are frequently performed,
although the opera is not. The most famous of the set is called simply
_Aragonaise_; it is not a jota. _Pleurez, mes yeux_, the principal air
of the piece, can scarcely be called Spanish. There is a delightful
suggestion of the jota in _La Navarraise_. In _Don Quichotte_ la belle
Dulcinée sings one of her airs to her own guitar strummings, and much
was made of the fact, before the original production at Monte Carlo,
of Mme. Lucy Arbell's lessons on that instrument. Mary Garden, who
had learned to dance for _Salome_, took no guitar lessons for _Don
Quichotte_. But is not the guitar an anachronism in this opera? In
a pamphlet by Don Cecilio de Roda, issued during the celebration of
the tercentenary of the publication of Cervantes's romance, taking
as its subject the musical references in the work, I find, "The harp
was the aristocratic instrument most favoured by women and it would
appear to be regarded in _Don Quixote_ as the feminine instrument
par excellence." Was the guitar as we know it in existence at that
epoch? I think the _vihuela_ was the guitar of the period.... Maurice
Ravel wrote a Spanish opera, _l'Heure Espagnole_ (one act, performed
at the Paris Opéra-Comique, 1911). Octave Séré ("Musiciens français
d'Aujourd'hui") says of it: "Les principaux traits de son caractère
et l'influence du sol natal s'y combinent étrangement. De l'alliance
de la mer et du Pays Basque (Ravel was born in the Basses-Pyrénées,
near the sea) est née une musique à la fois fluide et nerveusement
rythmée, mobile, chatoyante, amie du pittoresque et dont le trait
net et précis est plus incisif que profond." Hugo Wolf's opera _Der
Corregidor_ is founded on the novel, "El Sombrero de tres Picos," of
the Spanish writer, Pedro de Alarcón (1833-91). His unfinished opera
_Manuel Venegas_ also has a Spanish subject, suggested by Alarcón's
"El Niño de la Bola." Other Spanish operas are Beethoven's _Fidelio_,
Balfe's _The Rose of Castile_, Verdi's _Ernani_ and _Il Trovatore_,
Rossini's _Il Barbiere di Siviglia_, Mozart's _Don Giovanni_ and _Le
Nozze di Figaro_, Weber's _Preciosa_ (really a play with incidental
music), Dargomijsky's _The Stone Guest_ (Pushkin's version of the Don
Juan story. This opera, by the way, was one of the many retouched and
completed by Rimsky-Korsakow), Reznicek's _Donna Diana_--and Wagner's
_Parsifal_! The American composer John Knowles Paine's opera _Azara_,
dealing with a Moorish subject, has, I think, never been performed.
II
The early religious composers of Spain deserve a niche all to
themselves, be it ever so tiny, as in the present instance. There is,
to be sure, some doubt as to whether their inspiration was entirely
peninsular, or whether some of it was wafted from Flanders, and the
rest gleaned in Rome, for in their service to the church most of them
migrated to Italy and did their best work there. It is not the purpose
of the present chronicler to devote much space to these early men,
or to discuss in detail their music. There are no books in English
devoted to a study of Spanish music, and few in any language, but
what few exist take good care to relate at considerable length (some
of them with frequent musical quotation) the state of music in Spain
in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, the golden
period. To the reader who may wish to pursue this phase of our subject
I offer a small bibliography. There is first of all A. Soubies's two
volumes, "Histoire de la Musique d'Espagne," published in 1889. The
second volume takes us through the eighteenth century. The religious
and early secular composers are catalogued in these volumes, but there
is little attempt at detail, and he is a happy composer who is awarded
an entire page. Soubies does not find occasion to pause for more than a
paragraph on most of his subjects. Occasionally, however, he lightens
the plodding progress of the reader, as when he quotes Father Bermudo's
"Declaración de Instrumentos" (1548; the 1555 edition is in the Library
of Congress at Washington): "There are three kinds of instruments in
music. The first are called natural; these are men, of whom the song
is called _musical harmony_. Others are artificial and are played
by the touch--such as the harp, the _vihuela_ (the ancient guitar,
which resembles the lute), and others like them; the music of these
is called _artificial_ or rhythmic. The third species is pneumatique
and includes instruments such as the flute, the douçaine (a species of
oboe), and the organ." There may be some to dispute this ingenious and
highly original classification. The best known, and perhaps the most
useful (because it is easily accessible) history of Spanish music is
that written by Mariano Soriano Fuertes, in four volumes: "Historia
de la Música Española desde la venida de los Fenicios hasta el año de
1850"; published in Barcelona and Madrid in 1855. There is further the
"Diccionario Técnico, Histórico, y Biográfico de la Música," by José
Parada y Barreto (Madrid, 1867). This, of course, is a general work on
music, but Spain gets her full due. For example, a page and a half is
devoted to Beethoven, and nine pages to Eslava. It is to this latter
composer to whom we must turn for the most complete and important
work on Spanish church music: "Lira Sacro-Hispana" (Madrid, 1869),
in ten volumes, with voluminous extracts from the composers' works.
This collection of Spanish church music from the sixteenth century
through the eighteenth, with biographical notices of the composers is
out of print and rare (there is a copy in the Congressional Library
at Washington). As a complement to it I may mention Felipe Pedrell's
"Hispaniae Schola Musica Sacra," begun in 1894, which has already
reached the proportions of Eslava's work. Pedrell, who was the master
of Enrique Granados, has also issued a fine edition of the music of
Victoria.
The Spanish composers had their full share in the process of
crystallizing music into forms of permanent beauty during the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Rockstro asserts that during the
early part of the sixteenth century nearly all the best composers for
the great Roman choirs were Spaniards. But their greatest achievement
was the foundation of the school of which Palestrina was the crown. On
the music of their own country their influence is less perceptible. I
think the name of Cristofero Morales (1512-53) is the first important
name in the history of Spanish music. He preceded Palestrina in Rome
and some of his masses and motets are still sung in the Papal chapel
there (and in other Roman Catholic edifices and by choral societies).
Francisco Guerrero (1528-99; these dates are approximate) was a pupil
of Morales. He wrote settings of the Passion choruses according to
St. Matthew and St. John and numerous masses and motets. Tomás Luis
de Victoria is, of course, the greatest figure in Spanish music, and
next to Palestrina (with whom he worked contemporaneously) the greatest
figure in sixteenth century music. Soubies writes: "One might say that
on his musical palette he has entirely at his disposition, in some
sort, the glowing colour of Zurbaran, the realistic and transparent
tones of Velasquez, the ideal shades of Juan de Juanes and Murillo. His
mysticism is that of Santa Theresa and San Juan de la Cruz." The music
of Victoria is still very much alive and may be heard even in New York,
occasionally, through the medium of the Musical Art Society. Whether
it is performed in churches in America or not I do not know; the Roman
choirs still sing it....
The list might be extended indefinitely ... but the great names I
have given. There are Cabezón, whom Pedrell calls the "Spanish Bach,"
Navarro, Caseda, Gomes, Ribera, Castillo, Lobo, Durón, Romero, Juarez.
On the whole I think these composers had more influence on Rome--the
Spanish nature is more reverent than the Italian--than on Spain. The
modern Spanish composers have learned more from the folk-song and dance
than they have from the church composers. However, there are voices
which dissent from this opinion. G. Tebaldini ("Rivista Musicale," Vol.
IV, Pp. 267 and 494) says that Pedrell in his studies learned much
which he turned to account in the choral writing of his operas. And
Felipe Pedrell himself asserts that there is an unbroken chain between
the religious composers of the sixteenth century and the theatrical
composers of the seventeenth. We may follow him thus far without
believing that the theatrical composers of the seventeenth century had
too great an influence on the secular composers of the present day.
III
All the world dances in Spain, at least it would seem so, in reading
over the books of the Marco Polos who have made voyages of discovery
on the Iberian peninsula. Guitars seem to be as common there as
pea-shooters in New England, and strumming seems to set the feet
a-tapping and voices a-singing, what, they care not. (Havelock Ellis
says: "It is not always agreeable to the Spaniard to find that dancing
is regarded by the foreigner as a peculiar and important Spanish
institution. Even Valera, with his wide culture, could not escape
this feeling; in a review of a book about Spain by an American author
entitled 'The Land of the Castanet'--a book which he recognized as full
of appreciation for Spain--Valera resented the title. It is, he says,
as though a book about the United States should be called 'The Land of
Bacon.'") Oriental colour is streaked through and through the melodies
and harmonies, many of which betray their Arabian origin; others are
_flamenco_, or gipsy. The dances, almost invariably accompanied by
song, are generally in 3-4 time or its variants such as 6-8 or 3-8;
the tango, of course, is in 2-4. But the dancers evolve the most
elaborate inter-rhythms out of these simple measures, creating thereby
a complexity of effect which defies any comprehensible notation on
paper. As it is on this _fioritura_, if I may be permitted to use the
word in this connection, of the dancer that the sophisticated composer
bases some of his most natural and national effects, I shall linger on
the subject. La Argentina has re-arranged many of the Spanish dances
for purposes of the concert stage, but in her translation she has
retained in a large measure this interesting complication of rhythm,
marking the irregularity of the beat, now with a singularly complicated
detonation of heel-tapping, now with a sudden bend of a knee, now with
the subtle quiver of an eyelash, now with a shower of castanet sparks
(an instrument which requires a hard tutelage for its complete mastery;
Richard Ford tells us that even the children in the streets of Spain
rap shells together, to become self-taught artists in the use of it).
Chabrier, in his visit to Spain with his wife in 1882, attempted to
note down some of these rhythmic variations achieved by the dancers
while the musicians strummed their guitars, and he was partially
successful. But all in all he only succeeded in giving in a single
measure each variation; he did not attempt to weave them into the
intricate pattern which the Spanish women contrive to make of them.
[Illustration: LA ARGENTINA]
_from a photograph by White_
There is a singular similarity to be observed between this heel-tapping
and the complicated drum-tapping of the African negroes of certain
tribes. In his book "Afro-American Folksongs" H. E. Krehbiel thus
describes the musical accompaniment of the dances in the Dahoman
Village at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago: "These dances
were accompanied by choral song and the rhythmical and harmonious
beating of drums and bells, the song being in unison. The harmony was
a tonic major triad broken up rhythmically in a most intricate and
amazingly ingenious manner. The instruments were tuned with excellent
justness. The fundamental tone came from a drum made of a hollowed log
about three feet long with a single head, played by one who seemed
to be the leader of the band, though there was no giving of signals.
This drum was beaten with the palms of the hands. A variety of smaller
drums, some with one, some with two heads, were beaten variously with
sticks and fingers. The bells, four in number, were of iron and were
held mouth upward and struck with sticks. The players showed the most
remarkable rhythmical sense and skill that ever came under my notice.
Berlioz in his supremest effort with his army of drummers produced
nothing to compare in artistic interest with the harmonious drumming
of these savages. The fundamental effect was a combination of double
and triple time, the former kept by the singers, the latter by the
drummers, but it is impossible to convey the idea of the wealth of
detail achieved by the drummers by means of exchange of the rhythms,
syncopation of both simultaneously, and dynamic devices. Only by
making a score of the music could this have been done. I attempted to
make such a score by enlisting the help of the late John C. Filmore,
experienced in Indian music, but we were thwarted by the players
who, evidently divining our purpose when we took out our notebooks,
mischievously changed their manner of playing as soon as we touched
pencil to paper."
The resemblance between negro and Spanish music is very noticeable. Mr.
Krehbiel says that in South America Spanish melody has been imposed
on negro rhythm. In the dances of the people of Spain, as Chabrier
points out, the melody is often practically nil; the effect is rhythmic
(an effect which is emphasized by the obvious harmonic and melodic
limitations of the guitar, which invariably accompanies all singers
and dancers). If there were a melody or if the guitarists played well
(which they usually do not) one could not distinguish its contours
what with the cries of Olé! and the heel-beats of the performers.
Spanish melodies, indeed, are often scraps of tunes, like the African
negro melodies. The habanera is a true African dance, taken to Spain
by way of Cuba, as Albert Friedenthal points out in his book, "Musik,
Tanz, und Dichtung bei den Kreolen Amerikas." Whoever was responsible,
Arab, negro, or Moor (Havelock Ellis says that the dances of Spain
are closely allied with the ancient dances of Greece and Egypt), the
Spanish dances betray their oriental origin in their complexity of
rhythm (a complexity not at all obvious on the printed page, as so
much of it depends on dancer, guitarist, singer, and even public!),
and the _fioriture_ which decorate their melody when melody occurs.
While Spanish religious music is perhaps not distinctively Spanish, the
dances invariably display marked national characteristics; it is on
these, then (some in greater, some in less degree), that the composers
in and out of Spain have built their most atmospheric inspirations,
their best pictures of popular life in the Iberian peninsula. A good
deal of the interest of this music is due to the important part the
guitar plays in its construction; the modulations are often contrary
to all rules of harmony and (yet, some would say) the music seems
to be effervescent with variety and fire. Of the guitarists Richard
Ford ("Gatherings from Spain") says: "The performers seldom are very
scientific musicians; they content themselves with striking the
chords, sweeping the whole hand over the strings, or flourishing,
and tapping the board with the thumb, at which they are very expert.
Occasionally in the towns there is some one who has attained more
power over this ungrateful instrument; but the attempt is a failure.
The guitar responds coldly to Italian words and elaborate melody,
which never come home to Spanish ears or hearts." (An exception must
be made in the case of Miguel Llobet. I first heard him play at Pitts
Sanborn's concert at the Punch and Judy Theatre (April 17, 1916) for
the benefit of Hospital 28 in Bourges, France, and he made a deep
impression on me. In one of his numbers, the _Spanish Fantasy_ of
Farrega, he astounded and thrilled me. He seemed at all times to exceed
the capacity of his instrument, obtaining a variety of colour which
was truly amazing. In this particular number he not only plucked the
keyboard but the fingerboard as well, in intricate and rapid _tempo_;
seemingly two different kinds of instruments were playing. But at all
times he variated his tone; sometimes he made the instrument sound
almost as though it had been played by wind and not plucked. Especially
did I note a suggestion of the bagpipe. A true artist. None of the
music, the fantasy mentioned, a serenade of Albéniz, and a Menuet of
Tor, was particularly interesting, although the Fantasia contained
some fascinating references to folk-dance tunes. There is nothing
sensational about Llobet, a quiet prim sort of man; he sits quietly in
his chair and makes music. It might be a harp or a 'cello--no striving
for personal effect.)
The Spanish dances are infinite in number and for centuries back
they seem to form part and parcel of Spanish life. Discussion as to
how they are danced is a feature of the descriptions. No two authors
agree, it would seem; to a mere annotator the fact is evident that
they are danced differently on different occasions. It is obvious that
they are danced differently in different provinces. The Spaniards, as
Richard Ford points out, are not too willing to give information to
strangers, frequently because they themselves lack the knowledge. Their
statements are often misleading, sometimes intentionally so. They
do not understand the historical temperament. Until recently many of
the art treasures and archives of the peninsula were but poorly kept.
Those who lived in the shadow of the Alhambra admired only its shade.
It may be imagined that there has been even less interest displayed in
recording the folk-dances. "Dancing in Spain is now a matter which few
know anything about," writes Havelock Ellis, "because every one takes
it for granted that he knows all about it; and any question on the
subject receives a very ready answer which is usually of questionable
correctness." Of the music of the dances we have many records, and that
they are generally in 3-4 time or its variants we may be certain. As
to whether they are danced by two women, a woman and a man, or a woman
alone, the authorities do not always agree. The confusion is added to
by the oracular attitude of the scribes. It seems quite certain to me
that this procedure varies. That the animated picture almost invariably
possesses great fascination there are only too many witnesses to
prove. I myself can testify to the marvel of some of them, set to be
sure in strange frames, the Feria in Paris, for example; but even
without the surroundings, which Spanish dances demand, the diablerie,
the shivering intensity of these fleshly women, always wound tight
with such shawls as only the mistresses of kings might wear in other
countries, have drawn taut the _real thrill_. It is dancing which
enlists the co-operation not only of the feet and legs, but of the arms
and, in fact, the entire body.
The smart world in Spain today dances much as the smart world does
anywhere else, although it does not, I am told, hold a brief for our
tango, which Mr. Krehbiel suggests is a corruption of the original
African habanera. But in older days many of the dances, such as the
pavana, the sarabande, and the gallarda, were danced at the court and
were in favour with the nobility. (Although presumably of Italian
origin, the pavana and gallarda were more popular in Spain than in
Rome. Fuertes says that the sarabande was invented in the middle of
the sixteenth century by a dancer called Zarabanda who was a native of
either Seville or Guayaquil.) The pavana, an ancient dance of grave and
stately measure, was much in vogue in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries. An explanation of its name is that the figures executed
by the dancers bore a resemblance to the semi-circular wheel-like
spreading of the tail of a peacock. The gallarda (French, gaillard) was
usually danced as a relief to the pavana (and indeed often follows it
in the dance-suites of the classical composers in which these forms all
figure). The jacara, or more properly xacara, of the sixteenth century,
was danced in accompaniment to a romantic, swashbuckling ditty. The
Spanish folias were a set of dances danced to a simple tune treated
in a variety of styles with very free accompaniment of castanets
and bursts of song. Corelli in Rome in 1700 published twenty-four
variations in this form, which have been played in our day by Fritz
Kreisler and other violinists.
The names of the modern Spanish dances are often confused in the
descriptions offered by observing travellers, for the reasons already
noted. Hundreds of these descriptions exist, and it is difficult to
choose the most telling of them. Gertrude Stein, who has spent the last
two years in Spain, has noted the rhythm of several of these dances
by the mingling of her original use of words with the ingratiating
medium of _vers libre_. She has succeeded, I think, better than some
musicians in suggesting the intricacies of the rhythm. I should like to
transcribe one of these attempts here, but that I have not the right to
do as I have only seen them in manuscript; they have not yet appeared
in print. These pieces are in a sense the thing itself--I shall have
to fall back on descriptions of the thing. The tirana, a dance common
to the province of Andalusia, is accompanied by song. It has a decided
rhythm, affording opportunities for grace and gesture, the women toying
with their aprons, the men flourishing hats and handkerchiefs. The
polo, or ole, is now a gipsy dance. Mr. Ellis asserts that it is a
corruption of the sarabande! He goes on to say, "The so-called gipsy
dances of Spain are Spanish dances which the Spaniards are tending to
relinquish but which the gipsies have taken up with energy and skill."
(This theory might be warmly contested.) The bolero, a comparatively
modern dance, came to Spain through Italy. Mr. Philip Hale points out
the fact that the bolero and the cachucha (which, by the way, one
seldom hears of nowadays) were the popular Spanish dances when Mesdames
Faviani and Dolores Tesrai, and their followers, Mlle. Noblet and
Fanny Elssler, visited Paris. Fanny Elssler indeed is most frequently
seen pictured in Spanish costume, and the cachucha was danced by her
as often, I fancy, as Mme. Pavlowa dances _Le Cygne_ of Saint-Saëns.
Marie-Anne de Camargo, who acquired great fame as a dancer in France
in the early eighteenth century, was born in Brussels but was of
Spanish descent. She relied, however, on the Italian classic style for
her success rather than on national Spanish dances. The seguidilla
is a gipsy dance which has the same rhythm as the bolero but is more
animated and stirring. Examples of these dances, and of the jota,
fandango, and the sevillana, are to be met with in the compositions
listed in the first section of this article, in the appendices of
Soriano Fuertes's "History of Spanish Music," in Grove's Dictionary,
in the numbers of "S. I. M." in which the letters of Emmanuel Chabrier
occur, and in collections made by P. Lacome, published in Paris.
The jota is another dance in 3-4 time. Every province in Spain has its
own jota, but the most famous variations are those of Aragón, Valencia,
and Navarre. It is accompanied by the guitar, the _bandarria_ (similar
to the guitar), small drum, castanets, and triangle. Mr. Hale says
that its origin in the twelfth century is attributed to a Moor named
Alben Jot who fled from Valencia to Aragón. "The jota," he continues,
"is danced not only at merrymakings but at certain religious festivals
and even in watching the dead. One called the 'Natividad del Señor'
(nativity of our Lord) is danced on Christmas eve in Aragón, and is
accompanied by songs, and jotas are sung and danced at the crossroads,
invoking the favour of the Virgin, when the festival of Our Lady del
Pilar is celebrated at Saragossa."
Havelock Ellis's description of the jota is worth reproducing:
"The Aragonaise jota, the most important and typical dance outside
Andalusia, is danced by a man and a woman, and is a kind of combat
between them; most of the time they are facing each other, both using
castanets and advancing and retreating in an apparently aggressive
manner, the arms alternately slightly raised and lowered, and the legs,
with a seeming attempt to trip the partner, kicking out alternately
somewhat sidewise, as the body is rapidly supported first on one side
and then on the other. It is a monotonous dance, with immense rapidity
and vivacity in its monotony, but it has not the deliberate grace and
fascination, the happy audacities of Andalusian dancing. There is,
indeed, no faintest suggestion of voluptuousness in it, but it may
rather be said, in the words of a modern poet, Salvador Rueda, to have
in it 'the sound of helmets and plumes and lances and banners, the
roaring of cannon, the neighing of horses, the shock of swords.'"
Chabrier, in his astounding and amusing letters from Spain, gives us
vivid pictures and interesting information. This one, written to his
friend, Edouard Moullé, from Granada, November 4, 1882, appeared in "S.
I. M." April 15, 1911 (I have omitted the musical illustrations, which,
however, possess great value for the student): "In a month I must leave
adorable Spain ... and say good-bye to the Spaniards,--because, I say
this only to you, they are very nice, the little girls! I have not seen
a really ugly woman since I have been in Andalusia: I do not speak of
the feet, they are so small that I have never seen them; the hands are
tiny and well-kept and the arms of an exquisite contour; I speak only
of what one can see, but they show a good deal; add the arabesques, the
side-curls, and other ingenuities of the coiffure, the inevitable fan,
the flower and the comb in the hair, placed well behind, the shawl of
Chinese crêpe, with long fringe and embroidered in flowers, knotted
around the figure, the arm bare, and the eye protected by eyelashes
which are long enough to curl; the skin of dull white or orange colour,
according to the race, all this smiling, gesticulating, dancing,
drinking, and careless to the last degree...
"That is the Andalusian.
"Every evening we go with Alice to the café-concerts where the
malagueñas, the Soledas, the Sapateados, and the Peteneras are sung;
then the dances, absolutely Arab, to speak truth; if you could see
them wriggle, unjoint their hips, contortion, I believe you would not
try to get away!... At Málaga the dancing became so intense that I
was compelled to take my wife away; it wasn't even amusing any more.
I can't write about it, but I remember it and I will describe it to
you.--I have no need to tell you that I have noted down many things;
the tango, a kind of dance in which the women imitate the pitching of
a ship (_le tangage du navire_) is the only dance in 2 time; all the
others, all, are in 3-4 (Seville) or in 3-8 (Málaga and Cadiz);--in
the North it is different, there is some music in 5-8, very curious.
The 2-4 of the tango is always like the habanera; this is the picture:
one or two women dance, two silly men play it doesn't matter what on
their guitars, and five or six women howl, with excruciating voices
and in triplet figures impossible to note down because they change
the air--every instant a new scrap of tune. They howl a series of
figurations with syllables, words, rising voices, clapping hands which
strike the six quavers, emphasizing the third and the sixth, cries of
Anda! Anda! La Salud! eso es la Maraquita! gracia, nationidad! Baila,
la chiquilla! Anda! Anda! Consuelo! Olé, la Lola, olé la Carmen! qué
gracia! qué elegancia! all that to excite the young dancer. It is
vertiginous--it is unspeakable!
"The Sevillana is another thing: it is in 3-4 time (and with
castanets).... All this becomes extraordinarily alluring with two
curls, a pair of castanets and a guitar. It is impossible to write down
the malagueña. It is a melopœia, however, which has a form and which
always ends on the dominant, to which the guitar furnishes 3-8 time,
and the spectator (when there is one) seated beside the guitarist,
holds a cane between his legs and beats the syncopated rhythm; the
dancers themselves instinctively syncopate the measures in a thousand
ways, striking with their heels an unbelievable number of rhythms....
It is all rhythm and dance: the airs scraped out by the guitarist
have no value; besides, they cannot be heard on account of the cries
of Anda! la chiquilla! qué gracia! qué elegancia! Anda! Olé! Olé! la
chiquirritita! and the more the cries the more the dancer laughs with
her mouth wide open, and turns her hips, and is mad with her body...."
As it is on these dances that composers invariably base their Spanish
music (not alone Albéniz, Chapí, Bretón, and Granados, but Chabrier,
Ravel, Laparra, and Bizet, as well) we may linger somewhat longer on
their delights. The following compelling description is from Richard
Ford's highly readable "Gatherings from Spain": "The dance which is
closely analogous to the _Ghowasee_ of the Egyptians, and the _Nautch_
of the Hindoos, is called the _Olé_ by Spaniards, the _Romalis_ by
their gipsies; the soul and essence of it consists in the expression of
a certain sentiment, one not indeed of a very sentimental or correct
character. The ladies, who seem to have no bones, resolve the problem
of perpetual motion, their feet having comparatively a sinecure, as the
whole person performs a pantomime, and trembles like an aspen leaf; the
flexible form and Terpsichore figure of a young Andalusian girl--be she
gipsy or not--is said, by the learned, to have been designed by nature
as the fit frame for her voluptuous imagination.
"Be that as it may, the scholar and classical commentator will every
moment quote Martial, etc., when he beholds the unchanged balancing of
hands, raised as if to catch showers of roses, the tapping of the feet,
and the serpentine quivering movements. A contagious excitement seizes
the spectators, who, like Orientals, beat time with their hands in
measured cadence, and at every pause applaud with cries and clappings.
The damsels, thus encouraged, continue in violent action until nature
is all but exhausted; then aniseed brandy, wine, and _alpisteras_ are
handed about, and the fête, carried on to early dawn, often concludes
in broken heads, which here are called 'gipsy's fare.' These dances
appear, to a stranger from the chilly north, to be more marked by
energy than by grace, nor have the legs less to do than the body, hips,
and arms. The sight of this unchanged pastime of antiquity, which
excites the Spaniard to frenzy, rather disgusts an English spectator,
possibly from some national malorganization, for, as Molière says,
'l'Angleterre a produit des grands hommes dans les sciences et les
beaux arts, mais pas un grand danseur--allez lire l'histoire.'" (A fact
as true in our day as it was in Molière's.)
On certain days the sevillana is danced before the high altar of
the cathedral at Seville. The Reverend Henry Cart de Lafontaine
("Proceedings of the Musical Association"; London, thirty-third
session, 1906-7) gives the following account of it, quoting a "French
author": "While Louis XIII was reigning over France, the Pope heard
much talk of the Spanish dance called the 'Sevillana.' He wished to
satisfy himself, by actual eye-witness, as to the character of this
dance, and expressed his wish to a bishop of the diocese of Seville,
who every year visited Rome. Evil tongues make the bishop responsible
for the primary suggestion of the idea. Be that as it may, the bishop,
on his return to Seville, had twelve youths well instructed in all
the intricate measures of this Andalusian dance. He had to choose
youths, for how could he present maidens to the horrified glance of
the Holy Father? When his little troop was thoroughly schooled and
perfected, he took the party to Rome, and the audience was arranged.
The 'Sevillana' was danced in one of the rooms of the Vatican. The Pope
warmly complimented the young executants, who were dressed in beautiful
silk costumes of the period. The bishop humbly asked for permission to
perform this dance at certain fêtes in the cathedral church at Seville,
and further pleaded for a restriction of this privilege to that church
alone. The Pope, hoist by his own petard, did not like to refuse, but
granted the privilege with this restriction, that it should only last
so long as the costumes of the dancers were wearable. Needless to say,
these costumes are, therefore, objects of constant repair, but they are
supposed to retain their identity even to this day. And this is the
reason why the twelve boys who dance the 'Sevillana' before the high
altar in the cathedral on certain feast days are dressed in the costume
belonging to the reign of Louis XIII."
This is a very pretty story, but it is not uncontradicted.... Has any
statement been made about Spanish dancing or music which has been
allowed to go uncontradicted? Look upon that picture and upon this: "As
far as it is possible to ascertain from records," says Rhoda G. Edwards
in the "Musical Standard," "this dance would seem always to have been
in use in Seville cathedral; when the town was taken from the Moors in
the thirteenth century it was undoubtedly an established custom and in
1428 we find the six boys recognized as an integral part of the chapter
by Pope Eugenius IV. The dance is known as the (_sic_) 'Los Scises,'
or dance of the six boys who, with four others, dance it before the
high altar at Benediction on the three evenings before Lent and in
the octaves of Corpus Christi and La Purissima (the conception of Our
Lady). The dress of the boys is most picturesque, page costumes of the
time of Philip III being worn, blue for La Purissima and red satin
doublets slashed with blue for the other occasion; white hats with blue
and white feathers are also worn whilst dancing. The dance is usually
of twenty-five minutes' duration and in form seems quite unique, not
resembling any of the other Spanish dance-forms, or in fact those of
any other country. The boys accompany the symphony on castanets and
sing a hymn in two parts whilst dancing."
From another author we learn that religious dancing is to be seen
elsewhere in Spain than at Seville cathedral. At one time, it is said
to have been common. The pilgrims to the shrine of the Virgin at
Montserrat were wont to dance, and dancing took place in the churches
of Valencia, Toledo, and Jerez. Religious dancing continued to be
common, especially in Catalonia up to the seventeenth century. An
account of the dance in the Seville cathedral may be found in "Los
Españoles Pintados por si Mismos" (pages 287-91).
This very incomplete and rambling record of Spanish dancing should
include some mention of the fandango. The origin of the word is
obscure, but the dance is obviously one of the gayest and wildest of
the Spanish dances. Like the malagueña it is in 3-8 time, but it is
quite different in spirit from that sensuous form of terpsichorean
enjoyment. La Argentina informs me that "fandango" in Spanish suggests
very much what "bachanale" does in English or French. It is a very old
dance, and may be a survival of a Moorish dance, as Desrat suggests.
Mr. Philip Hale found the following account of it somewhere:
"Like an electric shock, the notes of the fandango animate all hearts.
Men and women, young and old, acknowledge the power of this air over
the ears and soul of every Spaniard. The young men spring to their
places, rattling castanets, or imitating their sound by snapping their
fingers. The girls are remarkable for the willowy languor and lightness
of their movements, the voluptuousness of their attitudes--beating the
exactest time with tapping heels. Partners tease and entreat and pursue
each other by turns. Suddenly the music stops, and each dancer shows
his skill by remaining absolutely motionless, bounding again in the
full life of the fandango as the orchestra strikes up. The sound of the
guitar, the violin, the rapid tic-tac of heels (_taconeos_), the crack
of fingers and castanets, the supple swaying of the dancers, fill the
spectators with ecstasy.
"The music whirls along in a rapid triple time. Spangles glitter; the
sharp clank of ivory and ebony castanets beats out the cadence of
strange, throbbing, deafening notes--assonances unknown to music,
but curiously characteristic, effective, and intoxicating. Amidst the
rustle of silks, smiles gleam over white teeth, dark eyes sparkle and
droop, and flash up again in flame. All is flutter and glitter, grace
and animation--quivering, sonorous, passionate, seductive. _Olé! Olé!_
Faces beam and burn. _Olé! Olé!_
"The bolero intoxicates, the fandango inflames."
It can be well understood that the study of Spanish dancing and its
music must be carried on in Spain. Mr. Ellis tells us why: "Another
characteristic of Spanish dancing, and especially of the most typical
kind called flamenco, lies in its accompaniments, and particularly
in the fact that under proper conditions all the spectators are
themselves performers.... Thus it is that at the end of a dance an
absolute silence often falls, with no sound of applause: the relation
of performers and public has ceased to exist.... The finest Spanish
dancing is at once killed or degraded by the presence of an indifferent
or unsympathetic public, and that is probably why it cannot be
transplanted, but remains local."
At the end of a dance an absolute silence often falls.... I am again
in an underground café in Amsterdam. It is the eve of the Queen's
birthday, and the Dutch are celebrating. The low, smoke-wreathed room
is crowded with students, soldiers, and women. Now a weazened female
takes her place at the piano, on a slightly raised platform at one side
of the room. She begins to play. The dancing begins. It is not woman
with man; the dancing is informal. Some dance together, and some dance
alone; some sing the melody of the tune, others shriek, but all make
a noise. Faster and faster and louder and louder the music is pounded
out, and the dancing becomes wilder and wilder. A tray of glasses is
kicked from the upturned palm of a sweaty waiter. Waiter, broken glass,
dancer, all lie, a laughing heap, on the floor. A soldier and a woman
stand in opposite corners, facing the corners; then without turning,
they back towards the middle of the room at a furious pace; the
collision is appalling. Hand in hand the mad dancers encircle the room,
throwing confetti, beer, anything. A heavy stein crushes two teeth--the
wound bleeds--but the dancer does not stop. Noise and action and colour
all become synonymous. There is no escape from the force. I am dragged
into the circle. Suddenly the music stops. All the dancers stop. The
soldier no longer looks at the woman by his side; not a word is spoken.
People lumber towards chairs. The woman looks for a glass of water
to assuage the pain of her bleeding mouth. I think Jaques-Dalcroze is
right when he seeks to unite spectator and actor, drama and public.
IV
In the preceding section I may have too strongly insisted upon the
relation of the folk-song to the dance. It is true that the two are
seldom separated in performance (although not all songs are danced;
for example, the _cañas_ and _playeras_ of Andalusia). However, most
of the folk-songs of Spain are intended to be danced; they are built
on dance-rhythms and they bear the names of dances. Thus the jota is
always danced to the same music, although the variations are great at
different times and in different provinces. It is, of course, when
the folk-songs are danced that they make their best effect, in the
polyrhythm achieved by the opposing rhythms of guitar-player, dancer,
and singer. When there is no dancer the defect is sometimes overcome by
some one tapping a stick on the ground in imitation of resounding heels.
Blind beggars have a habit of singing the songs, in certain provinces,
with a wealth of florid ornament, such ornament as is always
associated with oriental airs in performance, and this ornament still
plays a considerable rôle when the vocalist becomes an integral part
of the accompaniment for a dancer. Chabrier gives several examples of
it in one of his letters. In the circumstances it can readily be seen
that Spanish folk-songs written down are pretty bare recollections of
the real thing, and when sung by singers who have no knowledge of the
traditional manner of performing them they are likely to sound fairly
banal. The same thing might be said of the negro folk-songs of America,
or the folk-songs of Russia or Hungary, but with much less truth, for
the folk-songs of these countries usually possess a melodic interest
which is seldom inherent in the folk-songs of Spain. To make their
effect they must be performed by Spaniards, as nearly as possible after
the manner of the people. Indeed, their spirit and their polyrhythmic
effects are much more essential to their proper interpretation than
their melody, as many witnesses have pointed out.
Spanish music, indeed, much of it, is actually unpleasant to Western
ears; it lacks the sad monotony and the wailing intensity of true
oriental music; much of it is loud and blaring, like the hot sunglare
of the Iberian peninsula. However, many a Western or Northern European
has found pleasure in listening by the hour to the strains, which often
sound as if they were improvised, sung by some beggar or mountaineer.
The collections of these songs are not in any sense complete and few of
them attempt more than a collocation of the songs of one locality or
people. Deductions have been drawn. For example it is noted that the
Basque songs are irregular in melody and rhythm and are further marked
by unusual tempos, 5-8, or 7-4. In Aragón and Navarre the popular song
(and dance) is the jota; in Galicia, the seguidilla; the Catalonian
songs resemble the folk-tunes of Southern France. The Andalusian songs,
like the dances of that province, are the most beautiful of all, often
truly oriental in their rhythm and floridity. In Spain the gipsy has
become an integral part of the popular life, and it is difficult at
times to determine what is _flamenco_ and what is Spanish. However,
collections (few to be sure) have been attempted of gipsy songs.
Elsewhere in this rambling article I have touched on the _villancicos_
and the early song-writers. To do justice to these subjects would
require a good deal more space and a different intention. Those who
are interested in them may pursue these matters in Pedrell's various
works. The most available collection of Spanish folk-tunes is that
issued by P. Lacome and J. Puig y Alsubide (Paris, 1872). There are
several collections of Basque songs; Demófilo's "Colección de Cantos
Flamencos" (Seville, 1881), Cecilio Ocón's collection of Andalusian
folk-songs, and F. Rodríguez Marín's "Cantos Populares Españoles"
(Seville, 1882-3) may also be mentioned.
V
After the bull-fight the most popular form of amusement in Spain is
the zarzuela, the only distinctive art-form which Spanish music has
evolved, but there has been no progress; the form has not changed,
except perhaps to degenerate, since its invention in the early
seventeenth century. Soriano Fuertes and other writers have devoted
pages to grieving because Spanish composers have not taken occasion to
make something grander and more important out of the zarzuela. The fact
remains that they have not, although, small and great alike, they have
all taken a hand at writing these entertainments. But as they found
the zarzuela, so they have left it. It must be conceded that the form
is quite distinct from that of opera and should not be confused with
it. And the Spaniards are probably right when they assert that the
zarzuela is the mother of the French opéra-bouffe. At least it must be
admitted that Offenbach and Lecocq and their precursors owe something
of the germ of their inspiration to the Spanish form. Today the melody
chests of the zarzuela markets are plundered to find tunes for French
_revues_, and such popular airs as _La Paraguaya_ and _Y ... Como le
Vá?_ were originally danced and sung in Spanish theatres. The composer
of these airs, J. Valverde _fils_, indeed found the French market so
good that he migrated to Paris, and for some time has been writing
_musique mélangée ... une moitié de chaque nation_. So _La Rose de
Grenade_, composed for Paris, might have been written for Spain, with
slight melodic alterations and tauromachian allusions in the book.
The zarzuela is usually a one-act piece (although sometimes it is
permitted to run into two or more acts) in which the music is freely
interrupted by spoken dialogue, and that in turn gives way to national
dances. Very often the entire score is danced as well as sung. The
subject is usually comic and often topical, although it may be serious,
poetic, or even tragic. The actors often introduce dialogue of
their own, "gagging" freely; sometimes they engage in long impromptu
conversations with members of the audience. They also embroider on the
music after the fashion of the great singers of the old Italian opera
(Dr. de Lafontaine asserts that Spanish audiences, even in cabarets,
demand embroidery of this sort). The music is spirited and lively,
and in the dances, Andalusian, _flamenco_, or Sevillan, as the case
may be, it attains its best results. H. V. Hamilton, in his essay on
the subject in Grove's Dictionary, says, "The music is ... apt to be
vague in form when the national dance and folk-song forms are avoided.
The orchestration is a little blatant." It will be seen that this
description suits Granados's _Goyescas_ (the opera), which is on its
safest ground during the dances and becomes excessively vague at other
times; but _Goyescas_ is not a zarzuela, because there is no spoken
dialogue. Otherwise it bears the earmarks. A zarzuela stands somewhere
between a French _revue_ and opéra-comique. It is usually, however,
more informal in tone than the latter and often decidedly more serious
than the former. All the musicians in Spain since the form was invented
(excepting, of course, certain exclusively religious composers), and
most of the poets and playwrights, have contributed numerous examples.
Thus Calderon wrote the first zarzuela, and Lope de Vega contributed
words to entertainments much in the same order. In our day Miguel
Echegaray, brother of José Echegaray, has written one of the most
popular zarzuelas, _Gigantes y Cabezudos_ (the music by Caballero).
The subject is the fiesta of Santa María del Pilar. It has had many a
long run and is often revived. Another very popular zarzuela, which
was almost, if not quite, heard in New York, is _La Gran Vía_ (by
Valverde, _père_), which has been performed in London in extended
form. The principal theatres for the zarzuela in Madrid are (or were
until recently) that of the Calle de Jovellanos, called the Teatro de
Zarzuela, and the Apolo. Usually four separate zarzuelas are performed
in one evening before as many audiences.
_La Gran Vía_, which in some respects may be considered a typical
zarzuela, consists of a string of dance-tunes, with no more
homogeneity than their national significance would suggest. There is
an introduction and polka, a waltz, a tango, a jota, a mazurka, a
schottische, another waltz, and a two-step (_paso-doble_). The tunes
have little distinction; nor can the orchestration be considered
brilliant. There is a great deal of noise and variety of rhythm, and
when presented correctly the effect must be precisely that of one of
the dance-halls described by Chabrier. The zarzuela, to be enjoyed,
in fact, must be seen in Spain. Like Spanish dancing it requires a
special audience to bring out its best points. There must be a certain
electricity, at least an element of sympathy, to carry the thing
through successfully. Examination of the scores of zarzuelas (many
of them have been printed and some of them are to be seen in our
libraries) will convince any one that Mr. Ellis is speaking mildly
when he says that the Spaniards love noise. However, the combination
of this noise with beautiful women, dancing, elaborate rhythm, and a
shouting audience, seems to almost equal the café-concert dancing and
the tauromachian spectacles in Spanish popular affection. (Of course,
as I have suggested, there are zarzuelas more serious melodically and
dramatically; but as _La Gran Vía_ is frequently mentioned by writers
as one of the most popular examples, it may be selected as typical of
the larger number of these entertainments.)
H. V. Hamilton says that the first performance of a zarzuela took
place in 1628 (Pedrell gives the date as October 29, 1629), during
the reign of Felipe IV, in the Palace of the Zarzuela (so called
because it was surrounded by _zarzas_, brambles). It was called _El
Jardín de Falerina_; the text was by the great Calderon and the music
by Juan Risco, chapelmaster of the cathedral at Cordova, according to
Mr. Hamilton, who doubtless follows Soriano Fuertes on this detail.
Soubies, following the more modern studies of Pedrell, gives Jóse Peyró
the credit. Pedrell, in his richly documented work, "Teatro Lírico
Español anterior al siglo XIX," attributes the music of this zarzuela
to Peyró and gives an example of it. The first Spanish opera dates from
the same period, Lope de Vega's _La Selva sin Amor_ (1629). As a matter
of fact, many of the plays of Calderon and Lope de Vega were performed
with music to heighten the effect of the declamation, and musical
curtain-raisers and interludes were performed before and in the midst
of all of them. Lana, Palomares, Benavente and Hidalgo were among the
musicians who contributed music to the theatre of this period. Hidalgo
wrote the music for Calderon's zarzuela, _Ni Amor se Libre de Amor_. To
the same group belong Miguel Ferrer, Juan de Navas, Sebastian Durón,
and Jerónimo de la Torre. (Examples of the music of these men may be
found in the aforementioned "Teatro Lírico.") Until 1659 zarzuelas
were written by the best poets and composers and frequently performed
on royal birthdays, at royal marriages, and on many other occasions;
but after that date the art fell into a decline and seems to have
been in eclipse during the whole of the eighteenth century. According
to Soriano Fuertes the beginning of the reign of Felipe V marked the
introduction of Italian opera into Spain (more popular than Spanish
opera there to this day) and the decadence of nationalism (whole pages
of Fuertes read very much like the plaints of modern English composers
about the neglect of national composers in their country). In 1829
there was a revival of interest in Spanish music and a conservatory was
founded in Madrid. (For a discussion of this later period the reader
is referred to "La Opera Española en el Siglo XIX," by Antonio Peña y
Goñi, 1881.) This interest has been fostered by Fuertes and Pedrell,
and the younger composers today are taking some account of it. There is
hope, indeed, that Spanish music may again take its place in the world
of art.
Of course, the zarzuela did not spring into being out of nowhere and
nothing, and the true origins are not entirely obscure. It is generally
agreed that a priest, Juan del Encina (born at Salamanca, 1468),
was the true founder of the secular theatre in Spain. His dramatic
compositions are in the nature of eclogues based on Virgilian models.
In all of these there is singing and in one a dance. Isabel la Católica
in the fifteenth century always had at her command a troop of musicians
and poets who comforted and consoled her in her chapel with motets
and _plegarias_ (French, _prière_), and in the royal apartments with
_canciones_ and _villancicos_. (_Canciones_ are songs inclining towards
the ballad-form. _Villancicos_ are songs in the old Spanish measure;
they receive their name from their rustic character, as supposedly they
were first composed by the _villanos_ or peasants for the nativity and
other festivals of the church.) "It is necessary to search for the true
origins of the Spanish musical spectacle," states Soubies, "in the
_villancicos_ and _cantacillos_ which alternated with the dialogue in
the works of Juan del Encina and Lucas Fernández, without forgetting
the _ensaladas_, the _jácaras_, etc., which served as intermezzi and
curtain-raisers." These were sung before the curtain, before the
drama was performed (and during the intervals, with jokes added) by
women in court dress, and later created a form of their own (besides
contributing to the creation of the zarzuela), the _tonadilla_, which,
accompanied by a guitar or violin and interspersed with dances, was
very popular for a number of years. H. V. Hamilton is probably on
sound ground when he says, "That the first zarzuela was written with
an express desire for expansion and development is, however, not so
certain as that it was the result of a wish to inaugurate the new house
of entertainment with something entirely original and novel."
VI
We have Richard Ford's testimony that Spain was not very musical in his
day. The Reverend Henry Cart de Lafontaine says that the contemporary
musical services in the churches are not to be considered seriously
from an artistic point of view. Emmanuel Chabrier was impressed with
the fact that the music for dancing was almost entirely rhythmic in its
effect, strummed rudely on the guitar, the spectators meanwhile making
such a din that it was practically impossible to distinguish a melody,
had there been one. And all observers point at the Italian opera, which
is still the favourite opera in Spain (in Barcelona at the Liceo three
weeks of opera in Catalan is given after the regular season in Italian;
in Madrid at the Teatro-Real the Spanish season is scattered through
the Italian), and at Señor Arbós's concerts (the same Señor Arbós who
was once concert master of the Boston Symphony Orchestra), at which
Brandenburg concertos and Beethoven symphonies are more frequently
performed than works by Albéniz. Still there are, and have always been
during the course of the last century, Spanish composers, some of whom
have made a little noise in the outer world, although a good many have
been content to spend their artistic energy on the manufacture of
zarzuelas--in other words, to make a good deal of noise in Spain. In
most modern instances, however, there has been a revival of interest
in the national forms, and folk-song and folk-dance have contributed
their important share to the composers' work. No one man has done more
to encourage this interest in nationalism than Felipe Pedrell, who may
be said to have begun in Spain the work which the "Five" accomplished
in Russia. Pedrell says in his "Handbook" (Barcelona, 1891; Heinrich
and Co.; French translation by Bertal; Paris, Fischbacher): "The
popular song, the voice of the people, the pure primitive inspiration
of the anonymous singer, passes through the alembic of contemporary art
and one obtains thereby its quintessence; the composer assimilates
it and then reveals it in the most delicate form that music alone is
capable of rendering form in its technical aspect, this thanks to the
extraordinary development of the technique of our art in this epoch.
The folk-song lends the accent, the background, and modern art lends
all that it possesses, its conventional symbolism and the richness of
form which is its patrimony. The frame is enlarged in such a fashion
that the _lied_ makes a corresponding development; could it be said
then that the national lyric drama is the same _lied_ expanded? Is
not the national lyric drama the product of the force of absorption
and creative power? Do we not see in it faithfully reflected not only
the artistic idiosyncrasy of each composer, but all the artistic
manifestations of the people?" There is always the search for new
composers in Spain and always the hope that a man may come who will
be acclaimed by the world. As a consequence, the younger composers
in Spain often receive more adulation than is their due. It must be
remembered that the most successful Spanish music is not serious, the
Spanish are more themselves in the lighter vein.
I hesitate for a moment on the name of Martin y Solar, born at
Valencia; died at St. Petersburg, 1806; called "The Italian" by the
Spaniards on account of his musical style, and "lo Spagnuolo" by the
Italians. Da Ponte wrote several opera-books for him, _l'Arbore di
Diana_, _la Cosa Rara_, and _La Capricciosa Corretta_ (a version of
_The Taming of the Shrew_) among others. It is to be seen that he is
without importance if considered as a composer distinctively Spanish
and I have made this slight reference to him solely to recount how
Mozart quoted an air from one of his operas in the supper scene of
_Don Giovanni_. At the time Martin y Solar was better liked in Vienna
than Mozart himself and the air in question was as well known as say
Musetta's waltz is known to us.
Juan Chrysostomo Arriaga, born in Bilbao 1808; died 1828 (these dates
are given in Grove: 1806-1826), is another matter. He might have become
better known had he lived longer. As it is, some of his music has been
performed in London and Paris, and perhaps in America, although I have
no record of it. He studied in Paris at the Conservatoire, under Fétis
for harmony, and Baillot for violin. Before he went to Paris even, as
a child, with no knowledge of the rules of harmony, he had written
an opera! Cherubini declared his fugue for eight voices on the words
in the Credo, "Et Vitam Venturi" a veritable chef d'œuvre, at least
there is a legend to this effect. In 1824 he wrote three quartets, an
overture, a symphony, a mass, and some French cantatas and romances.
García considered his opera _Los Esclavos Felices_ so good that he
attempted, unsuccessfully, to secure for it a Paris hearing. It has
been performed in Bilbao, which city, I think, celebrated the centenary
of the composer's birth.
Manuel García is better known to us as a singer, an impresario, and a
father, than as a composer! Still he wrote a good deal of music (so
did Mme. Malibran; for a list of the diva's compositions I must refer
the reader to Arthur Pougin's biography). Fétis enumerates seventeen
Spanish, nineteen Italian, and seven French operas by García. He had
works produced in Madrid, at the Opéra in Paris (_La mort du, Tasse_
and _Florestan_), at the Italiens in Paris (_Fazzoletto_), at the
Opéra-Comique in Paris (_Deux Contrats_), and at many other theatres.
However, when all is said and done, Manuel García's reputation
still rests on his singing and his daughters. His compositions are
forgotten; nor was his music, much of it, probably, truly Spanish.
(However, I have heard a polo [serenade] from an opera called _El
Poeta Calculista_, which is so Spanish in accent and harmony--and so
beautiful--that it has found a place in a collection of folk-tunes!)
Miguel Hilarión Eslava (born in Burlada, October 21, 1807, died at
Madrid, July 23, 1878) is chiefly famous for his compilation, the
"Lira Sacra-Hispana," mentioned heretofore. He also composed over 140
pieces of church music, masses, motets, songs, etc., after he had been
appointed chapelmaster of Queen Isabella in 1844, and several operas,
including _El Solitario_, _La Tregua del Ptolemaide_, and _Pedro el
Cruel_. He also wrote several books of theory and composition: "Método
de Solfeo" (1846) and "Escuela de Armonía y Composición" in three parts
(harmony, composition, and melody). He edited (1855-6) the "Gaceta
Musical de Madrid."
There is the celebrated virtuoso, Pablo de Sarasate, who wrote music,
but his memory is perhaps better preserved in Whistler's diabolical
portrait than in his own compositions.
Felipe Pedrell (born February 19, 1841) is also perhaps more important
as a writer on musical subjects and for his influence on the younger
school of composers (he teaches in the conservatory of Barcelona, and
his attitude towards nationalism has already been discussed), than he
is as a composer. Still, Edouard Lopez-Chavarri does not hesitate to
pronounce his trilogy _Los Pireneos_ (Barcelona, 1902; the prologue
was performed in Venice in 1897) the most important work for the
theatre written in Spain. His first opera, _El Último Abencerraje_, was
produced in Barcelona in 1874. Some of his other works are _Quasimodo_,
1875; _El Tasso á Ferrara_, _Cleopatra_, _Mazeppa_ (Madrid, 1881), _La
Celestina_ (1904), and _La Matinada_ (1905). J. A. Fuller-Maitland
says that the influence of Wagner is traceable in all his stage work.
(Wagner is adored in Spain; _Parsifal_ was given eighteen times in one
month at the Liceo in Barcelona.) If this be true, his case will be
found to bear other resemblances to that of the Russian "Five," who
found it difficult to exorcise all foreign influences in their pursuit
of nationalism.
He was made a member of the Spanish Academy in 1894 and shortly
thereafter became Professor of Musical History and Æsthetics at the
Royal Conservatory at Madrid. Besides his "Hispaniae Schola Musica
Sacra" he has written a number of other books, and translated Richter's
treatise on Harmony into Spanish. He has made several excursions into
the history of folk-lore and the principal results are contained in
"Músicos Anónimos" and "Por nuestra Música." Other works are "Teatro
Lírico Español anterior al siglo XIX," "Lírica Nacionalizada," "De
Música Religiosa," "Músiquerias y más Músiquesias." One of his books,
"Músicos Contemporáneos y de Otros Tiempos" (in the library of the
Hispanic Society of New York) is very catholic in its range of subject.
It includes essays on the _Don Quixote_ of Strauss, the _Boris Godunow_
of Moussorgsky, Smetana, Manuel García, Edward Elgar, Jaques-Dalcroze,
Bruckner, Mahler, Albéniz, Palestrina, Busoni, and the tenth symphony
of Beethoven!
In John Towers's extraordinary compilation, "Dictionary-Catalogue of
Operas," it is stated that Manuel Fernández Caballero (born in 1835)
wrote sixty-two operas, and the names of them are given. He was a
pupil of Fuertes (harmony) and Eslava (composition) at the Madrid
Conservatory and later became very popular as a writer of zarzuelas.
I have already mentioned his _Gigantes y Cabezudos_ for which Miguel
Echegaray furnished the book. Among his other works in this form are
_Los Dineros del Sacristán_, _Los Africanistas_ (Barcelona, 1894), _El
Cabo Primero_ (Barcelona, 1895), and _La Rueda de la Fortuna_ (Madrid,
1896).
At a concert given in the New York Hippodrome, April 3, 1911, Mme.
Tetrazzini sang a Spanish song, which was referred to the next day
by the reviewers of the "New York Times" and the "New York Globe."
To say truth the soprano made a great effect with the song, although
it was written for a low voice. It was _Carceleras_, from Ruperto
Chapí's zarzuela _Las Hijas de Zebedeo_. Chapí was one of the most
prolific and popular composers of Spain during the last century. He
produced countless zarzuelas and nine children. He was born at Villena
March 27, 1851, and he died March 25, 1909, a few months earlier than
his compatriot Isaac Albéniz. He was admitted to the conservatory of
Madrid in 1867 as a pupil of piano and harmony. In 1869 he obtained
the first prize for harmony and he continued to obtain prizes until in
1874 he was sent to Rome by the Academy of Fine Arts. He remained for
some time in Italy and Paris. In 1875 the Teatro Real of Madrid played
his _La Hija de Jefté_ sent from Rome. The following is an incomplete
list of his operas and zarzuelas: _Vía Libre_, _Los Gendarmes_, _El
Rey que Rabió_ (3 acts), _El Cura del Regimiento_, _El Reclamo_, _La
Tempestad_, _La Bruja_, _La Leyenda del Monje_, _Las Campanadas_,
_La Czarina_, _El Milagro de la Virgen_, _Roger de Flor_ (3 acts),
_Las Naves de Cortés, irce_ (3 acts), _Aqui Hase Farta un Hombre_,
_Juan Francisco_ (3 acts, 1905; rewritten and presented in 1908 as
_Entre Rocas_), _Los Madrileños_ (1908), _La Dama Roja_ (1 act, 1908),
_Hesperia_ (1908), _Las Calderas de Pedro Botero_ (1909) and _Margarita
la Tornera_, presented just before his death without success.
His other works include an oratorio, _Los Ángeles_, a symphonic poem,
_Escenas de Capa y Espada_, a symphony in D, _Moorish Fantasy_ for
orchestra, a serenade for orchestra, a trio for piano, violin and
'cello, songs, etc. Chapí was president of the Society of Authors and
Composers, and when he died the King and Queen of Spain sent a telegram
of condolence to his widow. There is a copy of his zarzuela, _Blasones
y Talegas_ in the New York Public Library.
I have already spoken of _La Dolores_. It is one of a long series of
operas and zarzuelas written by Tomás Bretón y Hernandez (born at
Salamanca, December 29, 1850). First produced at Madrid, in 1895, it
has been sung with success in such distant capitals as Buenos Ayres
and Prague. I have been assured by a Spanish woman of impeccable taste
that _La Dolores_ is charming, delightful in its fluent melody and
its striking rhythms, thoroughly Spanish in style, but certain to
find favour in America, if it were produced here. Our own Eleanora
de Cisneros at a Press Club Benefit in Barcelona appeared in Bretón's
zarzuela _La Verbena de la Paloma_. Another of Bretón's famous
zarzuelas is _Los Amantes de Teruel_ (Madrid, 1889). His works for the
theatre further include _Tabaré_, for which he wrote both words and
music (Madrid, 1913); _Don Gil_ (Barcelona, 1914); _Garín_ (Barcelona,
1891); _Raquel_ (Madrid, 1900); _Guzmán el Bueno_ (Madrid, 1876); _El
Certamen de Cremona_ (Madrid, 1906); _El Campanero de Begoña_ (Madrid,
1878); _El Barberillo en Orán_; _Corona contra Corona_ (Madrid, 1879);
_Los Amores de un Príncipe_ (Madrid, 1881); _El Clavel Rojo_ (1899);
_Covadonga_ (1901); and _El Domingo de Ramos_, words by Echegaray
(Madrid, 1894). His works for orchestra include: _En la Alhambra_,
_Los Galeotes_, and _Escenas Andaluzas_, a suite. He has written three
string quartets, a piano trio, a piano quintet, and an oratorio in two
parts, _El Apocalipsis_.
[Illustration: TOMÁS BRETÓN]
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._).
_New York, March 20, 1916._
The Land of Joy
"_Dancing is something more than an amusement in Spain. It is part of
that solemn ritual which enters into the whole life of the people. It
expresses their very spirit._"
Havelock Ellis.
The Land of Joy
An idle observer of theatrical conditions might derive a certain ironic
pleasure from remarking the contradiction implied in the professed
admiration of the constables of the playhouse for the unconventional
and their almost passionate adoration for the conventional. We
constantly hear it said that the public cries for novelty, and just as
constantly we see the same kind of acting, the same gestures, the same
Julian Mitchellisms and George Marionisms and Ned Wayburnisms repeated
in and out of season, summer and winter. Indeed, certain conventions
(which bore us even now) are so deeply rooted in the soil of our
theatre that I see no hope of their being eradicated before the year
1999, at which date other conventions will have supplanted them and
will likewise have become tiresome.
In this respect our theatre does not differ materially from the
theatres of other countries except in one particular. In Europe the
juxtaposition of nations makes an interchange of conventions possible,
which brings about slow change or rapid revolution. Paris, for example,
has received visits from the Russian Ballet which almost assumed
the proportions of Tartar invasions. London, too, has been invaded
by the Russians and by the Irish. The Irish playwrights, indeed,
are continually pounding away at British middle-class complacency.
Germany, in turn, has been invaded by England (we regret that this
sentence has only an artistic and figurative significance), and we
find Max Reinhardt well on his way toward giving a complete cycle
of the plays of Shakespeare; a few years ago we might have observed
Deutschland grovelling hysterically before Oscar Wilde's _Salome_, a
play which, at least without its musical dress, has not, I believe,
even yet been performed publicly in London. In Italy, of course,
there are no artistic invasions (nobody cares to pay for them) and
even the conventions of the Italian theatre themselves, such as the
_Commedia del'Arte_, are quite dead; so the country remains as dormant,
artistically speaking, as a rag rug, until an enthusiast like Marinetti
arises to take it between his teeth and shake it back into rags again.
Very often whisperings of art life in the foreign theatre (such as
accounts of Stanislavski's accomplishments in Moscow) cross the
Atlantic. Very often the husks of the realities (as was the case with
the Russian Ballet) are imported. But whispers and husks have about
as much influence as the "New York Times" in a mayoralty campaign,
and as a result we find the American theatre as little aware of world
activities in the drama as a deaf mute living on a pole in the desert
of Sahara would be. Indeed any intrepid foreign investigator who wishes
to study the American drama, American acting, and American stage
decoration will find them in almost as virgin a condition as they were
in the time of Lincoln.
A few rude assaults have been made on this smug eupepsy. I might
mention the coming of Paul Orleneff, who left Alla Nazimova with us to
be eventually swallowed up in the conventional American theatre. Four
or five years ago a company of Negro players at the Lafayette Theatre
gave a performance of a musical revue that boomed like the big bell
in the Kremlin at Moscow. Nobody could be deaf to the sounds. Florenz
Ziegfeld took over as many of the tunes and gestures as he could buy
for his _Follies_ of that season, but he neglected to import the one
essential quality of the entertainment, its style, for the exploitation
of which Negro players were indispensable. For the past two months
Mimi Aguglia, one of the greatest actresses of the world, has been
performing in a succession of classic and modern plays (a répertoire
comprising dramas by Shakespeare, d'Annunzio, and Giacosa) at the
Garibaldi Theatre, on East Fourth Street, before very large and very
enthusiastic audiences, but uptown culture and managerial acumen will
not awaken to the importance of this gesture until they read about it
in some book published in 1950....
All of which is merely by way of prelude to what I feel must be
something in the nature of lyric outburst and verbal explosion. A
few nights ago a Spanish company, unheralded, unsung, indeed almost
unwelcomed by such reviewers as had to trudge to the out-of-the-way
Park Theatre, came to New York, in a musical revue entitled _The Land
of Joy_. The score was written by Joaquín Valverde, _fils_, whose music
is not unknown to us, and the company included La Argentina, a Spanish
dancer who had given matinées here in a past season without arousing
more than mild enthusiasm. The theatrical impressarii, the song
publishers, and the Broadway rabble stayed away on the first night. It
was all very well, they might have reasoned, to read about the goings
on in Spain, but they would never do in America. Spanish dancers had
been imported in the past without awakening undue excitement. Did not
the great Carmencita herself visit America twenty or more years ago?
These impressarii had ignored the existence of a great psychological
(or more properly physiological) truth: you cannot mix Burgundy and
Beer! One Spanish dancer surrounded by Americans is just as much lost
as the great Nijinsky himself was in an English music hall, where he
made a complete and dismal failure. And so they would have been very
much astonished (had they been present) on the opening night to have
witnessed all the scenes of uncontrollable enthusiasm--just as they are
described by Havelock Ellis, Richard Ford, and Chabrier--repeated. The
audience, indeed, became hysterical, and broke into wild cries of _Olé!
Olé!_ Hats were thrown on the stage. The audience became as abandoned
as the players, became a part of the action.
You will find all this described in "The Soul of Spain," in "Gatherings
from Spain," in Chabrier's letters, and it had all been transplanted to
New York almost without a whisper of preparation, which is fortunate,
for if it had been expected, doubtless we would have found the way to
spoil it. Fancy the average New York first-night audience, stiff and
unbending, sceptical and sardonic, welcoming this exhibition! Havelock
Ellis gives an ingenious explanation for the fact that Spanish dancing
has seldom if ever successfully crossed the border of the Iberian
peninsula: "The finest Spanish dancing is at once killed or degraded
by the presence of an indifferent or unsympathetic public, and that is
probably why it cannot be transplanted, but remains local." Fortunately
the Spaniards in the first-night audience gave the cue, unlocked the
lips and loosened the hands of us cold Americans. For my part, I was
soon yelling _Olé!_ louder than anybody else.
The dancer, Doloretes, is indeed extraordinary. The gipsy fascination,
the abandoned, perverse bewitchery of this female devil of the dance is
not to be described by mouth, typewriter, or quilled pen. Heine would
have put her at the head of his dancing temptresses in his ballet of
_Méphistophéla_ (found by Lumley too indecent for representation at
Her Majesty's Theatre, for which it was written; in spite of which the
scenario was published in the respectable "Revue de Deux Mondes"). In
this ballet a series of dancing celebrities is exhibited by the female
Méphistophélès for the entertainment of her victim. After Salome had
twisted her flanks and exploited the prowess of her abdominal muscles
to perfunctory applause, Doloretes would have heated the blood, not
only of Faust, but of the ladies and gentlemen in the orchestra stalls,
with the clicking of her heels, the clacking of her castanets, now held
high over head, now held low behind her back, the flashing of her
ivory teeth, the shrill screaming, electric magenta of her smile, the
wile of her wriggle, the passion of her performance. And close beside
her the sinuous Mazantinita would flaunt a garish tambourine and wave
a shrieking fan. All inanimate objects, shawls, mantillas, combs, and
cymbals, become inflamed with life, once they are pressed into the
service of these señoritas, languorous and forbidding, indifferent and
sensuous. Against these rude gipsies the refined grace and Goyaesque
elegance of La Argentina stand forth in high relief, La Argentina,
in whose hands the castanets become as potent an instrument for our
pleasure as the violin does in the fingers of Jascha Heifetz. Bilbao,
too, with his thundering heels and his tauromachian gestures, bewilders
our highly magnetized senses. When, in the dance, he pursues, without
catching, the elusive Doloretes, it would seem that the limit of
dynamic effects in the theatre had been reached.
[Illustration: DOLORETES]
_from a photograph by White_
Here are singers! The limpid and lovely soprano of the comparatively
placid María Marco, who introduces figurations into the brilliant music
she sings at every turn. One indecent (there is no other word for it)
chromatic oriental phrase is so strange that none of us can ever recall
it or forget it! And the frantically nervous Luisita Puchol, whose
eyelids spring open like the cover of a Jack-in-the-box, and whose
hands flutter like saucy butterflies, sings suggestive popular ditties
just a shade better than any one else I know of.
But _The Land of Joy_ does not rely on one or two principals for its
effect. The organization as a whole is as full of fire and purpose as
the original Russian Ballet; the costumes themselves, in their blazing,
heated colours, constitute the ingredients of an orgy; the music, now
sentimental (the adaptability of Valverde, who has lived in Paris, is
little short of amazing; there is a vocal waltz in the style of Arditi
that Mme. Patti might have introduced into the lesson scene of _Il
Barbiere_; there is another song in the style of George M. Cohan--these
by way of contrast to the Iberian music), now pulsing with rhythmic
life, is the best Spanish music we have yet heard in this country. The
whole entertainment, music, colours, costumes, songs, dances, and all,
is as nicely arranged in its crescendos and decrescendos, its prestos
and adagios as a Mozart finale. The close of the first act, in which
the ladies sweep the stage with long ruffled trains, suggestive of all
the Manet pictures you have ever seen, would seem to be unapproachable,
but the most striking costumes and the wildest dancing are reserved
for the very last scene of all. There these bewildering señoritas
come forth in the splendorous envelope of embroidered Manila shawls,
and such shawls! Prehistoric African roses of unbelievable measure
decorate a texture of turquoise, from which depends nearly a yard of
silken fringe. In others mingle royal purple and buff, orange and
white, black and the kaleidoscope! The revue, a sublimated form of
zarzuela, is calculated, indeed, to hold you in a dangerous state
of nervous excitement during the entire evening, to keep you awake
for the rest of the night, and to entice you to the theatre the next
night and the next. It is as intoxicating as vodka, as insidious as
cocaine, and it is likely to become a habit, like these stimulants. I
have found, indeed, that it appeals to all classes of taste, from that
of a telephone operator, whose usual artistic debauch is the latest
antipyretic novel of Robert W. Chambers, to that of the frequenter of
the concert halls.
I cannot resist further cataloguing; details shake their fists at my
memory; for instance, the intricate rhythms of Valverde's elaborately
syncopated music (not at all like ragtime syncopation), the thrilling
orchestration (I remember one dance which is accompanied by drum taps
and oboe, nothing else!), the utter absence of tangos (which are
Argentine), and habaneras (which are Cuban), most of the music being
written in two-four and three-four time, and the interesting use of
folk-tunes; the casual and very suggestive indifference of the dancers,
while they are not dancing, seemingly models for a dozen Zuloaga
paintings, the apparently inexhaustible skill and variety of these
dancers in action, winding ornaments around the melodies with their
feet and bodies and arms and heads and castanets as coloratura sopranos
do with their voices. Sometimes castanets are not used; cymbals
supplant them, or tambourines, or even fingers. Once, by some esoteric
witchcraft, the dancers seemed to tap upon their arms. The effect was
so stupendous and terrifying that I could not project myself into that
aloof state of mind necessary for a calm dissection of its technique.
What we have been thinking of all these years in accepting the
imitation and ignoring the actuality I don't know; it has all been down
in black and white. What Richard Ford saw and wrote down in 1846 I am
seeing and writing down in 1917. How these devilish Spaniards have been
able to keep it up all this time I can't imagine. Here we have our
paradox. Spain has changed so little that Ford's book is still the
best to be procured on the subject (you may spend many a delightful
half-hour with the charming irony of its pages for company). Spanish
dancing is apparently what it was a hundred years ago; no wind from the
north has disturbed it. Stranger still, it depends for its effect on
the acquirement of a brilliant technique. Merely to play the castanets
requires a severe tutelage. And yet it is all as spontaneous, as
fresh, as unstudied, as vehement in its appeal, even to Spaniards, as
it was in the beginning. Let us hope that Spain will have no artistic
reawakening.
Aristotle and Havelock Ellis and Louis Sherwin have taught us that
the theatre should be an outlet for suppressed desires. So, indeed,
the ideal theatre should. As a matter of fact, in most playhouses (I
will generously refrain from naming the one I visited yesterday) I
am continually suppressing a desire to strangle somebody or other,
but after a visit to the Spaniards I walk out into Columbus Circle
completely purged of pity and fear, love, hate, and all the rest. It is
an experience.
_November 3, 1917._
From George Borrow to Mary Garden
"_Les femmes disent qu'elle est laide,
Mais tous les hommes en sont fous:
Et l'archevêque de Tolède
Chante la messe à ses genoux._"
Théophile Gautier's "Carmen."
From George Borrow to Mary Garden
(_Histoire sommaire de Carmen_)
Alice, it will be recalled, adventured into Wonderland bearing a morsel
of mushroom in each hand; now she munched one piece, which made her
grow tall, now the other, which diminished her height. In this manner
she adjusted her size to that of the various doorways and gates of the
place as well as to that of the creatures she encountered. In somewhat
the same fashion George Borrow, sent by the British Bible Society to
distribute the Holy Word in the papalized peninsula, advanced into
Spain. In one hand he held a Castilian version of the New Testament;
in the other his very considerable curiosity. Doubtless he made many
valiant attempts to hawk Bibles, but it is quite as certain that he
never restrained his natural aptitude for the companionship of thieves,
gitanos, contrabandists, and bandits. More than once his zeal in behalf
of the Scriptures landed him in jail, but I can scarcely accept this as
proof of his devotion to a holy cause when I remember that he had been
attempting in vain to persuade certain Madrid officials to permit him
to voluntarily incarcerate himself so that he might have such further
opportunities for the pursuit of his studies of the "crabbed gitano" as
intercourse with the prisoners might offer. As a matter of fact when he
was arrested the English Ambassador secured his pardon before the day
was done, but this Borrow refused to consider. He was in jail and he
proposed to remain there, and remain he did, a matter of several weeks,
during which period he had lengthy talks with all the prisoners, adding
substantially to his foreign vocabularies.... His sympathy, indeed,
was with the gitanos; he ate and drank and slept with them, sometimes
in stables, sometimes in dirty lofts. If he himself did not connive
at the "affairs of Egypt," at least he travelled with those who did;
if he did not assist at robberies or murders, he was often aware that
they were about to be committed. On one occasion he held converse,
which is delightfully recorded, with Sevilla, the picador, whom Prosper
Mérimée met and who is referred to in Richard Ford's "Gatherings from
Spain."... We must, on the whole, thank the British Bible Society for
giving Borrow the opportunity to write two strangely charming books,
one of them a masterpiece, but over what Borrow did for the Bible
Society it is perhaps just as well to draw a shade.
The production of two such books as "The Zincali" and "The Bible in
Spain" may be regarded, however, as sufficient justification for the
incorporation and continued existence of the British Bible Society. If
all the information he gives us concerning the gipsies in these books
is not authentic we may at least be certain that Borrow had a better
opportunity for making it so than that afforded any other writer.
If, therefore, he has sometimes distorted facts it is because he is
first of all an artist and "The Bible in Spain" is first of all a
work of art. These books appeared in the early forties and were read
and admired all over Europe, awakening an interest in the Iberian
Peninsula, and more especially in the Spanish gipsies, which has never
since died. In the preface to the second edition of "The Zincali"
Borrow relates his astonishment at the success of his book: "the voice
not only of England but of the greater part of Europe, informing me
that I had achieved a feat--a work in the nineteenth century with some
pretensions to originality." And when a writer in "The Spectator"
called "The Bible in Spain" "a 'Gil Blas' in water-colours" Borrow
fairly bubbled.
"The Zincali" was translated into several languages, among others into
French, and among those influenced and affected by it was Prosper
Mérimée; indeed it now seems probable that without the spur of this
suggestive book Mérimée would never have written "Carmen," assuredly
not in its present form. Here are the facts: Mérimée visited Spain in
1830 and it was during this tour that the Condessa de Teba related to
him a story of jealousy and murder, substantially that of "Carmen,"
in which, however, the gipsies played no part. This material offered
scant inspiration for the production of a masterpiece. Mérimée,
indeed, seems to have dropped the idea out of his mind entirely until
Borrow's books appeared, reviving his interest in the gipsies and
suggesting to him the possibility of transferring the Condessa's tale
into a gipsy setting. Borrow's translation of the Gospel of Luke into
Caló was issued in 1837. There is evidence that Mérimée read it. "The
Zincali" came out in London in 1841; "The Bible in Spain" in 1842.
"Carmen" first appeared, without the final chapter on the gipsies,
in the "Revue des Deux Mondes" for October 1, 1845. The proofs of
Mérimée's indebtedness to Borrow are manifold; one of the best is his
own admission in his correspondence with his _Inconnue_: "You asked
me the other day where I had obtained my acquaintance with the dialect
of the gipsies. I had so many things to tell you that I forgot to
reply. I got it from Mr. Borrow; his book is one of the most curious
I have read." But the internal evidence is even stronger: all but two
of the gipsy proverbs in "Carmen" are to be found in "The Zincali" as
is many a detail in plot and description. Professor George T. Northup
of the University of Toronto has traced a number of such resemblances
and you may find his account of them in "Modern Philology" for July,
1915. "When he (Mérimée) set out to manufacture local colour he seldom
dispensed with literary aid. He did indeed frequently dispense with
direct observation," writes Professor Northup. "In his study of the
Gipsies Borrow was Mérimée's important, although not his sole, literary
guide; and of that a careful comparison of the two works leaves not the
slightest doubt."
On one point, however, Mérimée is at variance with Borrow, and this is
a most important point, so important, indeed, that the French author,
in spite of (perhaps because of!) his obligation to the Englishman,
points the finger of scorn at him in the added chapter (largely made
up of facts to be found in "The Zincali"!) of "Carmen." Here is the
passage: "M. Borrow, missionaire anglais, auteur de deux ouvrages
fort intéressants sur les bohémiens d'Espagne, qu'il avait entrepris
de convertir, aux frais de la Societé biblique, assure qu'il est
sans exemple qu'une Gitana ait jamais eu quelque faiblesse pour un
homme étranger à sa race." Borrow does not say _sans exemple_: "The
Gitanas have in general a decided aversion to the white men; some few
instances, however, to the contrary are said to have occurred." Let us
continue with Mérimée: "Il me semble qu'il y a beaucoup d'exagération
dans les éloges qu'il accorde à leur chasteté. D'abord, le plus grand
nombre est dans le cas de la laide d'Ovide: _Casta quam nemo rogavit_.
Quant aux jolies, elles sont comme toutes les Espagnoles, difficiles
dans le choix de leurs amants. Il faut leur plaire, il faut les
mériter."
This is what Borrow has to say about the matter in "The Zincali":
"There is a word in the Gipsy language to which those who speak it
attach ideas of peculiar reverence, far superior to that connected
with the name of the Supreme Being, the creator of themselves and
the universe. This word is _Lácha_, which with them is the corporeal
chastity of the females; we say corporeal chastity, for no other
do they hold in the slightest esteem; it is lawful amongst them,
nay praise-worthy, to be obscene in look, gesture, and discourse,
to be accessories to vice, and to stand by and laugh at the worst
abominations of the Busné (Busno is the term used by the Spanish
gipsies for the Spaniard or indeed any person not a gipsy), provided
their _Lácha ye trupos_, or corporeal chastity remains unblemished. The
Gipsy child, from her earliest years, is told by her strange mother,
that a good Calli need only dread one thing in this world, and that is
the loss of _Lácha_, in comparison with which that of life is of little
consequence, as in such an event she will be provided for, but what
provision is there for a gipsy who has lost her _Lácha_? 'Bear this in
mind, my child,' she will say, 'and now eat this bread, and go forth
and see what you can steal.'
"A Gipsy girl is generally betrothed at the age of fourteen to the
youth whom her parents deem a suitable match, and who is generally
a few years older than herself. Marriage is invariably preceded by
betrothment.... With the Busné or Gentiles, the betrothed female is
allowed the freest intercourse, going whither she will, and returning
at all times and seasons. With respect to the Busné, indeed, the
parents are invariably less cautious than with their own race, as they
conceive it next to an impossibility that their child should lose her
_Lácha_ by any intercourse with _the white blood_; and true it is that
experience has proved that their confidence in this respect is not
altogether idle. The Gitanas have in general a decided aversion to the
white men; some few instances, however, to the contrary are said to
have occurred."
The gitanas, Borrow goes on to explain, are never above exciting
passion in the Busné which, however, they refuse to satisfy. Their
dances for the most part are lascivious and obscene. They often act
as procuresses. But let no Busno presume from these facts that he may
count on a more intimate acquaintanceship. Richard Ford in "Gatherings
from Spain" in his description of the _romalis_ supports Borrow in his
theory: "However indecent these dances may be, yet the performers are
inviolably chaste, and as far at least as ungipsy guests are concerned,
may be compared to iced punch at a rout; young girls go through them
before the applauding eyes of their parents and brothers, who resent to
the death any attempt on their sisters' virtue."
Mérimée refers to the matter in a letter to the _Inconnue_: "What he
(Borrow) relates of the gipsies is perfectly true, and his personal
observations are entirely in accord with mine save on a single point.
In his capacity of clergyman (_sic_), he may very well have deceived
himself where I, in my capacity of Frenchman and layman, was able to
make conclusive experiments." In spite of the weight of Mérimée's
personal experience it may be noted that the majority of Spanish
writers are in accord with Borrow, who was _not_ a clergyman. And, as
Professor Northup slyly points out, the man who taught Isopel Berners
of Mumpers Dingle to conjugate the verb "to love" in Armenian may not
have been so naïve an observer after all.
Whether gipsies are corporeally chaste or not[1] is, however, a matter
of the slightest moment in relation to the masterpiece that Mérimée
based on the theory that they are not. As Havelock Ellis so precisely
puts it: "Art is in its sphere as supreme over fact as Science in its
sphere is supreme over fiction. The artist may play either fast or
loose with Science, and the finest artist will sometimes play loose."
It may be remarked that in general Borrow was more inclined to play
loose than Mérimée.
It is interesting enough to realize that "The Bible in Spain," in
itself a masterpiece, was the inspiration for another masterpiece,
one of the great short stories of all literature. Curiously enough
still a third masterpiece emerged from the activities of the British
Bible Society, _Carmen_, the opera. In transferring the story to the
stage Messrs. Meilhac and Halévy, in searching for dramatic emphasis,
have thrown overboard a good deal of the wild and wanton atmosphere,
the calid passion, the brutal austerity of the original tale. Carmen,
in their version, becomes a mixture of Spanish gipsy and Parisian
cocotte. In certain scenes, such as that of the Seguidilla and the duet
in the last act a good deal of Mérimée's feeling has been preserved
but the scene of the quintet in which the other gipsies taunt Carmen
with being _amoureuse_ is probably essentially Parisian. So, too,
perhaps, is the scene of the Habanera. Spaniards have long protested
against the work because, as nearly as I can discover, they consider
it an _idealization_. Spanish women as a rule make the worst Carmens,
although they have often achieved notable successes in another Spanish
character, Rosina in _The Barber of Seville_.[2] An understanding of
the French opéra-comique form is essential to a fine interpretation of
this gipsy heroine; even a good deal of the music is not essentially
Spanish. If it were it would probably not be great because Bizet was
a Frenchman and must perforce in writing French opera hear Spain with
French ears.... Nevertheless I see no reason why a singer should not
go to Mérimée for many hints; indeed I think she might even go farther
and study Borrow's conception of the Spanish gipsy character. One line
alone in Mérimée would suggest a new interpretation to an actress
capable of realizing it. José is speaking: "Monsieur, quand cette
fille-là riait, il n'y avait pas moyen de parler raison. Tout le monde
riait avec elle." But an actress must conceive any part in terms of her
own personality and this effect could be made only by a very complete
_charmeuse_.
In the original story the bull-fighter, Lucas, scarcely appears and
he is a picador not an _espada_ as he becomes in the opera under the
new name of Escamillo. Why was this name changed? I have a theory,
unsupported by any evidence, that Bizet asked his librettists to
furnish him with a name which would fit the music of the marvellous
duet in the last act. He probably had achieved the phrase which now
accompanies _Ah! je t'aime, Escamillo_, only to discover that it
could not be married to the name Lucas. Jealousy remains the motive
for the murder of Carmen although the scenes are quite differently
arranged in the tale and in the lyric drama.... Micaela is new. The
only suggestion of her in Mérimée's story is the following line of
José's: "J'étais jeune alors; je pensais toujours au pays, et je
croyais pas qu'il y eût de jolies filles sans jupes bleues et sans
nattes tombant sur les épaules." Carmen's second meeting with José does
not take place at Lillas Pastia's but the third does, and ever so many
details such as the "chaine avec du fil de laiton," the cassia which
the hussy removes from her lips to toss at José's feet, the rejected
ring, etc., are incidents from Mérimée. Why, one wonders, does not
some interpreter remember that the original Carmen broke a plate and
from the pieces fashioned castanets to play while she danced the
_romalis_ for José?... The brutal García le Borgne, Carmen's _rom_,
disappears completely. He is not essential to the intrigue devised by
the librettists. They have also blotted out Carmen's very diverting
adventures with the Englishman at Gibraltar.
_Carmen_ was produced at the Paris Opéra-Comique March 3, 1875.
The first performance was coldly received. Charles Pigot (Bizet's
biographer) informs us that the prelude to the second act was repeated;
the air of the Toreador and the quintet were applauded: that was
all. The curtain fell on each act to complete indifference. The
discouragement of the composer seems to have been deep. We do not
wonder at it. Vincent d'Indy told Edmond Galabert that after the first
act he and a group of young musicians met Bizet on the sidewalk near
the stage entrance of the theatre and felicitated him on the life
and colour in the music. Bizet responded: "Vous êtes les premiers
qui me disiez ça, et je crains bien que vous ne soyez les derniers."
_Carmen_ was a failure. The reviews were bad. There were, curiously
enough, many charges of immorality. Pigot assures us that Camille du
Locle, the director of the theatre, who never believed in _Carmen_,
was more or less responsible for these. To a minister who wrote in
asking for a loge for the first night he replied that it would perhaps
be better if he came to the general rehearsal to see if he found the
piece sufficiently respectable for his wife and daughters!... Possibly
these charges of immorality awakened curiosity. At any rate it is
certain that after the fifth performance the receipts rose and the
apathy of the audiences became less marked. The piece was given for the
thirty-seventh time on June 13, just before the theatre closed for the
summer. Bizet had died June 3. In the fall _Carmen_ was revived and
given thirteen representations; then not again in Paris until 1883.
At various times attempts have been made to prove that _Carmen_ did
not fail when it was first produced. The most notable of these is
an article contributed to the "Ménestrel" (1903; p. 53) by Arthur
Pougin entitled "La Légende de la Chute de _Carmen_ et la Mort de
Bizet" in which he quotes Mme. Galli-Marié: "L'insuccès de _Carmen_
à la création, mais c'est une légende! _Carmen_ n'est pas tombée au
bout de quelques représentations, comme beaucoup le croient.... Nous
l'avons jouée plus de quarante fois dans la saison, et quand ce pauvre
Bizet est mort, le succes de son chef d'œuvre semblait definitivement
assis."... Pigot scoffs at this, pointing out that the exigencies of
the répertoire often make it necessary for a director to perform a work
oftener than it will pay to do so. His evidence is cumulative and for
the most part convincing.
According to H. Sutherland Edwards, who seems to have acquired this
information from Marie Roze, in its original form the opera included
two complete airs for Carmen which, in the end, the composer and his
librettists decided to suppress. The gipsy was to have been represented
as capable of remorse (!) and after the scene in which she foretells
her death by the cards was to be left alone to give vent to her
feelings in a pathetic air! The other omitted air occurred in the last
act.
Mr. Edwards gives us more details: The bull-fight, according to the
original design of the authors, was to be shown in the form of a
tableau, occupying all the back of the stage with live chorus figures
and "supers" in the front of the picture and painted figures behind
them. Escamillo was to have been seen triumphing over the figure of
the fallen bull, while the crowd of spectators overlooking the arena
shouted vociferously the air of the Toreador. In a dark background (the
back of the stage alone being illuminated) the figures of Carmen and
Don José were to be seen.
Charles Pigot tells us that Micaela's song was composed originally for
_Griselidis_ (an opera for which Sardou supplied the book and which
Bizet never completed). The score of _Carmen_ would be perfect without
it. The story of the Habanera is related elsewhere in this volume (p.
27), and need not be repeated here.
_Carmen_ originally contained a good deal of spoken dialogue, which is
still to be heard at the Paris Opéra-Comique. Guiraud (not Godard, as
Clara Louise Kellogg has it) wrote the music for the recitatives and it
is with these that the work is usually performed in foreign theatres,
including the Metropolitan Opera House. In some theatres, however, a
bastard version, a combination of these two forms, is given.
It is probable that Spaniards base their main objection to _Carmen_
on the idealization of a national type offered by the libretto. It is
not likely that they object to the music. At any rate they have always
found Italian, French, and German music pleasant to their ears and
many Spanish composers have been less Spanish than Bizet, who after
all, was a Jew, and something of an oriental himself! The dances and
some of the entr'acte music, then, of this opera may be considered
thoroughly Spanish. But Spanish or not there is no denying that Bizet
succeeded in writing one of the most delightful of operas. When I first
read Nietzsche's "The Case of Wagner" I was inclined to feel that the
German in his rage against Wagner had put up the silliest of opponents
against him in order to make his ex-hero more ridiculous. I do not feel
that way today. I humbly subscribe to all of Nietzsche's outpourings:
"This music seems to me to be perfect. It approaches lightly, nimbly,
and with courtesy. It is amiable, it does not produce _sweat_. 'What
is good is easy; everything divine runs with light feet'--the first
proposition of my Æsthetics. This music is wicked, subtle, and
fatalistic; it remains popular at the same time,--it has the subtlety
of a race, not of an individual. It is rich. It is precise.... It
has borrowed from Mérimée the logic in passion, the shortest route,
_stern_ necessity. It possesses, above all, what belongs to the warm
climate, the dryness of the air, its _limpidezza_.... This music is
gay; but it has not a French or a German gaiety. Its gaiety is African;
destiny hangs over it, its happiness is short, sudden, and without
forgiveness." Has any one ever described _Carmen_ so well? And there
is much more. I pray you, turn to "The Case of Wagner" and read it all
... and perhaps begin to believe, as I do, that aside from _Tristan_
Wagner himself never penned so complete a masterpiece.
Before we begin to glance at some of the ladies who have attempted to
do justice to the Spanish gipsy it might be well to pause for a few
seconds on two descriptions of the _cigarrera_ type. Gautier visited
the celebrated Fábrica de Tobacos in Seville, where Carmen was employed
until she began to stick knives into her co-workers. Here is what he
says of it:
"L'on nous conduisit aux ateliers où se roulent les cigares en
feuilles. Cinq où six cents femmes sont employées à cette préparation.
Quand nous mîmes le pied dans leur salle, nous fûmes assailis par un
ouragan de bruits: elles parlaient, chantaient et se disputaient toutes
à la fois. Je n'ai jamais entendu un vacarme pareil. Elles étaient
jeunes pour la plupart, et il y en avait de fort jolies. Le négligé
extrême de leur toilette permettait d'apprécier leurs charmes en toute
liberté. Quelques-unes portaient résolûment à l'angle de leur bouche
un bout de cigare avec l'aplomb d'un officier de hussards; d'autres,
ô muse, viens à mon aide! d'autres ... chiquaient comme de vieux
matelots, car on leur laisse prendre autant de tabac qu'elles en
peuvent consommer sur place.... La _cigarrera_ de Séville est un type,
comme la _manola_ de Madrid."
I also append Edmondo de Amicis's description: "The women are almost
all in three immense rooms, divided into three parts, by three rows of
pilasters. The first effect is stupendous. Eight hundred girls present
themselves at once to your view. They are divided into groups of five
or six, and are seated around work-tables, crowded together, those
in the distance indistinct, and the last scarcely visible. They are
all young, but few are children; in all, eight hundred dark heads of
hair, and eight hundred dusky faces from every province of Andalusia,
from Jaen to Cadiz, and from Granada to Seville. You hear the buzzing
that you would in a square full of people. The walls, from one end
of the three rooms to the other, are covered with skirts, shawls,
handkerchiefs, and scarfs, and, curiously enough, the whole mass of
rags, which would be sufficient to fill a hundred second-hand shops,
presents two predominating colours, both continuous, one above the
other, like the stripes of a flag. The black of the shawls is above,
the red of the dresses below, and mixed with the latter, are white,
purple, and yellow, so that you seem to see an immense fancy costume
shop, or a large dancing-room, in which the ballet girls, in order
to obtain more freedom of movement, have hung everything on the wall
which is not absolutely necessary to cover them decently. The girls
put on these dresses when they leave, but wear old things while at
work, which, however, are white and red like the others. The heat being
insupportable, they lighten their clothing as much as possible, so
that among those five thousand there may be hardly fifty whose arms
or shoulders the visitor will not have the opportunity of admiring
at his leisure, without counting the exceptional cases which present
themselves quite unexpectedly in passing from one room to the other,
behind the doors, columns, or in distant corners. There are some very
beautiful faces, and even those that are not absolutely beautiful, have
something about them which attracts the eye and remains impressed upon
the memory--the colouring, eyes, brows, and smile, for instance. Many,
and especially the so-called _gitane_, are dark brown, like mulattoes,
and have protruding lips; others have such large eyes that a faithful
likeness of them would seem an exaggeration. The majority are small,
well made, and all wear a rose, pink, or a bunch of field flowers
among their braids."[3]
Mlle. Célestine Galli-Marié was the first Carmen. She is said to have
been delightful, but the first interpreter of a part always has an
advantage over those who follow her; she need not fear comparison.
She was charged with immorality but it is not likely that she allowed
herself as many gipsy liberties as some of her successors. Charles
Pigot tells us that she took advantage of Mérimée's vigorous etching:
"elle avait pris modèle sur ce portrait d'une ressemblance qui donne
le frisson de la vie au personnage évoqué. Oeillades assassines,
regards chargés de volupté qui livrent la victime pieds et poings liés,
déhanchements lascifs, poings sur la hanche, rien ne manquait à la
ressemblance; et ce déploiement de perversités physiques, refletant
à merveille l'âme de cette bohémienne ehontée, cette crudité de tons
dans le rendu du geste et de l'allure qui choquèrent bien des personnes
et firent crier a l'immoralité, étaient indiqués par l'effronterie
du personnage, et, j'ajouterai, nécessaires à la verité du drame, à
l'explication de l'ensorcellement subit du navarrais."
Arthur Pougin says of her: "Mme. Galli-Marié should take rank with
those numerous artists who, although endowed with no great voice, have
for a century past rendered to this theatre services made remarkable by
their talent for acting and their incontestable worth from a dramatic
point of view.... Equally capable of exciting laughter or of provoking
tears, endowed with an artistic temperament of great originality ...
which has permitted her making out of parts confided to her distinct
types ... in which she has represented personages whose nature and
characteristics are essentially opposed."... She died at Vence, near
Nice, September 22, 1905.
Fräulein Ehnn seems to have been the second Carmen; as Vienna was
the second city to produce Bizet's opera; the date was October 23,
1875. Brussels had the honour of being the third city; the date was
February 8, 1876; Mlle. Maria Dérivis enacted the rôle of the gipsy
here. Thereafter the opera made the grand tour of the world, and firmly
established itself in the répertoire of the meanest singing theatres.
Scarcely a singer but has at one time or other sung one of the rôles in
this work. Sometimes it has been Micaela (Mme. Melba, among others,
has sung this rôle); sometimes Frasquita, in which Emma Trentini made
an instantaneous impression in New York, more often than not Carmen
herself, for contraltos and sopranos have both appeared in the part.
Adèle Isaac, a soprano, sang the part when _Carmen_ was revived at the
Opéra-Comique in 1883. She did not make a very good impression but
the opera was received much more favourably than it had been in 1875.
When Mme. Galli-Marié reappeared she was again deemed matchless. Then
came Mme. Nardi. About 1888 Mme. Deschamps-Jehin sang the rôle. Mme.
Tarquini d'Or succeeded her. In December, 1892, Mme. Calvé disclosed
her characterization. It has been the custom in America to signalize a
vast distinction between her early and late performances of the rôle;
it has been said that she became self-conscious and wayward. Paris
always found her so, but it must be remembered that tradition must
be followed in the French theatre. Charles Darcourt's criticism in
"Le Figaro" the next morning is enough to give a Parisian impression:
He reproached her "d'être allée trop loin dans ses gestes et ses
attitudes, d'avoir été trop peu comme il faut, d'être sorti des limites
du bon goût et surtout du bon ton."... Mlle. Charlotte Wyns sang
Carmen in 1894. Mme. Nina Pack, Mme. de Nuovina and Mme. Marie Brema
followed her. In 1898 came Georgette Leblanc, who subsequently became
the wife of Maurice Maeterlinck. Mlle. Leblanc's interpretation was a
new one and she inspired one critic (Fierens-Gevaert) to put on paper
the following ecstatic lines about her appearance in the second act:
"Mlle. Leblanc is clothed in a long robe of plaited tulle, ornamented
with spangles. Her body, finely proportioned, is revealed by this
indiscreet drapery. Her nobly modelled shoulders and arms are bare. Her
hair is confined by three circles of gold, arranged in Grecian fashion.
Alma, gipsy, daughter of the East, princess of the harem, Byzantine
empress or Moorish dancer? All this is suggested by this fantastic and
seductive costume. But a more ideal image pursues us. The singer is
constantly urged by feminine visions of our ultra-modern poets. She
finds absolute beauty in the exquisite body of a woman animated by
a Florentine robe. And it is through this imaginary figure that she
composes her other incarnations; and in a tavern where gipsy women
meet soldiers, she evokes the apparition of a woman of Mantegna or
Botticelli, degraded, vile, who gives the idea of a shameless creature
that has not lost entirely the gracefulness of her original rank.
She is never weary of cheapening her original model. She is sensual,
impudent, voluptuous, gross, but in her white diction, in her blithe
walk, you divine her desire of evoking something else.... Carmen is,
according to Mlle. Leblanc, a hybrid, monstrous creature. You look
upon her with eager curiosity and infinite sadness.... Mlle. Leblanc
makes light of her voice. She maltreats it, threshes it, subjects it to
inhuman inflections.... Her singing is not musical, her interpretation
lacks the naïveté necessary to true dramatic power. Nevertheless, she
is one of the most emotional interpreters of our period. Her limited
abilities, hidden by a thousand details in accentuation, remind one of
the weak and ornate poetry of artistic degeneration.... Thanks to her,
Antioch and Alexandria, corrupt and adorable cities, live again, for an
hour."
Perhaps Philip Hale's description of Carmen owes something to this
picture of Mlle. Leblanc. At any rate it is striking enough to
reproduce:
"Carmen lived years before she was known to Mérimée. She dies many
deaths and many are her resurrections. When the world was young, they
say her name was Lilith, and the serpent for her sake hated Adam. She
perished that wild night when the heavens rained fire upon the cities
of the plain. Samson knew her when she dwelt in the valley of Sorek.
The mound builders saw her and fell at her feet. She disquieted the
blameless men of Ethiopia. Years after she was the friend of Theodora.
In the fifteenth century she was noticed in Sabbatic revels led by the
four-horned goat. She was in Paris at the end of the last century and
she wore powder and patches at the dinner given by the Marquis de Sade.
In Spain she smoked cigarettes and wrecked the life of Don José."
Georgette Leblanc's successors were Mme. Delna, Zélie de Lussan, Marié
de l'Isle (who sang Mercedes before she sang Carmen), Cécile Thévenet,
Jenny Passama, Claire Friché, Marguerite Sylva, Mme. Lafargue, Mlle.
Vix, Mlle. Brohly, Mlle. Charbonnel, Sigrid Arnoldson, Mlle. Mérentié,
and Lucienne Bréval, whom Zuloaga painted twice in the part. One of
these painting hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
The other belongs to Mme. Bréval. I have not seen Mme. Bréval in
_Carmen_ but I have seen her in other operas and I think I am safe in
saying that Zuloaga's conception of her is more gipsy-like than her
performance.... One of the latest of the Paris Carmens has been Mary
Garden.
[Illustration: ZULOAGA'S PORTRAIT OF LUCIENNE BRÉVAL AS CARMEN. ACT II]
_By permission of the Hispanic Society of America_
I think Col. Mapleson brought _Carmen_ to London. The first performance
was given June 22, 1878, at Her Majesty's Theatre. He was fortunate
in having as his leading interpreter Minnie Hauk of Brooklyn, who,
I believe, had been heard in the part in Brussels before she sang
it in London. She is said to have been fascinating in the rôle and
straightway made it pretty much her own. Mapleson in his "Memoirs"
tells what a time he had with the other interpreters. Campanini
returned the part of José, giving as his explanation that he had no
romance and no love duet except with the _seconda donna_. Del Puente
suggested that the part of Escamillo must have been intended for one of
the chorus. Mlle. Valleria made a similar remark in regard to Micaela.
However, the wily Colonel managed to get the singers to come to a
rehearsal or two and in a short time they became infatuated with their
rôles.
It has been generally taken for granted and indeed you will find
it so stated in most of the books, that Minnie Hauk was the first
American Carmen, but Clara Louise Kellogg in her "Memoirs" denies
this, asserting that she preceded Miss Hauk here in the rôle by
several months.[4] One thing is certain, that Miss Hauk made more of an
impression as Carmen on her contemporaries than Mme. Kellogg. An early
international exponent of the rôle was Marie Roze, who according to H.
Sutherland Edwards, at first could scarcely be persuaded to undertake
a character of so vile a nature. She finally succumbed to the lure,
however. Edwards says of her: "Marie Roze brought forward the gentle
side of the character. Carmen has something of the playfulness of the
cat, something also of the ferocity of the tigress; and the ferocious
side of Carmen's disposition could not find a sympathetic exponent in
Madame Marie Roze." Clara Louise Kellogg gives us, as is her wont, a
more forceful description: "When she (Marie Roze) was singing _Carmen_
she was the gentlest mannered gipsy that was ever stabbed by a jealous
lover--a handsome Carmen but too sweet and good for anything."
Christine Nilsson is said to have decided that the rôle was not pure
enough for her, but Adelina Patti, who has stated publicly that Wagner
wrote _Parsifal_ for her and that she had refused the rôle of Kundry,
could not forego the chance to appear as the Mérimée-Bizet gipsy. Her
failure was abysmal. H. E. Krehbiel says she was seen "and occasionally
heard" in the part. She "ignored its dramatic elements entirely, and
cared only for the music, and only for the music in which she sang
alone." But Pauline Lucca sang the part with success, I believe.
Carmen was a rôle that Lilli Lehmann had frequently sung in Germany
before she came to America and she made her American début in the part.
Here is Mr. Krehbiel's description of her performance ("Chapters of
Opera"):
"Lehmann as the gipsy cigarette maker, with her Habanera and
Seguidilla, with her errant fancy wandering from a sentimental
brigadier to a dashing bull-fighter, is a conception which will not
come easy to the admirers of the later Brünnhilde and Isolde; and,
indeed, she was a puzzling phenomenon to the experienced observers of
that time. Carmen was already a familiar apparition to New Yorkers,
who had imagined that Minnie Hauk had spoken the last word in the
interpretation of that character. When Fräulein Lehmann came her
tall stature and erect, almost military, bearing, were calculated
to produce an effect of surprise of such a nature that it had to be
overcome before it was possible to enter into the feeling with which
she informed the part. To the eye, moreover, she was a somewhat more
matronly Carmen than the fancy, stimulated by earlier performances
of the opera or the reading of Mérimée's novel, was prepared to
accept; but it was in harmony with the new picture that she stripped
the character of the flippancy and playfulness popularly associated
with it, and intensified its sinister side. In this, Fräulein Lehmann
deviated from Mme. Hauk's impersonation and approached that of Mme.
Trebelli.... In her musical performance she surpassed both of those
admired and experienced artists."
Mme. Trebelli, referred to in the last paragraph, was a popular Carmen
here in the eighties, but it was not until Emma Calvé appeared at the
Metropolitan Opera House in 1893-4 that _Carmen_ became a fetish. The
Frenchwoman so completely fascinated the public in this rôle that she
was seldom allowed to appear in any other, although her Santuzza, her
Cherubino, her Anita, and her Ophélie were probably more artistic
achievements. She was beautiful and wanton and wayward and thoroughly
fascinating when she first appeared here in the rôle. Whether she
became enamoured of herself in it later, or merely tired of it, does
not appear to be certain; at any rate she allowed her mannerisms
full sway and soon completely stepped out of the picture, the more
completely as she frequently distorted the rhythms of the music. Calvé
had the power, as few singers have possessed it, to colour her voice to
express different emotions, and her vocal treatment of the part in the
beginning was a delight. Her costumes were very wonderful. I have read
criticisms of her and other Carmens, bearing on this point. But Carmen
was a smuggler, a thief, even a murderess; she often had plenty of
money, and she frequently dressed extravagantly. Mérimée does not leave
us any room for doubt in this matter. The second time José sees her she
is described thus: "Elle était parée, cette fois, comme une châsse,
pomponnée, attifée, tout or et tout rubans. Une robe à paillettes, des
souliers bleus à paillettes aussi, des fleurs et des galons partout."
How many Carmens have we seen since Calvé! Zélie de Lussan, who gave
an exquisite opéra-comique performance, with a touch of savagery
and a charming sense of humour! Fanchon Thompson, who attempted
to sing the part in English with Henry W. Savage's company at the
Metropolitan Opera House but who broke down and left the stage after
she had sung a few bars. Olive Fremstad, who had appeared in the part
many times in Munich (all contraltos sing the part in Germany; even
Ernestine Schumann-Heink has sung it there) was the Metropolitan Opera
House Carmen for a season or two. Her interpretation followed that
of Lilli Lehmann. It was very austere, almost savage, and with very
little humour. Olive Fremstad was applauded in the rôle but she never
succeeded in making the opera popular.
[Illustration: OLIVE FREMSTAD AS CARMEN. ACT I]
_from an early photograph by Lützel, Munich_
But Clotilde Bressler-Gianoli sang the part fifteen times in Oscar
Hammerstein's first Manhattan Opera House season; the performance of
_Carmen_ at this theatre, indeed, saved the first season, as Mary
Garden and Luisa Tetrazzini saved the second. Mme. Bressler-Gianoli,
who had been heard at the Paris Opéra-Comique in the rôle, and indeed
once with the New Orleans Opera Company at the New York Casino, gave
a delightful interpretation; its chief charm was its absolute freedom
from self-consciousness; it was so natural that it became real.
Calvé sang the part four times at the end of this season. Mme.
Gerville-Réache was another Manhattan Opera House Carmen and Lina
Cavalieri was a fourth. Mme. Cavalieri was particularly charming in the
dances, but she made a very unconvincing gipsy. In no part that she
has ever played before or since has she produced such an impression
of girlish innocence. Mariette Mazarin sang Carmen here before she
was heard in _Elektra_. Her Carmen was brazen and diabolic, electric
and strident; I think it might be included among the great Carmens;
it was very original. Marguerite Sylva's Carmen is traditional and
pleasant; in tone very like that of Zélie de Lussan. It has been
sufficiently appreciated.... María Gay, the Spanish Carmen, attempted
realistic touches such as expectoration; a well-sung, well-thought-out,
consistent performance, but lacking in glamour.
Although the Century Theatre with Kathleen Howard and others, and
sundry small Italian companies had offered Carmen in New York the work
was missing from the répertoire of the Metropolitan Opera House for
several seasons until Geraldine Farrar brought it back in 1914-15.[5]
The scenery and costumes were new. By way of caprice the Spanish army
was dressed in Bavarian blue although José is several times referred
to as _canari_ in the text. Caruso sang José, as he had with Mme.
Fremstad, and Mr. Toscanini conducted. With the public Carmen has
become one of Mme. Farrar's favourite rôles, sharing that distinction
with Butterfly.
Other Carmens who may be mentioned are Anna de Belocca, Stella Bonheur,
Kirkby-Lunn, Ottilie Metzger, Emmy Destinn, Marie Tempest, Selina
Dolaro, Camille Seygard, Alice Gentle, Eleanora de Cisneros, Jane
Noria, Ester Ferrabini, Margarita d'Alvarez, Tarquinia Tarquini.... It
might be said in passing that some Carmens do not get nearer to the
Giralda Tower in Seville than Stanford White's imitation in Madison
Square.
Although Mary Garden brought to America three of the best parts in her
répertoire, Mélisande, Thais, and Louise, six rôles, at least, she has
sung for the first time in this country, Sapho, Natoma, Dulcinée in
_Don Quichotte_, Prince Charmant in _Cendrillon_, Salome, and Carmen.
She first identified herself with the Spanish gipsy at the Philadelphia
Opera House on November 3, 1911. On February 13, 1912, with the
Philadelphia Company, she was heard in Bizet's opera in New York. I
attended both of these performances and found much to admire in each
of them. Something, however, was lacking; something was wrong; nobody
seemed to know exactly what. The general impression was that Mary
Garden had failed at last and it was generally bruited about that she
would never sing Carmen again. However, Miss Garden is not one of those
who permits herself to fail; it may be that she remembers Schumann's
saying, "He who sets limits to himself will always be expected to
remain within them."... In any case I was not surprised to learn that
Miss Garden was singing Carmen at the Opéra-Comique in Paris during the
season of 1916-17. In the fall of 1917 she sang the part in Chicago and
on February 8, 1918, with the Chicago Opera Company, she reappeared
in the part in New York. This occasion may be regarded as one of the
greatest triumphs a singer has ever achieved. For Mary Garden had so
entirely reconceived the rôle, so stepped into its atmosphere, that she
had now made it not merely one of her great parts (it ranks with her
Mélisande, her Monna Vanna, and her Thais) but also she had made it
_her_ part. There is indeed no Carmen of the moment who can be compared
with her.
A feral gipsy from Triana, this apparition; a _cigarrera_ in the
Fábrica de Tobacos for the sake of the "affairs of Egypt"; a true
gitana in her _saya_ "with many rows of flounces." Any day in the
streets of Seville could you have seen her like, peering through the
gratings into the patios, ready to tell _bahi_. "Eyes of a gipsy,
eyes of a wolf" is a Spanish proverb, according to Mérimée, and
Borrow tells us that a gitano can always be detected by his eye: "Its
peculiarity consists chiefly in a strange staring expression, which
to be understood must be seen, and in a thin glaze which steals over
it when in repose, and seems to emit phospheric light."... So, did it
seem to me, had become the eyes of Mary Garden. This discinct creature,
instinctively paradoxical, would be equally at home in the spinnies of
the arid Spanish plains, on the dirty stage of a _maison de danses_ at
Triana, or, gaily bedecked and spangled, like a "bedizened butterfly
of commerce" in a box of the Plaza de Toros. Sensuous and caline, as
in the Seguidilla, rubbing her velvet back against the _canari_; proud
and magnetic (she must have carried a piece of the _bar lachi_ about
with her), she drew her lovers to her side; she did not advance to meet
them. White hot in anger: other Carmens have hurled the helmet after
the departing José; Mary Garden _shot_ it at him like a bursting hand
grenade. Fatalist: cabalistic signs smouldering in purple flame on
her breast, in the end published this motto in Roman letters: "_Je ne
crains rien!_" When she danced she scarcely lifted her feet from the
floor, tapping her heels rhythmically and sensuously into the hidden
chambers of our brains; so the inquisitors maddened their victims
with the endless drop, drop, drop of water. Her manipulation of her
fan, a monstrous Spanish fan, coral on one side and with tauromachian
decorations on the other, was in itself a lesson in diabolic grace. She
made the fan a part of herself, a part of her movement, as a Spanish
woman would.... The climax was fitting enough; her answer to José in
the last act, "_Non, je ne t'aime plus_," sung not with force, not in
anger, but with a sort of amused contempt.... So does the gipsy regard
the busno ... _with a sort of amused contempt_. Fatalist, humourist,
enchantress, panther, savage, _gamine_, in turn, this Carmen suggested
the virgin brutality of Spain, the austere portentous passion of
Persephone, the frivolous devilments of Hell itself.
_June 20, 1918._
FOOTNOTES:
[1] It must be remembered that Mérimée and Borrow were writing nearly
a century ago; what was true then may not be true today. Borrow,
himself, says (in "The Zincali"): "It is, of course, by inter-marriage
alone that the two races will ever commingle, and before that event is
brought about, much modification must take place amongst the Gitanos,
in their manners, in their habits, in their affections, and their
dislikes, and, perhaps, even in their physical peculiarities; much must
be forgotten on both sides, and everything is forgotten in the course
of time."
[2] Nevertheless _Carmen_ is frequently sung in Spain, even in Seville,
although probably more often in Italian than in French or Spanish.
[3] There is a picturesque account of this Fábrica de Tobacos in Baron
Ch. Davillier's "l'Espagne" (Hachette; Paris; 1874).
[4] According to W. J. Henderson (in his introduction to _Carmen_;
Dodd, Mead and Co., 1911), who is usually as accurate as anybody can
be about such matters, "_Carmen_ was first performed in New York
(in Italian) at the Academy of Music, October 23, 1878, under the
management of Col. J. H. Mapleson. The principal singers were Minnie
Hauk as Carmen, Italo Campanini as Don José, and Giuseppe del Puente as
Escamillo." However it should be noted that Mme. Kellogg does not say
that she was the first _New York_ Carmen.
[5] Mr. Henderson gives an interesting and probably authentic
reason for the disappearance of _Carmen_ from the répertoire of the
Metropolitan Opera House: "It has not been performed as much in America
in recent seasons as it has in Europe because American audiences have
learned to expect a very striking impersonation of the heroine and do
not eagerly go to hear the opera when such an impersonation is not
offered." And again: "Mme. Calvé's bold, picturesque and capricious
impersonation of the gipsy became the idol of the American imagination,
and thereby much harm was wrought, for whereas the gifted performer
began the season with a consistent and well-executed characterization,
she speedily permitted success to turn her head and lead her to
abandon genuine dramatic art for catch-penny devices directed at the
unthinking. The result has been that opera-goers have found correct
impersonations of Carmen uninteresting."
Notes on the Text
Notes on the Text
P. 13. "why it was abandoned I have never learned": Oscar Hammerstein
has since told me: "The score called for a large number of guitar
players, more than I could get together readily. I should have been
obliged to have engaged all the barbers in New York."... Raoul Laparra
has spoken to me with enthusiasm about the orchestration of _La
Dolores_: "The guitars produce an extraordinary effect."
P. 14. "There are probably other instances": During the season of
1916-17 at least two attempts were made by Spanish companies to give
New York a taste of the zarzuela. In December at the Amsterdam Opera
House Arrieta's _Marina_ and Chapí's _El Puñao de Rosas_ were sung on
one evening and Valverde's _El Pobre Valbuena_ and somebody else's
_America para los Americanos_ on another. In April a company came to
the Garden Theatre and gave Chapí's _La Tempestad_ and perhaps some
others. Both of these experiments were made in the most primitive
manner and were foredoomed to failure.... _The Land of Joy_ was
the first Spanish musical piece of any pretension (save the dull
_Goyescas_) to be presented in New York.
P. 14. "_La Gran Vía_": I heard a performance of this zarzuela in
Italian at the People's Theatre on the Bowery, July 1, 1918. The work
is a favourite with itinerant Italian opéra-bouffe companies, probably
on account of the very delightful _Pickpockets' Jota_ in which the
rogues outwit policemen in a dozen different ways. This strikes a truly
picaresque note, redolent of folklore. The music of this number, too,
is the best in the score, aside from the _Tango de la Menegilda_. This
performance was primitive and certainly not in the Spanish manner but
it was very gay and delightful from beginning to end.
P. 15. "the earlier vogue of Carmencita": This list could be extended
almost indefinitely. I have made no mention of Lola Montez, who danced,
acted, lectured, and died in this country. However, her pretensions to
Spanish blood were mostly pretensions. Her father was the son of Sir
Edward Gilbert of Limerick, although she had some Spanish blood on her
mother's side. She spent some time in Spain and studied Spanish dancing
there, but there is no evidence that she ever achieved proficiency in
this art.... I believe both Otero and La Tortajada have appeared in
this country. But neither of these women could help the cause abroad
of Spanish music or dancing. Of these two I can speak personally as
I have seen them both. Elvira de Hidalgo, a Spanish soprano, sang a
few performances at the Metropolitan Opera House and the New Theatre
at the end of the season of 1909-10. One of her rôles was Rosina,
which is a greater favourite with Spanish women singers than Carmen.
Margarita d'Alvarez, a Peruvian contralto born in Liverpool, sang in
Oscar Hammerstein's last Manhattan Opera House season. Tortola Valencia
danced for a short time during the season of 1917-18 in a revue at
the Century Theatre. As for painters Francis Picabia, the Cuban, and
Henry Caro-Delvaille, who is almost wholly Spanish in sympathy and
appearance, but quite French in his art, are both living in this
country at present ... and the work of Pablo Picasso is well-known here.
P. 16. To these should be added Juan Nadal, tenor with the Chicago
Opera Company, José Mardones, bass, Hipolito Lazaro, tenor, and Rafaelo
Diaz, tenor, with the Metropolitan Opera Company.
P. 18. "Where are they?": Pedrell's _La Celestina_ has found many
admirers. Camille Bellaigue in "Notes Brèves" recommends it warmly to
the director of the Opéra-Comique in Paris: "Aussi bien, après tant de
'saisons' russes, italiennes, allemandes, pourquoi ne pas en avoir une
espagnole?"... Manuel de Falla's _La Vida Breve_ was produced in Paris
before it was heard in Madrid. G. Jean-Aubry praises it highly.... And
José María Usandizaga's _Las Golindrinas_ has proved immensely popular
in Spain.
Pianists have not been slow to realize the value and beauty of Spanish
music which they have placed on their programs, if not in profusion, at
least in no niggardly manner ... but so far as I know no Spanish music
has yet been played by our New York symphony societies, although works
of Granados, and possibly those of other Spanish composers, have been
heard elsewhere in America. This neglect is not only lamentable; it
is stupid. Whether the music is good or bad, interesting or dull, New
York should be permitted to hear some of it. I should suggest, to begin
with, Albéniz's _Catalonia_, Joaquín Turina's _La Procesión del Rocio_,
Conrado del Campo's _Divina Comedia_, Pérez Casas's _Suite Murcienne_,
and Manuel de Falla's _Noches en los Jardines de España_. Of these I
should prefer to hear the second and last.
P. 18. "It is doubtful, indeed, if the zarzuela could take root in any
theatre in New York": No longer doubtful. Now that we have heard _The
Land of Joy_ it is certain that a group of zarzuelas, presented by a
good company with a good orchestra in the Spanish fashion, would be
greeted here with enthusiasm.
P. 18. "in Spain Italian and German operas are much more popular than
Spanish": This situation must be quite familiar to any American or
Englishman, for neither in America nor in England has English opera any
standing. See note to Page 70.
P. 24. "_Don Quixote_": Anton Rubinstein wrote a tone-poem with this
title.... This list could be made much longer. The second of Debussy's
_Estampes_ for piano, _La Soirée dans Grenade_ should certainly be
mentioned here.... Pablo Casals ('cellist) and Ruth Deyo (pianist)
played Loeffler's _Poème Espagnol_ at a concert in Boston March 24,
1917.
P. 25. "Raoul Laparra": This composer, of Basque blood, has been
almost constantly obsessed with the idea of Spain and has probably
written more consistently Spanish music than some Iberian composers
who might be mentioned. There is to be another dance-opera, he
writes me, to add to _La Habanera_ and _La Jota_, to be called _Le
Tango et la Malagueña_, thus completing the series of "three dramas
suggested by three dances." Mr. Laparra married an American and is
at present living in America. He has completed an opera entitled _Le
Conquistador_, which obviously has do with the Spanish occupation of
America. He has also written a book, "La Musique Populaire en Espagne"
(Delagrave; Paris). "The best Spanish composer _is_ the people," is his
phrase.
At a concert in Aeolian Hall, January 6, 1917, Harold Bauer played
Laparra's _Rhythmes Espagnols_ (announced as the first performance
in New York). These proved to be a series of characteristic dance
impressions. The composer supplied the following comment:
"There exists a world in Spain, little known outside the Iberian
peninsula itself, made up of these people with their schools, their
traditions. That is what I have tried to seize, that is what I
am passionately interested in. Without the use of native tunes I
have moulded my music on the native rhythms and forms and thereby
endeavoured to interpret the spirit of the people. Thus _Petenera_ is
conceived in the characteristic style and rhythm created by the singer
of that name, an Andalusian woman, who lived in the last century.
Old singers who had heard her told me that she sang 'like an angel.'
Nobody could tell the date of her birth or death, and she has become
a legendary character for whom all Andalusia wept and still weeps,
although her beauty and her voice caused many men much unhappiness.
"_Tientos_ reproduces the impression of those mysterious comments of
the guitar before or during the singer's sobbing melodic figures. The
singer and the guitar-player improvise together and, strangely enough,
always in harmony, as though animated by a single impulse.
"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_."
P. 29. "_Don Giovanni_ and _Le Nozze di Figaro_": "Seville, more than
any city I have ever seen, is the city of pleasure ... and in living
gaily, and in the present, it is carrying on a tradition: it is the
city of Don Juan, the city of Figaro." Arthur Symons in "Cities."
P. 30. To this list of operas add Cherubini's _Les Abencérages_,
Donizetti's _La Favorita_, Camille Erlanger's _La Sorcière_, Lecocq's
_Giroflé-Girofla_, Wallace's _Maritana_, d'Albert's _Tiefland_, Verdi's
_Don Carlos_, Sir Arthur Sullivan's _The Chieftain_, and Julius
Eichberg's _The Doctor of Alcántara_.
P. 36. Probably Pastora Imperio is the foremost of all contemporary
Spanish dancers. She is a gipsy, the daughter of the dancer, La
Mejorana, and Víctor Rojes, a tailor to bull-fighters, and she married
the _torero_, El Gallo. She made her début at the Japonés, the best
variety theatre in Madrid, opened in 1900. In 1902 she went to the
Novedadés in the Calle Alcala, where La Argentina, then known as Aidá,
and the famous Amalia Molina first appeared in Madrid. The Brothers
Quintero have inscribed a sonnet to Pastora Imperio and they wrote
their "Historia de Sevilla" for her use. Julio Romero de Torres has
painted her. And Benavente, himself, the greatest, perhaps, of modern
Spanish writers, has written a description of her dancing: "Her flesh
burns with the consuming heat of all eternity, but her body is like the
very pillar of the sanctuary, palpitating as it is kindled in the glow
of sacred fires.... Watching Pastora Imperio life becomes more intense.
The loves and hates of other worlds pass before our eyes and we feel
ourselves heroes, bandits, hermits assailed by temptation, shameless
bullies of the tavern--whatever is highest and lowest in one. A desire
to shout out horrible things takes possession of us: _Gitanaza!_ Thief!
Assassin! Then we turn to curse. Finally, summing it all up, in a burst
of exaltation we praise God, because we believe in God while we look
at Pastora Imperio, just as we do when we read Shakespeare." Recently
La Imperio has been appearing in a one act piece, the music of which
was arranged from de Falla's _El Amor Brujo_.
Amalia Molina, mentioned above, was in her prime ten years or so
ago.... Zuloaga has painted several portraits of Anita Ramirez and
other Spanish dancers. One of his most admired pictures is of a gipsy
dancer in _torero_ costume.
Here, too, I may speak of La Goya, a delightful music-hall singer who
has won fame not only in Spain but in South America as well. She has
made a special study of costumes. Of a more popular type, but not more
of a favourite, is Raquel Meller.
P. 43. "the tail of a peacock": In Catulle Mendès's song, _La Pavana_,
set to music by Alfred Bruneau, he compares the pavane to a peacock.
P. 46. "its origin in the twelfth century": Tomás Bretón writes me that
he considers it ridiculous to attribute any such age to the jota. His
researches on the subject are embodied in a pamphlet (1911) entitled
"Rápida ojeada histórica sobre la música española."
P. 49. Curiously enough in a music critic's account of a voyage
in Spain (H. T. Finck's "Spain and Morocco") only a single page is
devoted to a discussion of Spanish music or dancing. The author is not
sympathetic. The rhythmic and dynamic features of the performance which
so aroused the delight of Chabrier only annoy Mr. Finck. I quote his
account which begins with an experience at Murcia: "In the evening I
came across an interesting performance in the street. A woman and a
man were singing a duet, accompanying themselves with a guitar and a
mandolin, making a peculiarly pleasing combination, infinitely superior
to the performances of the Italian bards who accompany themselves
with hand-organs or cheap harps, not to speak of the horrible German
beer-bands which infest our streets. It was indeed so agreeable that
I followed the couple for several blocks. But with the exception of a
students' concert in Seville, it was almost the only good music I heard
in Spain. Madrid and Barcelona have ambitious operatic performances in
winter, and the Barcelonese go so far as to claim that they sing and
understand Wagner better than the Berliners; but as the opera-houses
were closed while I was there, I have no comments to offer on this
boast. In a café chantant which I visited in Seville I heard, instead
of national airs, vulgar French women singing a French version of
'Champagne Charley' and similar vulgar things; no one, it is true,
cared for these songs, whereas a rare bit of national melody in the
program was wildly applauded; but fashion of course must have her
sway. At another café the music was thoroughly Spanish, with guitar
accompaniment; but, according to the usual Spanish custom, there were
a dozen persons on the stage who clapped their hands so loudly, to
mark the rhythm, that the music degenerated into a mere rhythmic noise
accompanying the dancing. These dances interest the Spanish populace
much more than any kind of music, and I was amused occasionally to see
a group of working men looking on the grotesque amateur dancing of one
or two of their number with an expression of supreme enjoyment, and
clapping their hands in unison to keep time."
Seeing indifferent dancing performed, he affirms, by women who were
no longer young, in the early part of his Spanish sojourn, Théophile
Gautier, too, at first was inclined to treat Spanish dancing as a
myth (P. 31): "Les danses espagnoles n'existent qu'à Paris, comme les
coquillages, qu'on ne trouve que chez les marchands de curiosités, et
jamais sur le bord de la mer. O Fanny Elssler! qui êtes maintenant en
Amérique chez les sauvages, même avant d'aller en Espagne, nous nous
doutions bien que c'était vous qui aviez inventé la cachucha!"... This
was at Vitoria. In Madrid he writes: "On nous avait dit à Vitoria, à
Burgos et à Valladolid, que les bonnes danseuses étaient à Madrid;
à Madrid, l'on nous a dit que les véritables danseuses de cachucha
n'existaient qu'en Andalousie, à Séville. Nous verrons bien; mais
nous avons peur qu'en fait de danses espagnoles, il ne nous faille en
revenir à Fanny Elssler et aux deux soeurs Noblet."... In Andalusia
he capitulated: "Les danseuses espagnoles, bien qu'elles n'aient pas
le fini, la correction précise, l'élévation des danseuses françaises,
leur sont, à mon avis, bien supérieures par la grâce et le charme;
comme elles travaillent peu et ne s'assujetissent pas à ces terribles
excercises d'assouplissement qui font ressembler une classe de danse à
une salle de torture, elles évitent cette maigreur de cheval entrainé
qui donne à nos ballets quelque chose de trop macabre et de trop
anatomique; elles conservent les contours et les rondeurs de leur
sexe; elles ont l'air de femmes qui dansent et non pas de danseuses,
ce qui est bien différent.... En Espagne les pieds quittent à peine
la terre; point de ces grands ronds de jambe, de ces écarts qui font
ressembler une femme à un compas forcé, et qu'on trouve là-bas d'une
indécence révoltante. C'est le corps qui danse, ce sont les reins qui
se cambrent, les flancs qui ploient, la taille qui se tord avec une
souplesse d'almée où de couleuvre. Dans les poses renversées, les
épaules de la danseuse vont presque toucher la terre; les bras, pâmés
et morts, ont une flexibilité, une mollesse d'écharpe dénouée; on
dirait que les mains peuvent à peine soulever et faire babiller les
castagnettes d'ivoire aux cordons tressés d'or; et cependant, au moment
venu, des bonds de jeune jaguar succèdent à cette langueur voluptueuse,
et prouvent que ces corps, doux comme la soie, enveloppent des muscles
d'acier...."
P. 50. "the malagueña": Gautier thus describes this dance: "La
_malagueña_, danse locale de Málaga, est vraiment d'une poésie
charmante. Le cavalier paraît d'abord, le _sombrero_ sur les yeux,
embossé dans sa cape écarlate comme un hidalgo qui se promène et
cherche les aventures. La dame entre, drapée dans sa mantille, son
éventail à la main, avec les façons d'une femme qui va faire un tour
à l'Alameda. Le cavalier tâche de voir la figure de cette mystérieuse
sirène; mais la coquette manoeuvre si bien de l'éventail, l'ouvre et le
ferme si à propos, le tourne et le retourne si promptement à la hauteur
de son joli visage, que le galant, désappointé, recule de quelques pas
et s'avise d'un autre stratagème. Il fait parler des castagnettes sous
son manteau. A ce bruit, la dame prête l'oreille; elle sourit, son sein
palpite, la pointe de son petit pied de satin marque la mesure malgré
elle; elle jette son éventail, sa mantille, et paraît en folle toilette
de danseuse, étincelante de paillettes et de clinquants, une rose dans
les cheveux, un grand peigne d'écaille sur la tête. Le cavalier se
débarrasse de son masque et de sa cape, et tous deux exécutent un pas
d'une originalité délicieuse."
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.
P. 62. When Dmitri Slaviansky visited Barcelona with his Russian
choir in 1895, introducing Russian folk-music to Spain, he became
very much interested in the folk-music of Catalonia. His enthusiasm
was contagious and Spanish musicians themselves caught the fever. In
that very year Enrique Morera made a harmonization of the first verse
of _Sant Ramón_, a traditional melody from the island of Mallorca,
which was performed by the Russian Choir. Later Amadeo Vives founded
the Orfeó Catalá, a choral society which devotes itself for the most
part to the exploitation of the old folk and religious music, arranged
by Morera, Pedrell, and other Spanish composers. Lluis Millet is now
the director of this organization, which visited Paris and London in
the spring of 1914. In both these cities the Choir was received with
enthusiasm. Henry Quittard wrote in "Le Figaro": "We must confess that
we have never heard anything that could approach this extraordinary
ensemble." Emile Vuillermoz said, "A most varied program showed all
the resources of this miraculous instrument, which ravishes and at
the same time humiliates us profoundly. The comparison of our most
reputed French choruses with this splendid phalanx is singularly sad
for our own pride. Never have we had such discipline in a group which
unites voices of such quality. Now we know what can be done. It is
impossible to imagine the degree of technical perfection, of collective
virtuosity, which human voices can attain, before one has heard the
colossal living organ which Lluis Millet has presented Barcelona."
Lluis Millet has issued a book with musical illustrations on "The
Religious Folk-Song of Spain." On January 15, 1918, the Schola Cantorum
of New York under the direction of Kurt Schindler gave a concert at
Carnegie Hall in which the major part of the program was devoted to
songs in the répertoire of the Orféo Catalá, sung in the original
tongues. Strictly speaking these can no longer be called folk-songs
as they have all been re-arranged. In some instances, aside from an
occasional use of a folk-melody, they may be considered original
compositions. Several of the songs were arranged, in some instances
one might almost say composed, by Kurt Schindler and presented for the
first time in their new form. One of these, _A Miracle of the Virgin
Mary_, a fourteenth century canticle of Spanish Galicia, in which Mabel
Garrison's lovely voice was assigned an important rôle, proved to be
very beautiful. The whole program, indeed, aroused the deepest interest.
P. 62. "After the bull-fight": E. E. Hale ("Seven Spanish Cities")
achieved the almost impossible feat of writing a book about Spain
without having seen a bull-fight. One might as well attempt to write
a history of opera, after refusing to listen to Wagner's _Ring_. H.
T. Finck ("Spain and Morocco") was satisfied and disgusted with half
a bull-fight. His attitude is quoted and reflected in Baedeker....
More sympathetic and detailed accounts of this very popular Spanish
diversion may be found in Richard Ford's "Gatherings from Spain,"
Gautier's "Voyage en Espagne," Havelock Ellis's "The Soul of Spain,"
and de Amicis's "Spain and the Spaniards." Edward Penfield has
illustrated a bull-fight in his "Spanish Sketches." The chapter on the
bull-fight in John Hay's "Castilian Days" is very readable. The best
descriptions in fiction of the tauromachian sport that I know of are in
Frank Harris's very vivid story "Montes the Matador" (Gautier, by the
way, devotes many nervous pages to Montes) and in Edgar Saltus's early
novel, "Mr. Incoul's Misadventure."
P. 64. "often introduce dialogue of their own": This is no longer true,
Mr. John Garrett Underhill informs me, as the Sociedad de Autores has
forbidden such interpolations.
P. 64. "The Zarzuela": I am indebted to Mr. John Garrett Underhill for
the following remarks anent the zarzuela: "The zarzuela was originally
a three act romantic operetta, partly sung and partly spoken, and it
continued in this form until the introduction of the one act form in
the early eighties. The performances given at the Teatro de Zarzuela
were mostly in the more elaborate form, while the _género chico_
(lesser genre) made its home at the Apolo. With the change to one
act, the zarzuelas became more realistic--minute pictures of local
customs, etc., built up around characteristic songs and dances, so that
now the name has come to be pretty well synonymous with this species
of entertainment, while the longer older form is generally spoken of
as operetta. In other words a zarzuela is rather a musico-dramatic
entertainment that is strongly Spanish than merely a mixed form. _The
Land of Joy_ illustrates precisely this quality, although, having no
dramatic element, it is not a zarzuela.
"The most popular zarzuelas are all strongly coloured. They are _La
Alegría de la Huerta_, music by Federico Chueca, built up about a
scene of provincial merry-making, _La Verbena de la Paloma_ by Bretón,
dealing with a popular religious festival in Madrid, Manuel Nieto's
_Certamen Nacional_, Fernández Caballero's _El Cabo Primero_ and
_Gigantes y Cabezudos_, and Chapí's _El Puñao de Rosas_. All these are
in one act and the spoken parts are broad low comedy. To these must be
added Emilio Arrieta's _Marina_, in three acts, the best example of
the old form, showing strong Italian influence. _Marina_ is the sort
of operatic classic with Spaniards that _Pinafore_--another nautical
work--is with us.
"What is most distinctive in the zarzuela is its low comedy and
Spanish _sal_, together with that peculiar indiscipline so well
exemplified by _The Land of Joy_. In other words, the zarzuela is a
state of mind, just as Spanish music is an expression of Spanish life,
and unintelligible without some understanding of its symbols.
"It would be safe to say that every zarzuela has either a realistic low
comedy element or otherwise exhibits some direct form of theatricalism,
differentiating it in this respect from works of a purely artistic
category. Yet it is difficult to draw the line. The zarzuela is
not without a tang similar to that of our burlesque stage. The
analogue would be American burlesque written by playwrights of high
intelligence. Had Harrigan's _Mulligan Guards Ball_ been compressed
into one act, it would have been a typical zarzuela."
P. 65. "_La Gran Vía_": See note to page 14.
P. 65. "Usually four separate zarzuelas are performed in one evening
before as many audiences": At the Apolo. "The evening is divided into
separate sections--four or five are the usual number," writes Mr.
Underhill. "These are called _funciones_, each consisting of a single
play. If the first _función_ begins at eight, the second will follow
at nine or nine-fifteen, the third at ten, the fourth shortly after
eleven, and the last, which is commonly a farce, appealing perhaps to
the less puritanical elements in the community, at twelve or a quarter
after twelve. A similar system prevails in the afternoons. There is
considerable variation in the hours of the _funciones_ in different
cities, according to the character and habits of the population. In
some theatres performances are practically continuous.... A separate
admission is charged to each _función_.... Spacious and comfortable
waiting rooms are provided in which the audience gathers for the
succeeding _función_ previously to the conclusion of that actually in
progress, so that the delay incident to the necessary change is reduced
to a minimum, never exceeding a quarter of an hour. Meanwhile ushers
circulate through the aisles and boxes taking up the tickets of those
who remain, although in these popular theatres the reconstitution of
the audience is practically complete."
P. 69. "_villancicos_": On the program of the second historical concert
given by M. Fétis in Paris, November 18, 1832, devoted to music of the
sixteenth century, I find: "_Vilhancicos espagnols, à 6 voix de femmes,
avec 8 guitars obligées, composés par Soto de Puebla et exécutés dans
un concert à la cour de Philippe II (1561)._"
P. 70. George Henry Lewes gives some account of the drama in Spain,
touching on the zarzuela, in Chapter XIV of "On Actors and the Art of
Acting."
P. 70. "the Italian opera": In Gautier's day Bellini was the favourite
composer (see P. 215, "Voyage en Espagne").
John Hay writes in "Castilian Days" (1871): "It (Madrid) has a superb
opera house, which might as well be in Naples, for all the national
character it has; the Court Theatre, where not a word of Castilian is
ever heard, nor a strain of Spanish music.... The champagny strains of
Offenbach are heard in every town of Spain oftener than the ballads
of the country. In Madrid there are more _pilluelos_ who whistle _Bu
qui s'avance_ than the Hymn of Riego. The Cancan has taken its place
on the boards of every stage in the city, apparently to stay; and the
exquisite jota and cachucha are giving way to the bestialities of the
Casino Cadet."
It is well to remember in this connection that the Metropolitan Opera
House in New York and Covent Garden Theatre in London "might as
well be in Naples" too, "for all the national character" they have.
Our symphony orchestras, too, perform works by native composers as
infrequently as those in Madrid.
P. 75. To fill in the period between 1850-70 four names, inadvertently
omitted from the original text of "Spain and Music," are necessary,
those of Joaquín Gaztambide, Emilio Arrieta, Baltasar Saldoni, and
Francisco A. Barbieri. Joaquín Gaztambide, born February 7, 1822, was
a pupil of the Madrid Conservatory, and conductor of the "Pensions"
concerts at the Conservatory. He was the composer of at least forty
zarzuelas of which some of the titles follow: _La Cisterna Encantada_,
_La Edad en la Boca_, _Matilda y Malek Adel_, _El Secreto de la Reina_,
_Las Señas del Archiduque_, and _El Valle de Andorra_. He died March
18, 1870.
Emilio Arrieta, born October 21, 1823, was a pupil of the Milan
Conservatory from 1842 until 1845. Many of the best Spanish musicians
have received their training outside of Spain. His first opera,
_Ildegonda_, was produced at Milan. He returned to Spain in 1848. In
1857 he became a teacher of composition in the Madrid Conservatory and
later became director of that institution. He died February 11, 1894.
The extensive list of his zarzuelas and operas (there are about fifty
altogether) includes the following titles: _La Conquista de Granada_,
_La Dama del Rey_, _De Madrid à Biarritz_, _Los Enemigos Domesticos_,
_La Tabernera de Londres_, _Un Viaje á Cochinchina_, and _La Vuelta
del Corsario_.
Francisco Asenjo Barbieri, born at Madrid, August 3, 1823, studied
in the Conservatory there and after a varied career as member of a
military band, a theatre orchestra, and an Italian opera troupe,
became secretary and chief promoter of an association for instituting
a Spanish national opera and encouraging the production of zarzuelas,
in opposition to the Italian opera. _Gloria y Peluca_ (1850), _Jugar
con Fuero_ (1851) were the first of these zarzuelas, of which he wrote
seventy-five in all. He was also a teacher and a critic. He died in
Madrid, February 19, 1894.
Baltasar Saldoni (1807-1890), born at Barcelona and educated at the
monastery of Montserrat, was organist and teacher as well as composer.
His works include a symphony for orchestra, military band and organ,
_A mi patria_, a _Hymn to the God of Art_, operas and zarzuelas, and a
great quantity of church and organ music.
P. 76. "Felipe Pedrell": _El Último Abencerraje_ was sung in Italian
when it was produced in Barcelona in 1874. _Quasimodo_ is an operatic
version of Victor Hugo's "Notre-Dame de Paris." _Mazeppa_ (after
Byron) is in one act as is _Tasso_; _Cleopatra_ is in four acts. _Los
Pireneos_ is the first part of a triptych of which _La Celestina_ is
the second. The three parts are named respectively, Fatherland, Love,
and Faith. So far as I know the third part has not yet appeared. _La
Matinada_ is called "a musical landscape," for solo, chorus, and an
invisible orchestra.
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_.
Here also I might mention Gerónimo Giménez, who was born in Seville.
As a boy he went to Cadiz, studying with his father and singing in
the cathedral. At sixteen he conducted a performance of an opera by
Petrella at Gibraltar, and in consequence became the conductor of a
number of Italian opera companies touring Spain and Portugal. The
Province of Cadiz granting him a pension for foreign study, he entered
the Paris Conservatory under Ambroise Thomas. He also lived for a
time in Milan. Returning to Spain he was engaged by Chapí, who then
controlled the Teatro Apolo at Madrid, to direct the orchestra at the
production of his new _El Milagro de la Virgen_. Later at the Zarzuela
Theatre he conducted the first performance of Chapí's _La Bruja_.
Still later he succeeded Luigi Mancinelli as conductor of the Sociedad
de Conciertos in Madrid; he held this post for twelve years. He is
a member of the Academia de Bellas Artes and composer of _María del
Pilar_ and numerous other zarzuelas, including _Las Panderetas_, _El
Baile de Luis Alonso_, _La Tempranica_, _El Húsar de la Guardia_, and
_Cinematógrafo Nacional_.
[Illustration: AMADEO VIVES]
Other light composers who may be listed are Rafael Calleja, Enrique
Brú, Alberto Foglietti, Pablo Luna, Vicente Lleó, and Arturo Saco del
Valle.
Of a more serious character is the music of Amadeo Vives, born at
Collbato. At the age of 10 he went to Barcelona to study with his
brother, a musician in a regimental band. He became an acolyte in a
church and his first compositions were written under the influence
of the organ music which he then heard. From Barcelona he strayed to
Málaga where he became a conductor, and from there he went to Madrid
where he played in churches and cafés indifferently, it would seem. At
times he was even reduced to peddling on the streets and to writing
musical criticism for a Barcelona paper. _Artús_ (after a Breton
legend), produced in Barcelona in 1897, established his fame. He
founded the celebrated Orfeó Catalá in Barcelona, afterwards directed
by Millet, and his male choruses written for this organization are said
to be among his best works. The list of his operas includes _Don Lucas
del Cigarral_, his first attempt at the traditional classic Spanish
zarzuela, produced in Madrid in 1899, _Enda d'Uriach_, for which Angel
Guimerá wrote the book (Barcelona; 1900); _Colomba_ (Madrid; 1910);
_Maruxa_, "égloga lírica en 2 actos" (1914); and _Tabaré_ (1914), and
about thirty zarzuelas including _El Tesoro_, _El Señor Pandolfo_, and
_Bohemios_.
Joaquín Larregla was a native of the mountain town of Lumbier in
Spanish Navarre. After some schooling at Pamplona he entered the
Madrid Conservatory under Zabalza and Arrieta. He has made somewhat of
a name both as pianist and composer. He is especially, according to
Manuel Manrique de Lara, the composer of Navarre, his works "evoking
the landscapes, songs, and traditions of his province." He is a member
of the Bellas Artes and an instructor in the Conservatory. His works
include _Navarra Montañesca_, _Miguel Andrés_, and _I Viva Navarra!_
The war, it may be suggested, has had a most salutary effect on Spanish
music, while it has killed the tonal art in most other countries. It
has driven the Spaniards, however, back into their own country and
thus may be directly responsible for the foundation of a definite
modern school of Spanish music. One of those to leave Paris in 1914
was Manuel de Falla, of whom G. Jean-Aubry says, "Today he is the most
striking figure of the Spanish school, tomorrow he will be a composer
of European fame, just as is Ravel or Stravinsky."
Manuel de Falla was born at Cadiz, November 23, 1877. He studied
harmony with Alejandro Odero and Enrique Broca; later he went to Madrid
where he studied piano with José Trigo and composition with Felipe
Pedrell. He was still under fourteen when the Madrid Academy of Music
awarded him the first prize for his piano playing. Between 1890 and
1904 he divided his time between composing and piano playing, both as
soloist and in concerted chamber music. The compositions of this period
were not published, however, and now de Falla cannot be urged to speak
of them. In 1907 he went to Paris, where, from the very first, he
received a warm welcome from Paul Dukas. Debussy was also friendly. His
only published works at this time were _Quatres Pièces Espagnoles_:
_Aragonesa_, _Cubana_, _Montañesa_, and _Andaluza_, for piano, and
_Trois Mélodies_: _Les Colombes_, _Chinoiserie_, and _Seguidille_,
words by Théophile Gautier. In 1910 he made his début as a pianist in
Paris and the following year in London....
On April 1, 1913, the Casino at Nice produced his first opera, _La
Vida Breve_ (which so early as 1905 had won a prize at the Madrid
Academy of Fine Arts) with Lilian Grenville as Salud; on December
30, 1913, the work was performed at the Opéra-Comique in Paris with
Marguerite Carré as Salud. The first performance of this lyric drama
in Spain occurred at the Teatro de la Zarzuela in Madrid, November 14,
1914. _La Vida Breve_ has been compared to _Cavalleria Rusticana_, "a
_Cavalleria_ written by a consummate musician penetrated with a keen
desire to express his thoughts without making easy concessions to the
mob."... The orchestration has been warmly praised. "In the first act
he has linked the two scenes with an admirable evocation of Granada at
dusk; faint sounds of voices rise from the distant town and all the
atmosphere is laden with nonchalance, fragrance, and love."
With the beginning of the war de Falla left France for his native land.
He launched _La Vida Breve_ in Spain with some success and on April
15, 1915, his second opera, _El Amor Brujo_, was produced at the
Lara Theatre in Madrid. Aubry tells us that this work was a failure.
However, the composer suppressed the spoken and sung parts, enlarged
the orchestration, and made of it a symphonic suite, "semi-Arabian" in
style. Pastora Imperio, too, has used this music for her dances.
Aubry pronounces de Falla's _Nocturnes_, produced in Madrid in 1916,
the most important orchestral work yet written by a Spaniard. The
Spanish title reads: _Noches en los Jardines de España_. There are
three parts described by these subtitles: _En el Generalife_, _Danse
Lejana_, and _En los Jardines de la Sierra de Córdoba_. The piano plays
an important part in the orchestration but is never heard alone. "The
thematic material is built, as in _La Vida Breve_ or in _El Amor Brujo_
on rhythms, modes, cadences, or forms inspired by but never borrowed
from Andalusian folk-song."
When the Russian Ballet visited Spain Serge de Diaghilew was so much
interested in the work of de Falla that he commissioned him to write a
ballet on the subject of Alarcón's novel, "El Sombrero de tres Picos."
Joaquín Turina is another important figure in the modern school.
Debussy compared his orchestral work, _La Procesión del Rocio_, to
a luminous fresco. In an article in "The Musical Standard," January
6, 1917, Guilhermina Suggia writes: "This work, composed in 1912 and
dedicated to Enrique Fernández Arbós, depicts one of those striking
processions in honour of the Blessed Virgin Mary of which Richard Ford
writes in such picturesque fashion in the old edition of Murray's
'Handbook of Spain' (1845)." Every year in the month of June, _la
procesión del rocio_ takes place, and all the grandees in the town of
Seville come out in their carriages to take part in the festivity.
Turina has also composed an opera, _Fea y con Gracia_ (1905), a string
quartet, and numerous works for piano, among which may be mentioned
_Trois Danses Andalouses_ (_Petenera_, _Tango_, and _Zapateado_),
_Sevilla_, a suite, and _Recuerdos de mi rincón_ (_Tragedia cómica para
piano_).
José María Usandizaga, one of the most promising of the younger
composers, died in 1915. He was born in 1888 at San Sebastian and
died therefore at the age of 27, one year after his opera, _Las
Golindrinas_, was successfully produced at Madrid (February 4, 1914)
with the tenor Sagi-Barba in the leading rôle. Usandizaga was a man of
exceedingly frail physique, weak and lame, and he died of tuberculosis.
He was a pupil, I believe, of Vincent d'Indy. His posthumous opera, _La
Llama_, was produced at San Sebastian and Madrid during the winter of
1917-18. Gregorio Martínez Sierra, one of the foremost writers of the
younger generation, furnished the books for both his operas.
Enrique (more properly Enrich or Enric; Enrique is the Castilian form
of this Catalan name) Morera is, perhaps, the leading Catalan composer.
He is best-known for his choral arrangements of folk-songs, some of
which have been heard in New York through the medium of the Schola
Cantorum, but he has written music for Guimerá's plays, and a lyric
drama entitled _L'Alegría que passa_, the book for which was furnished
by Santiago Rusiñol.
Conrado del Campo has written a _Divina Comedia_ for orchestra and
Bartolomé Pérez Casas a _Suite Murcienne_ which G. Jean-Aubry includes
in a list of modern Spanish orchestral music. Pérez Casas is at present
the conductor of the Philharmonic Orchestra of Madrid. He and Turina
conducted the orchestra for the Russian Ballet during the May, 1918,
visit of that organization to Madrid.
I have the very pretty _Impressions Musicales_ for piano of Oscar
Esplá. The subtitle is _Cuentos Infantiles; composición escrita
en 1905 para una fiesta de niños_. There are five parts which are
entitled, respectively, _En el Hogar_, _Barba Azul_, _Caperucita Roja_,
_Cenicienta_, and _Antaño_. This music is not very Spanish; indeed it
reminds me strongly of the music of Rebikof.
R. Villar has written many pieces for piano, including _Páginas
Románticos_, _Nereida_, _Foot-Ball_, several songs, and pieces for
violin and piano and 'cello and piano. V. Costa y Nogueras is the
composer of _Flor de Almendro_ (1901), _Inés de Castro_ (1905) and
_Valieri_ (1906). J. Gómez is the composer of a _Suite in A_ for
orchestra which has been arranged for the piano. It includes _Prelude_,
_Intermezzo_, _Popular Song_, and _Finale-Dance_.
P. 85. "perhaps the first of the important Spanish composers to visit
North America": Albéniz came to the United States as a pianist in the
seventies when he was about fifteen years old.
Index
Index
_Abencérages, Les_, 154
_Africanistas, Los_, 77
"Afro-American Folk-Songs," 37
Aguglia, Mimi, 93
Aidá, 155
Alarcón, Pedro de, 29, 153, 190
Albéniz, Isaac, 15, 18, 41, 50, 71, 77, 78, 81, 82,
83, 148, 182, 183, 193
d'Albert, Eugen, 154
_Alegría de la Huerta, La_, 174
_Alegría que Passa, l'_, 192
_Alhambra, En la_, 80
Alhambra, The, 42
"Alhambra, The," 24
d'Alvarez, Margarita, 138, 147
_Amante Astuto, l'_, 14
_Amantes de Teruel, Los_, 80
_America para los Americanos_, 145
Amicis, Edmondo de, 123, 124, 125, 163, 173
_Amor Brujo, El_, 156, 189
_Amores de un Príncipe, Los_, 80
_Amour en Espagne, l'_, 84
_Ángeles, Los_, 79
d'Annunzio, Gabriele, 94
_Apocalipsis, El_, 80
Apolo Theatre in Madrid, 65, 175, 176
_Aqui Hase Farta un Hombre_, 79
Arbell, Lucy, 28
_Arbore de Diana, l'_, 73
Arbós, Enrique Fernández, 18, 71, 83, 84, 191
Arditi, Luigi, 98
Argentina, La, 16, 36, 55, 84, 94, 97, 155
Aristotle, 101
Arnoldson, Sigrid, 130
Arriaga, Juan Chrysostomo, 73, 74
Arrieta, Emilio, 145, 174, 178, 181, 182, 183, 187
_Artús_, 187
Aubry, J. Jean, 148, 182, 183, 188, 189, 192
_Azara_, 30
Bach, 18, 34, 71
Baedeker, 172
_Baile de Luis Alonso, El_, 186
Baillot, 73
Balakirew, 23, 183
Balfe, Michael William, 29
Bandarria, 46
Bara, Theda, 17
_Barberillo en Orán, El_, 80
_Barbiere di Siviglia, Il_, 29, 98, 115, 147
Barbieri, Francisco A., 178, 179
Barrientos, María, 16, 86
Bauer, Harold, 150
Beethoven, 15, 18, 29, 32, 71, 77
Beidler, Franz, 83
Bellaigue, Camille, 147, 180
Bellini, 177
Belocca, Anna de, 138
Benavente, Jacinto, 155, 185
Benavente (comp.), 67
Bermudo, Father, 31
"Bible in Spain, The," 103 _et seq._
Bilbao, 97
Bizet, Georges, 16, 17, 25, 26, 27, 85, 103 _et seq._, 170
_Blasones y Talegas_, 79
_Boabdil_, 15
_Bocetos_, 88
_Bohemios_, 187
Bolero, 45, 46, 57
Bonheur, Stella, 138
Bori, Lucrezia, 15, 17
_Boris Godunow_, 20, 77, 180
Borrow, George, 103 _et seq._
Bos, Coenraad V., 23
Botticelli, 128
Brassin, Louis, 82
Brema, Marie, 128
Bressler-Gianoli, Clotilde, 136
Bretón, Tomás, 13, 18, 50, 79, 80, 81, 145, 156, 174, 181
Bréval, Lucienne, 130
British Bible Society, 105 _et seq._
Broca, Enrique, 188
Brohly, Mlle., 130
Brú, Enrique, 186
Bruckner, 77
_Bruja, La_, 78, 181, 186
Bruneau, Alfred, 156
Bull-fight, 62, 66, 119, 155, 172, 173
Busoni, 23, 77
Caballero, Fernández, 65, 77, 174
Cabezón, 34
_Cabo Primero, El_, 77, 174
Cachucha, 45, 159
_Calderas de Pedro Bolero, Las_, 79
Calderon, 65, 67
Calleja, Rafael, 186
Calvé, Emma, 24, 127, 134, 135, 136, 138
Camargo, Marie-Anne, 45
_Campanadas, Las_, 78
Campanera, La, 169
_Campanero de Begoña, El_, 80
Campanini, Italo, 131, 132
Campo, Conrado del, 85, 148, 192
_Canción del Olvido, La_, 185
_Canción del Soldado, La_, 185
"Cantos. Populares Españoles," 62
_Capriccio Espagnole_, 22
_Capricciosa Corretta, La_, 73
_Carmen_, 16, 17, 25, 26, 27, 85, 103 _et seq._, 147, 152, 153, 170
"Carmen," 108 _et seq._
Carmencita, 15, 94, 146, 170
Caro-Delvaille, Henry, 147, 170
Carré, Marguerite, 189
Caruso, Enrico, 138
Casals, Pablo, 16, 149
Casas, Pérez, 148, 192
"Case of Wagner, The," 121, 122
Caseda, 34
Castanets, 36, 46, 47, 50, 56, 97, 100, 101, 164
"Castilian Days," 173, 177
Castillo, 34
_Catalonia_, 82, 148, 183
Cavalieri, Lina, 137
_Cavalleria Rusticana_, 189
_Celestina, La_, 76, 147, 180
_Centro de la Tierra, El_, 84
_Certamen de Cremona, El_, 80
_Certamen National_, 174
Cervantes, 27, 28
Chabrier, Emmanuel, 21, 22, 36, 38, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50,
60, 66, 70, 95, 157
Chambers, Robert W., 99
Chapí, Ruperto, 50, 78, 145, 174, 181, 185, 186
Chaplin, Charles, 17
Charbonnel, Mlle., 130
Chatfield-Taylor, H. C., 35
_Chérubin_, 27
Cherubini, 73, 154
_Chieftain, The_, 154
Chopin, 182, 183
Chorley, H. F., 153
Chueca, Federico, 84, 174
_Cid, Le_, 27, 28
_Cinematógrafo. Nacional_, 186
_Circe_, 79
Cisneros, Eleanora de, 80, 138
_Cisterna Encantada, La_, 178
_Clavel, Rojo, El_, 80
Clément et Larousse, 28
_Cleopatra_, 76, 179
Cohan, George M., 98
"Colección de Cantos Flamencos," 62
_Colomba_, 187
_Combat, The_, 83
_Conchita_, 24, 25
_Conquista de Granada, La_, 178
_Conquistador, Le_, 150
Copeland, George, 15, 81, 84
Corelli, 44
_Corona contra Corona_, 80
_Corregidor, Der_, 29
_Cosa Rara, La_, 73
Costa y Nogueras, V., 193
_Covadonga_, 80
_Cura del Regimiento, El_, 78
Curzon, Henri de, 180
Czarina, La, 78
Dalcroze, Jaques, 59, 77
_Dama del Rey, La_, 178
_Dama Roja, La_, 79
Dancing, 35, _et seq._, 65, 66, 94 _et seq._, 146, 147, 154 _et
seq._, 158 _et seq._, 168 _et seq._, 170, 189
_Dante_, 83
Darcourt, Charles, 127
Dargomijsky, 29
Davillier, Baron Charles, 125, 168, 169
Debussy, Claude, 13, 22, 23, 25, 149, 183, 188, 191
"Declaración de Instrumentos," 31
Delibes, Léo, 24
Delna, Marie, 130
Del Puente, Giuseppe, 131, 132
Demófilo, 62
_De Madrid á Biarritz_, 178
Dérivis, Maria, 126
Deschamps-Jehin, Mme., 127
Desrat, 56
Destinn, Emmy, 138
_Deux Contrats_, 74
Deyo, Ruth, 149
Diaghilew, Serge de, 190
Diaz, Rafaelo, 147
"Diccionario Técnico, Histórico y Biográfico de la Música," 32
"Dictionary-Catalogue of Operas," 28, 77
_Dineros del Sacristán, Los_, 77
_Divina Comedia_, 148, 192
_Doctor of Alcántara, The_, 154
Dolaro, Selina, 138
_Dolores, La_, 13, 18, 79, 145
Doloretes, 96, 97, 161
_Domingo de Ramos, El_, 80
_Doña Juana la Loca_, 181
_Don Carlos_, 154
Don César de Bazán, 27
_Don Gil_, 80
_Don Giovanni_, 29, 73, 154
Donizetti, 154
_Don Juan_, 24
_Donna Diana_, 30
_Don Lucas del Cigarrel_, 187
_Don Quichotte_, 27, 28
_Don Quixote_, 24, 28, 77, 149, 153
Doré, Gustave, 168, 169
Dukas, Paul, 188
Dumont, Joseph, 82
Durón, Sebastian, 67
Echegaray, José, 65, 181
Echegaray, Miguel, 65, 77, 80
_Edad en la Boca, La_, 178
Edwards, H. Sutherland, 119, 132
Edwards, Rhoda G., 54
Ehnn, Fräulein, 126
Eichberg, Julius, 154
_Elektra_, 137
Elgar, Sir Edward, 77
Ellis, Havelock, 19, 35, 39, 42, 45, 47, 57, 66, 89, 95,
101, 113, 173
Elssler, Fanny, 15, 45, 158, 159
Encina, Juan del, 68, 69
_Enda d'Uriach_, 187
_Enemigos Domesticos, Los_, 178
_Enrico Clifford_, 82
_Entre Rocas_, 79
_Epitalame_, 83
Erlanger, Camille, 154
_Ermitage Fleurie, l'_, 82
_Ernani_, 29
_Escenas Andaluzas_, 80
_Escenas de Capa y Espada_, 79
_Esclavos Felices, Los_, 74
Eslava, 32, 75, 77, 80, 81
Esplá, Oscar, 85, 193
_España_, 21
"Españoles Pintados por si Mismos," 55
_Estudiantina_, 24
Fábrica de Tabacos, 122 _et seq._
Falla, Manuel de, 84, 148, 156, 183, 188 _et seq._
_Falstaff_, 180
Fandango, 22, 46, 55, 56, 57, 165, 166, 168
Farrar, Geraldine, 16, 17, 137, 138
Farrega, 40
Fassett, Jacob S., Jr., 153
Fauré, Gabriel, 152
Faviani, 45
_Favorita, La_, 154
_Fea y con Gracia_, 191
"Femme et le Pantin, La," 25
Feria, The, 42
Fernández, Lucas, 69
Ferrabini, Ester, 138
Fétis, 73, 74, 176
_Fidelio_, 15, 29
Fierens-Gevaert, 128, 129
_Figlia dell'Aria, La_, 14
_Filles de Cadix, Les_, 24
Filmore, John C., 38
Finck, H. T., 157, 158, 163, 172
_Flor de Almendro_, 193
_Florestan_, 74
Foglietti, Alberto, 186
_Foletto_, 88
Folias, 44
Folk-music, 17, 21, 34, 37, 38, 39, 59 _et seq._, 64,
71, 72, 76, 87, 100, 150, 157, 170, 171, 172, 190
Ford, Anne, 168
Ford, Richard, 36, 40, 41, 51, 52, 70, 95, 100, 101,
106, 112, 173, 191
Fremstad, Olive, 24, 136, 138
Friché, Claire, 130
Friedenthal, Albert, 39
Fuertes, Mariano Soriano, 32, 43, 46, 62, 67, 68, 77
Gainsborough, Thomas, 166
Galabert, Edmond, 117
_Galeotes, Los_, 80
Gallarda, 43
Galli-Marié, Célestine, 27, 118, 125, 126, 137
García, Manuel, 14, 28, 74, 77, 153
García, Manuel, fils, 153
Garden, Mary, 28, 103, 131, 136, 139 _et seq._
Garibaldi Theatre, 94
_Garín_, 80
Garrison, Mabel, 172
"Gathering from Spain,"
36, 40, 41, 51, 52, 70, 95, 100, 101, 106, 112, 173
Gatti-Casazza, Giulio, 14, 18
Gautier, Théophile, 103, 122, 123, 158 _et seq._, 173, 177, 189
Gay, María, 17, 137
Gaztambide, Joaquín, 178
_Gendarmes, Los_, 78
Gentle, Alice, 138
Gerville-Réache, Mme., 137
Giacosa, 94
Gibert, 83
Giebel, F., 23
_Gigantes y Cabezudos_, 65, 77, 174
Giménez, Gerónimo, 185, 186
Gipsies, 22, 35, 45, 46, 51, 52, 57, 61, 64, 96, 97, 105 _et seq._,
151, 153, 154, 155, 156, 161 _et seq._, 169, 170
_Giroflé-Girofla_, 154
Glinka, 23
_Gloria y Peluca_, 179
Gogorza, Emillo de, 15
Godard, 120
_Golondrinas, Las_, 84, 148,191
Gomez, Antonio Carlos, 14
Gómez, J., 193
_Gonzalo de Córdoba_, 181
Gounod, Charles, 26
Goya, 16, 18, 86, 97
Goya, La, 156
_Goyescas_, 14, 16, 64, 85, 86,87, 145
Granados, Enrique, 14, 15, 16, 32, 50, 64, 83, 85 _et seq._, 145
_Gran Vía, La_, 14, 65, 66, 84, 146, 175
Greco, El, 18
Grenville, Lilian, 189
Grieg, Edvard, 182
Griselidis, 120
Grove's Dictionary, 46, 64, 73, 168
Grove, Sir George, 20
_Guarany, Il_, 14
Guerrero, Francisco, 33
Guimerá, Angel, 187, 192
Guiraud, 120
Guitar, 28, 29, 31, 35, 36, 39, 40, 46, 49, 50, 56, 59, 70, 145, 157
_Guitares et Mandolines_, 23
_Guzmán el Bueno_, 80
Habanera, 21, 24, 25, 26, 27, 39, 43, 49, 99, 114, 120, 133, 149
_Habanera, La_, 25, 26, 149
Hale, Edward Everett, 172
Hale, Philip, 26, 45, 46, 56, 129, 130, 168
Hamilton, H. V., 64, 66, 67, 70
Hammerstein, Oscar, 13, 14, 15, 136, 145, 147
Harris, Frank, 173
Hauk, Minnie, 131, 132, 133, 134
Hay, John, 173, 177
Heifetz, Jascha, 97
Heine, 96
Henderson, W. J., 132, 137, 138
Hesperia, 79
Heugel, 27
_Heure Espagnole, l'_, 29
Hidalgo, 67
Hidalgo, Elvira de, 147
_Hija de Jefté, La_, 78
_Hijas de Zebedeo, Las_, 78
"Hispaniae Schola Musica," 32, 76
Hispanic Society, 86
"Histoire de la Musique de l'Espagne," 31
"Historia de la Música Española," 32, 46
"Historia de Sevilla," 155
Howard, Kathleen, 137
Hugo, Victor, 179
Humperdinck, Engelbert, 22, 23
Huneker, James, 82, 169
_Húsar de la Guardia, El_, 186
_Iberia_ (Albéniz), 81, 83, 182, 183
_Iberia_ (Debussy), 22, 25
_Ildegonda_, 178
Imperio, Pastora, 154, 155, 156, 189
d'Indy, Vincent, 117, 192
_Inés de Castro_, 193
_Irene de Otranto_, 181
Iriarte, Tomás de, 168
Irving, Washington, 24
Isaac, Adèle, 127
Isle, Marié de l', 130
_I Viva Navarra_, 187
Jacara, 44, 69
Jadassohn, 82
_Jardín de Falerina, El_, 67
Joachim, 83
Jot, Alben, 46
Jota, 21, 23, 25, 26, 28, 46, 47, 59, 61, 65, 156, 170
_Jota, La_, 25, 26, 149
_Juan Francisco_, 79
Juanes, Juan de, 33
Juares, 34
_Jugar con Fuero_, 179
_Juicio de Friné, El_, 181
Kellogg, Clara Louise, 120, 131, 132
Kirkby-Lunn, Mme., 138
Knopf, Alfred A., 153
Koutznezoff, Mme., 17
Krehbiel, H. E., 37, 38, 43, 133
Kreisler, Fritz, 44
Kufferath, F., 82
Lacome, P., 46, 62
Lafargue, Mme., 130
Lafontaine, Rev., Henry Cart de, 52, 64, 70
Lalo, Edouard, 23
Lana, 67
"Land of the Castanet, The," 35
_Land of Joy, The_, 89 _et seq._, 145, 149, 174, 175, 184
Laparra, Raoul, 25, 26, 51, 145, 149 _et seq._, 181
Lara, Manrique de, 181, 187
Larregla, Joaquín, 187
Lavignac, Albert, 19
Lazaro, Hipolito, 147
Leblanc, Georgette, 128, 129, 130
Lecocq, 63, 154
Lehmann, Lilli, 133, 134
Lewes, George Henry, 176, 177
_Leyenda del Monje, La_, 78
_Liliana_, 88
"Lira Sacro-Hispana," 32, 75
Liszt, 23, 182, 183.
_Llama, La_, 185, 192
Lleó, Vicente, 186
Llobet, Miguel, 16, 40, 41
Lobo, 34
Locle, Camille du, 117
Loeffler, Charles Martin, 149
Lombard, Louis, 19
London Musical Association, 20, 52
Lopez-Chavarri, Edouard, 18, 75
Louÿs, Pierre, 25
Lucca, Pauline, 133
Lumley, Benjamin, 96
Luna, Pablo, 186
Lussan, Zélie de, 130, 135, 137
Luxembourg Gallery, 15
Mackinlay, M. Sterling, 153
_Madrileños, Los_, 79
Maeterlinck, Maurice, 13, 128
_Magic Opal, The_, 82
Mahler, Gustav, 77
_Maison de Danses, La_, 84
Maitland, J. A. Fuller, 76
_Maja y el Ruiseñor, La_, 87
_Maja de Rumbo, La_, 181
Malagueña, 15, 21, 48, 55, 160
_Mal de Amores, El_, 184
Malibran, Mme., 14, 174
Mancinelli, Luigi, 186
_Mandoline_, 23
Manet, Edouard, 98
Mantegna, 128
_Manuel Venegas_, 29
Mapleson, Col. J. H., 131, 132
Marchant, William, 19
Marco, María, 97
Mardones, José, 147
_Margarita la Tornera_, 79
_María del Carmen_, 87
_María del Pilar_, 186
Marín, F. Rodríguez, 62
_Marina_, 145, 174
Marinetti, F. T., 92
Marion, George, 91
_Maritana_, 154
Marmontel, 82
Martin y Solar, 72, 73
_Maruxa_, 187
Mascagni, 189
Massenet, 27, 28, 152
_Matilda y Malek Adel_, 178
Matinada, La, 76, 180
_Maurische Rhapsodie_, 23
Mazantinita, 97
Mazarin, Mariette, 137
_Mazeppa_, 76, 179
Meilhac and Halévy, 114 _et seq._
Mejorana, La, 155
Melba, Nellie, 127
Meller, Raquel, 156
Mendès, Catulle, 156
"Ménestrel, Le," 27, 118
_Méphistophéla_, 96
Mérentié, Mlle., 130
Mérimée, Prosper, 106 _et seq._
_Merlin l'Enchanteur_, 83
Mestres, Apeles, 88
Metzger, Ottilie, 138
_Miguel Andrés_, 187
_Milagro de la Virgen, El_, 78, 186
Millet, Lluis, 181, 187
Mitchell, Julian, 91
_Mithradates_, 181
Molière, 52
Molina, Amalia, 155, 156
_Molinos de Viento, Los_, 182
"Montes the Matador," 173
Montez, Lola, 146
_Moorish Fantasy_, 79
Morales, Cristofero, 33
Morera, Enrique, 85, 170, 171, 192
_Mort du Tasse La_, 74
Moszkowski, 15, 23
Moullé, Edouard, 48
Moussorgsky, 19, 77, 180, 182
Mozart, 29, 73, 98
"Mr. Incoul's Misadventure," 173
Muck, Dr. Karl, 81
Murillo, 33
Musical Art Society, 34
"Music and Musicians," 19
_Musical Journey Through Spain, A_, 152
"Musik, Tanz, und Dichtung bei den Kreolen Amerikas," 39
"Musique Populaire en Espagne, La," 150
Nadal, Juan, 147
Nardi, Mme., 127
_Navarraise, La_, 27, 28
Navarro, 34
Navas, Juan de, 67
_Naves de Cortés, Las_, 78
Nazimova, Alla, 93
Negro Actors, 93
_Ni Amor se Libre de Amor_, 67
Nieto, Manuel, 174
Nietzsche, 121, 122
_Night in Madrid, A_, 23
Nijinsky, Waslav, 95
Nilsson, Christine, 133
Nin, J. Joachim, 183
"Niño de la Bola, El," 29
_Nit del Mort, La_, 88
Noblet, Mlle., 45, 159
_Noches en los Jardines de España_, 148, 190
Northup, George T., 109
"Notes Brèves," 180
_Nozze de Figaro, Le_, 29, 154
Nuovina, Mme. de, 128
"Observations of a Musician, The," 19
Ocón, Cecilio, 62
Odero, Alejandro, 188
Offenbach, 63
Olé, 45, 51
"Opera Española en el Siglo XIX, La," 68
d'Or, Tarquini, Mme., 127
Orfeó Catalá, 171, 172, 187
Orleneff, Paul, 93
Ornstein, Leo, 15, 81, 183
Otero, 146, 170
_Overture on a Theme of a Spanish March_, 23
Pack, Nina, 128
Paesiello, 153
Pahissa, 83
Paine, John Knowles, 30
Palestrina, 33, 77
Palomares, 67
Pareda y Barreto, José, 32
_Parsifal_, 13, 76, 133
Passama, Jenny, 130
Patti, Adelina, 98, 133
Pavana, 43, 156
Pavlowa, Anna, 15, 45
Pedrell, Felipe, 18, 32, 34, 62, 66, 67, 68, 71, 75, 76, 77,
87, 147, 171, 179, 180, 188
_Pedro el Cruel_, 75
_Pélleas et Mélisande_, 13
Peña y Goñi Antonio, 68
Penfield, Edward, 173
_Pepita Jiménez_, 82, 83
Periquet, F., 86
Petenara, 49, 150, 170, 191
Petrella, 185
Peyró, José, 67
Picabia, Francis, 147
Picasso, Pablo, 147
Piccinni, 153
Pigot, Charles, 27, 117, 119, 120
_Pireneos, Los_, 18, 76, 179
_Pobre Valbuena, El_, 145
_Poème Espagnole_, 149
_Poeta Calculista, El_, 74
Poiret, Paul, 16
Polaire, 84
Polo, 45, 74
Ponte, da, 73
Pougin, Arthur, 74, 118, 126
Pozo, 170
_Preciosa_, 29
_Primera Salida de Don Quijote, La_, 182
_Procesión del Rocio, La_, 148, 191
Puchol, Luisita, 97, 98
Puig y Alsubide, J., 62
Pujol, Juan Bautista, 83, 87
_Puñao de Rosas, El_, 145, 174
Purcell, Henry, 153
Pushkin, 29
_Quasimodo_, 76, 179
Quintero Brothers, 155, 184, 185
Quittard, Henry, 171
Ragtime, 99
Ramirez, Anita, 156
_Rapsodie Espagnole_, 24
_Raquel_, 80
Ravel, Maurice, 24, 29, 183, 188
Rebikof, Vladimir, 193
_Reclamo, El_, 78
_Reina Mora, La_, 185
Reinhardt, Max, 92
Religious Composers, 30 _et seq._, 39, 170, 171, 172
"Revue de Deux Mondes," 96, 108
_Rey que Rabió, El_, 78
Reznicek, 30
_Rhythmes Espagnoles_, 150
Ribera, 34
Riemann, Hugo, 153
Rimsky-Korsakow, 22, 30
Risco, Juan, 67
"Rivista Musicale," 34
Robles, García, 83
Rockstro, 20, 33
Roda, Cecilio de, 28
Rodríguez, Isabel, 17
_Roger de Flor_, 78
Romalis, 51, 112, 117, 161
Romero, 34
_Rose of Castile, The_, 29
_Rose de Grenade, La_, 63, 84
Rossini, 29, 98, 115, 169
Roze, Marie, 119, 132
Rubinstein, Anton, 23, 149
Rueda, 151
_Rueda de la Fortuna, La_, 77
Rusiñol, Santiago, 192
Russian Ballet, 91, 92, 98, 190, 192
Sagi-Barbi, 191
Saint-Saëns, Camille, 23, 45, 81, 181
Saldoni, Baltasar, 178, 179
Salieri, 153
_Salome_, 28, 92
Saltus, Edgar, 173
_San Antonio de la Florida_, 82
Sanborn, Pitts, 24, 25, 40
Sapateados, 49, 191
Sarabanda, 43
Sarasate, Pablo de, 23, 75
Sargent, 15
Sati, Erik, 183
_Scheherazade_, 22
Schelling, Ernest, 15, 81, 86
Schindler, Kurt, 172
Schola Cantorum of New York, 171, 192
Schumann, Robert, 23, 139
Schumann-Heink, Ernestine, 136
_Secreto de la Reina, El_, 178
Seguidilla, 46, 61, 114, 133
Segurola, Andrés de, 15, 17
_Selva Sin Amor, La_, 67
_Señas del Archiduque, Las_, 178
_Señor Pandolfo, El_, 187
Séré, Octave, 29
Serrano, Emilio, 181, 182
Serrano, José, 184, 185
Sevilla, 106
Sevillana, 46, 50, 52, 53, 54, 55, 151, 163, 170
Seygard, Camille, 138
Shakespeare, 94
Sherwin, Louis, 101
Sierra, Gregorio Martínez, 192
"S. I. M.," 26, 46, 48
Slaviansky, Dmitri, 170
Smetana, 77
_Soirée dans Grenade, La_, 149
Soledas, 48
_Solitario, El_, 75
"Sombrero de tres Picos, El," 29, 153, 190
_Sorcière, La_, 154
Sorolla, 15
Soubies, A., 31, 33, 67, 69
"Soul of Spain, The," 19, 35, 39, 42, 45, 47, 57, 66, 89, 95, 173
Southgate, Dr. Thomas Lea, 20
"Spain and Morocco," 157, 163, 172
_Spanisches Liederbuch_, 23
_Spanisches Liederspiel_, 23
_Spanish Rhapsody_, 23
Stanislavski, 92
Stein, Gertrude, 44
Stanley, Helen, 152
_Stone Guest, The_, 29
Strauss, Richard, 24, 28, 77, 137
Stravinsky, Igor, 188
Suggia, Guilhermina, 191
_Suite Murcienne_, 148, 192
Sullivan, Sir Arthur, 154
Supervia, 17
Svendsen, 24
Sylva, Marguerite, 130, 137
Symons, Arthur, 154, 161 _et seq._, 163 _et seq._
_Symphonie Espagnole_, 23
_Tabaré_ (Bretón), 80
_Tabaré_ (Vives), 187
_Tabernera de Londres, La_, 179
Taglioni, 15
Tango, 17, 36, 43, 49, 65, 84, 99, 146, 191
_Tango et la Malagueña, Le_, 149
_Tannhäuser_, 19
Tarquini, Tarquinia, 25, 138
_Tasso á Ferrara, El_, 76, 179
"Teatro Lírico Español anterior al siglo XIX," 67, 77
Teba, Condessa de, 108
Tebaldini, G., 34
Tempest, Marie, 138
_Tempestad, La_, 78, 145
_Tempranica, La_, 186
_Tesoro, El_, 187
Tesrai, Dolores, 45
Tetrazzini, Luisa, 78, 136
Thévenet, Cécile, 130
Thicknesse, Philip, 165 _et seq._
Thomas, Ambroise, 185
Thomas, Theodore, 15
Thompson, Fanchon, 136
_Tiefland_, 154
Tirana, 45
Tonadilla, 70
Tor, 41
_Toreador and Andalusian_, 23
_Toros, A los_, 84
Torpadie, Greta, 23
Torre, Jerónimo de la, 67
Torres, Julio Romero de, 155
_Tortajada, La_, 146
Toscanini, Arturo, 138
Towers, John, 28, 77
Trebelli, Zelia, 134
_Tregua del Ptolemaide, La_, 75
Trentini, Emma, 127
Trigo, José, 188
_Tristan und Isolde_, 180
_Trovatore, Il_, 29, 153, 154
Turina, Joaquín, 15, 84, 148, 190, 191, 192
_Último Abencerraje, El_, 76, 179
Underhill, John Garrett, 173, 174, 175, 176, 184
Usandizaga, José María, 84, 148, 185, 191, 192
Valencia, Tortola, 147
Valera, 35
_Valieri_, 193
Valle, Arturo Saco del, 186
_Valle de Andorra, El_, 178
Valleria, Mlle., 131
Valverde, Joaquín, 14, 17, 65, 66, 84, 145, 146, 149, 175
Valverde, Joaquín, fils, 63, 84, 89 _et seq._, 145, 174, 175, 183, 184
Vega, Lope de, 67
Velasquez, 16, 33, 86
_Verbena de la Paloma, La_, 80, 174, 181
Verdi, 29, 153, 154, 180
_Viaje á Cochinchina, Un_, 179
Victor Records, 170
Victoria, Tomás Luis de, 32, 33, 34, 183
_Vida Breve, La_, 148, 189, 190
Vieuxtemps, 83
Vihuela, 29, 31
Villancicos, 61, 69, 176
Villar, R., 193
Viñes, Ricardo, 183
Vives, Amadeo, 171, 186
Vix, Genevieve, 130
_Vuelta del Corsario, La_, 179
Vuiller, Gaston, 168
Vuillermoz, Emile, 26, 171
Wagner, Richard, 13, 19, 76, 121, 122, 133, 157, 172, 180
Waldteufel, 21, 24
Wallace, William Vincent, 154
Wayburn, Ned, 91
Weber, 29
Whistler, 75
White, Stanford, 138
Wilde, Oscar, 92
Wolf, Hugo, 23, 29
Wood, Henry J., 183
Wyns, Charlotte, 128
Xacara, 44, 69
Yradier, Sebastian, 27
Zabalza, 181, 187
Zandonai, 24, 25
Zapateado, 49, 191
Zarabanda, 43
Zarzuela, 14, 18, 62 _et seq._, 71, 77, 78, 79, 80, 82, 84, 86, 99,
145, 146, 148, 149, 173, 174, 175, 176, 178, 179, 181, 183, 184,
185, 186, 187
Ziegfeld, Florenz, 93
"Zincali, The," 107 _et seq._
_Zorahayda_, 24
Zuloaga, 15, 99, 130, 156
Zurbaran, 33
What the Critics Say About Mr. Van Vechten's Work
What the Critics Say About Mr. Van Vechten's Work
Mr. Van Vechten has written and Alfred A. Knopf has published two other
books which should appeal to those who like "The Music of Spain." The
first of these, "Music and Bad Manners," contains the following seven
essays: Music and Bad Manners, Music for the Movies, Spain and Music,
Shall We Realize Wagner's Ideals? The Bridge Burners, A New Principle
in Music, Leo Ornstein.
"Interpreters and Interpretations" contains the following fourteen
essays: Olive Fremstad, Geraldine Farrar, Mary Garden, Feodor
Chaliapine, Mariette Mazarin, Yvette Guilbert, Waslav Nijinsky, The
Problem of Style in the Production of Opera, Notes on the _Armide_
of Gluck, Erik Satie, The Great American Composer, The Importance of
Electrical Picture Concerts, Modern Musical Fiction, and Why Music is
Unpopular.
Here is what Henry Blackman Sell of "The Chicago Daily News" has to say
of Mr. Van Vechten's work:
As one of that annoying clan who don't know anything about music except
that we know what we like, I hereby raise my voice to hymn Mr. Van
Vechten's intelligent pronouncements as a boon, a joy and a liberation.
Henceforth when I peruse the ponderous passages, which so often pass
for erudition in contemporary music criticism, I shall not sorrow with
myself in the mortification of ignorance, as of yore. No, no, I am
free. I have read of music and musicians in articles and essays written
by a man who is accredited in the most trustworthy quarters as being
a fellow well up in the nice points of his delicate trade--and I have
understood.
For two years I have avoided Mr. Van Vechten's annual volume ("Music
After the Great War" was published in 1915 and "Music and Bad Manners"
in 1916) for no more worthy reason than a convinced aversion for books
on music; their tangled sobriety seems such a poor guide to the joys of
the concert, the opera or the performer.
Wholly by chance, fortunate accident, I flipped open his latest,
"Interpreters and Interpretations," and this is what greeted my
astonished gaze:
"... Johanna Gadski, a coughing, raucous name.... Geraldine Farrar,
tomboyish and impertinent, Melrose with French sauce.... Edyth Walker,
a militant suffragette name.... Scalchi--Ugh! Further evidence could
be brought forward to prove that singers succeed in spite of their
names rather than because of them.... Until we reach the name of Mary
Garden.... The subtle fragrance of this name has found its way into
many hearts. Since Nell Gwynne no such scented cognomen, redolent of
cuckoos' boots, London pride, blood red poppies, purple foxgloves,
lemon stocks, and vermilion zinnias, has blown its delightful odour
across our scene.... Delightful and adorable Mary Garden, the fragile
Thais, pathetic Jean ... unforgettable Mélisande...."
Such things written by a critic! Impossible! Why, that is the way one
feels after an exquisite Mary Garden performance. And what have critics
to do with feelings? Yet there it was all set down in print. Oh, well,
I thought, he may be able to capture emotion, but when he gets down to
that critic business he'll be like the rest. Straight to the first page
of the Mary Garden article--here's what I found:
"The influence of Ibsen on our stage has been most subtle. The dramas
of the sly Norwegian are infrequently performed, but almost all of
the plays of the epoch bear his mark. And he has done away with the
actor, for nowadays emotions are considered rude on the stage. Our best
playwrights have striven for an intellectual monotone. So it happens
that for the Henry Irvings, the Sarah Bernhardts and the Edwin Booths
of a younger generation we must turn to the operatic stage, and there
we find them: Maurice Renaud, Olive Fremstad and Mary Garden.
"There is nothing casual about the art of Mary Garden. Her achievements
on the lyric stage are not the result of happy accident. Each detail of
her impersonations, indeed, is a carefully studied and selected effect,
chosen after a review of the possible alternatives. Occasionally,
after trial, Miss Garden even rejects the instinctive. This does
not mean that there is no feeling behind her performances. The deep
burning flame of poetic imagination illuminates and warms into life the
conception wrought in the study chamber. Nothing is left to chance, and
it is seldom and always for some good reason that this artist permits
herself to alter particulars of a characterization during the course of
a representation."
Enough! I began at the beginning and read the book through. Olive
Fremstad, Geraldine Farrar, Yvette Guilbert, Mary Garden, Waslav
Nijinsky.... "Why Music is Unpopular," a delightful and timely slap
at contemporary music criticism; "The Great American Composer" (Van
Vechten's first choice is Irving Berlin); "The Problem of Style in
the Production of Opera" and others, all in the same happy, sensible,
"modern" vein.
Have you bought your opera tickets? Very good, now go, phone or wire to
the nearest book store and get all three of Carl Van Vechten's books.
You'll thank me at the close of every chapter if you really care a
whoop for real music.
MUSIC AND BAD MANNERS
[12mo., 244 pages, $1.60 net.]
"When Carl Van Vechten's first book, 'Music After the Great War,' was
published a year or so ago, I lifted a modest hymn in praise of it,
and at the same time denounced the other music critics of America for
the fewness of their books, and for the intolerable dulness of that
few.... Now comes his second book, 'Music and Bad Manners'--thicker,
bolder, livelier, better. In it, in fact, he definitely establishes a
point of view and reveals a personality, and both have an undoubted
attractiveness. In it he proves, following Huneker, that a man may be
an American and still give all his thought to a civilized and noble
art, and write about it with authority and address, and even find
an audience that is genuinely interested in it ... a bird of very
bright plumage, and, after Huneker, the best now on view in the tonal
aviary."--H. L. Mencken in "The Smart Set."
"Mr. Van Vechten is well known in the musical and literary worlds,
and, while 'clever,' he is just and sound in his critical verdicts. He
inspires students and entertains general readers.... His theory about
the development of music appropriate to and especially for the 'movies'
is unique.... There are many clever suggestions one can cull from a
careful study of the book."--"The Literary Digest."
"'Music and Bad Manners,' by Carl Van Vechten, tells many amusing
stories to show what stupidities and brutalities may be perpetrated by
persons of the so-called 'artistic temperament,' and on the other hand,
what rudeness may be shown by an audience. These stories ... are vastly
entertaining, but the title essay gives a misleading impression of Mr.
Van Vechten's book, of its weight and poise, for it has much serious
discussion and criticism and much historical information of value and
significance. Music readers will skim with a smile the essay on 'Music
and Bad Manners,' but they will read with absorbed attention the other
half dozen essays of the volume. Mr. Van Vechten writes sound and not
too technical English, and has the good taste and good temper to write
without rancour."--"Vogue."
"Carl Van Vechten is one of the relatively few people in America to
write about music neither as a press agent nor as a pedant, but as an
essayist.... 'Music After the Great War' and 'Music and Bad Manners'
are delightful reading whether the reader is a musician or not. 'Music
and Bad Manners' ranges from a pretty thorough, if discursive, outline
of the national music of Spain to the collection of lively anecdotes
forming the essay from which the volume takes its name. The comments,
always shrewd and based on wide experience, betray the rare quality of
clear and independent thought. Moreover, Mr. Van Vechten, by the more
than occasional heterodoxy of his ideas, stimulates a healthy desire
to climb out of deep-worn ruts. The essays, in particular, on present
musical tendencies are none the less illuminating because they are
never ponderous.... The charm of the book is mainly due to the author's
keen enjoyment of the grotesque, illustrated in scores of incisive
phrases, and in a wealth of vivid anecdote."--Henry Adams Bellows in
"The Bellman."
"This very interesting book is in the style of the essays of
Charles Lamb. It breathes a very human spirit and is told in a very
entertaining fashion. It is in the form of a series of essays and from
the opening one regarding bad manners in music and musicians to the
closing article on Leo Ornstein it is spicy and intensely personal
in its style. Really it is one of the most interesting, as well as
thoughtful and yet expository, books I have seen."--"The Music News."
"Of all the books that have been sent to me this past musical year
none is so entertaining as 'Music and Bad Manners,' a little work in a
violent green cover with a vivid blue edge from the house of Knopf. Mr.
Van Vechten is a delightful young iconoclast who writes things about
music that many people think but very few have courage enough to say,
and his exaggerations so often contain trenchant truths, his style is
so easy and merry, his ideas so sprightly, that you, if you are at all
in sympathy with the 'moderns' will have a most agreeable hour if you
devote it to this work."--"The Baltimore Evening Sun."
"'Music and Bad Manners' by Carl Van Vechten is one of the most
readable books dealing with music that has been issued in a long time.
The writer, a decidedly clever one, does not spend his energy on themes
and theories that would prove interesting only to absorbed students
of music but he writes in a delightful style that gives a universal
interest to his themes. It is the kind of book that the average lover
of music will find most invigourating and that will stimulate his love
of music to a further examination of the thesis set forth by Mr. Van
Vechten. It is sound and discriminating in its judgments and it is
unique in its subject matter. There is always an eye for selecting the
things of highest interest.... This is a book that will prove pleasing
to all who read it. Its exhibition of the knowledge of music is not
pedantic, and the author is one of the new forces in music."--"The
Springfield (Mass.) Union."
"From the opening chapter until the final page the book is replete with
interesting matter."--"The Buffalo (N. Y.) Commercial."
"'Music and Bad Manners' by Carl Van Vechten is a series of seven
essays on musical topics that is intensely interesting.... The book
will be of deepest interest to all musicians."--"New York Herald."
"Mr. Van Vechten considers modern tendencies with an open mind. He
is to be no more deceived into disapproval of innovators by their
apparent disregard for tradition than awed by tradition itself (in
this case the Bayreuth tradition) into accepting the present specious
and old-fashioned methods of staging Wagner as the sacred intention of
the master.... Mr. Van Vechten is a well informed specialist, a bold
champion, and an entertaining gossip."--"The New York Evening Sun."
"This volume of musical essays may be cordially commended to
music-lovers who neither bow down to the youngest nor the eldest
composer, but seek to listen honestly according to their powers. The
author is a critic of discernment and sincerity."--"The Providence (R.
I.) Journal."
"This study of music and music makers is as lively as some of the
new tunes that have been given to us recently, but it is not at all
commonplace. It sets a new mark in musical criticism."--"The Portland
(Oregon) Telegram."
"Carl Van Vechten, whose book, 'Music After the Great War,' excited
considerable interest in artistic circles last year and drew upon him
the censure of certain conservatives because he did not agree with them
as to the entertaining value of chamber music, has published a new
volume, that is bound to extend his reputation as an original thinker
and investigator."--"The Evening News" (Newark, N. J.).
INTERPRETERS AND INTERPRETATIONS
[12mo., 368 pages, $2.00.]
"Mr. Van Vechten has a liking for the queer, the new, the perverse,
and the personal. He is as gossipy as Samuel Pepys, Jr. (and is in the
way of being a Pepys in the musical world).... Another distinguishing
characteristic of Mr. Van Vechten is his forehandedness. He has a
perfect genius for being on the side of the street where the car
stops--which for most of us is the other side.... He in short is doing
his best to throw a bomb into that parlour of musicians described
by Charles Lamb, in which they sat all silent and all damned.
He apparently sees no reason why music should not be a cheerful
business."--N. P. D. in "The New York Globe."
"Carl Van Vechten is now in fair alignment with James Huneker and H. L.
Mencken in the field in which both have done their most entertaining
work.... 'Interpreters and Interpretations' is bright, lively, snappy
reading; no part is dull."--Frederick Donaghey in "The Chicago Tribune."
"In these papers some of the questions of the day are spicily and
fearlessly discussed. The last paper is misnamed. It should have been
called 'Why Some Musical Critics are Not Liked by the Author of This
Book.'"--H. T. Finck in "The New York Evening Post."
"Carl Van Vechten is always an intelligent and stimulating critic.
You may not always agree with his point of view, but it is an
original point of view and he always sets you a-thinking. He shakes
up your conventional ideas on art and music in 'Interpreters and
Interpretations,' a vivacious and entertaining book. Nothing better has
come our way since James Huneker's books ceased being events in our
life."--"The Brooklyn Eagle."
"Mr. Van Vechten is always stimulating, because he has a mind which
functions on a vast amount of material, and the ability to express
himself incisively. He praises with discrimination, when he praises;
and when he hits, he hits hard and with a manifest endeavour to be
fair.... Mr. Van Vechten writes live criticism which is more than
most music critics can do; his ideals are the highest; and great art
does not suffer from his pen, but is made more secure of place by his
discriminating praise."--W. K. Kelsey in "The Detroit News-Tribune."
"Carl Van Vechten opens a new field of adventure for the music-lover.
Of the many biographers of musicians none has entered into so close an
intimacy with the singer and dealt with the mental grip of her artistic
conception of character."--"Reedy's Mirror."
"There would be less profound cant and meaningless ceremony about
the art of music if more musical critics wrote with the simplicity
and directness of Carl Van Vechten.... His critical creed is nicely
stated in the essay on 'Why Music is Unpopular.' No musical writer in
America, save James Huneker, comes nearer to this ideal than Mr. Van
Vechten himself. He says divertingly what he has to say; and, agree
with him or not, you feel the mental stimulation which only a keen
ardent intelligence can bring to a subject. Moreover, he is young and
in sympathy with modern tendencies in music. He is not too prudish
to say a good word for ragtime, nor to confess that one hearing a
year of the Beethoven Fifth is enough for him. He is as unaffected in
discovering the æsthetic virtues of a 'movie' concert as in painting
those sympathetic portraits of Mary Garden, Nijinsky, Chaliapine, Erik
Satie and other artists, celebrated or obscure."--"The Philadelphia
Press."
"Mr. Van Vechten has achieved that which, as a rule, appears to be past
accomplishment. That is to say, he has proved himself able to be both
simple and interesting upon a subject which, highly specialized in
itself is held commonly by both artists and critics to the exclusions
of an unknown tongue."--"Washington (D. C.) Evening Star."
"Carl Van Vechten is temperamentally more of an interpretative artist
than an analytical critic whose emotions are subservient to the
reasoning faculties. He is subjective rather than objective in mind and
method and consequently he must differ from the critics who can see and
hear great operas without having their emotions stirred. His gibes at
the professional critic spring therefore from the same sources as the
melodies of a composer."--"The Musical Courier."
"In his new book, 'Interpreters and Interpretations,' Mr. Van Vechten
is off on another joust against the orthodox and the dull, and the
reader who follows him will have an enlivening experience."--"The
Louisville (Ky.) Courier Journal."
"'Interpreters and Interpretations' is Carl Van Vechten's latest volume
of essays on music. Don't reach for your hats. This is going to be
fun. Carl Van Vechten writes essays so delightfully that they seem
like stimulating conversations.... He could write about a cuneiform
syllabary and give it the charm of a sophisticated chat on the Boul
Michigander. He can talk about singers and dancers and artists of all
sorts in a way that makes them all seem like the folks next door....
'Music and Bad Manners' was the most entertaining volume on music that
came to my jaded notice last year. 'Interpreters and Interpretations'
is a fit sequel to it. Neither of the books is a volume for the
musician alone.... A person who had never heard an opera would have a
vicarious joy in _Pelléas et Mélisande_ when Carl Van Vechten tells
how Mary Garden interpreted it.... Perhaps the secret of the charm of
his essays is that they're really very learned in material but not the
least bit in treatment. We all like to know that we're listening to
the word of authority, even when it's sweet music to the ear."--Fanny
Butcher in "The Chicago Tribune."
"Regardless of how much or how little you may know of music and its
interpreters you cannot fail to enjoy the delightful manner in which
Carl Van Vechten tells you of them in his book, 'Interpreters and
Interpretations.'... Without stirring from your easy chair or making
the slightest effort to entertain you may share a pleasant intimacy
with Mary Garden, Olive Fremstad, Geraldine Farrar, Waslav Nijinsky,
and others equally interesting. Carl Van Vechten discourses on the art
of music in a way that even the tired business man can understand and
enjoy."--"The Argonaut" (San Francisco).
"There is nothing pedagogic in Mr. Van Vechten's volume entitled
'Interpreters and Interpretations.' The interpreters who are sketched
with literary facility and genuine interest are Fremstad, Farrar,
Garden, Chaliapine, Mazarin, Guilbert, and Nijinsky.... Much the
better part of his book is that about interpretations. His best
essay is 'The Problem of Style in the Production of Opera,' which
is both practical and ideal and which is, above all, interesting
and suggestive. Next in importance is 'Why Music is Unpopular,' a
refreshing bit of personal temper."--W. J. Henderson in "The New York
Sun."
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