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Ebook has 650 lines and 46369 words, and 13 pages

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SPAIN AND MUSIC 13

FROM GEORGE BORROW TO MARY GARDEN 105

NOTES ON THE TEXT 145

Facing Page

TARQUINIA TARQUINI AS CONCHITA 24

LA ARGENTINA 36

TOM?S BRET?N 80

DOLORETES 96

ZULOAGA'S PORTRAIT OF LUCIENNE BR?VAL AS CARMEN, ACT II 130

OLIVE FREMSTAD AS CARMEN, ACT I 136

AMADEO VIVES 186

Spain and Music

SPAIN AND MUSIC

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 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 . Francisco Guerrero was a pupil of Morales. He wrote settings of the Passion choruses according to St. Matthew and St. John and numerous masses and motets. Tom?s Luis de Victoria is, of course, the greatest figure in Spanish music, and next to Palestrina 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 Cabez?n, whom Pedrell calls the "Spanish Bach," Navarro, Caseda, Gomes, Ribera, Castillo, Lobo, Dur?n, 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 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.

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 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. 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 was usually danced as a relief to the pavana . 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.

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.'"

"That is the Andalusian.

"Every evening we go with Alice to the caf?-concerts where the malague?as, 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 M?laga 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 is the only dance in 2 time; all the others, all, are in 3-4 or in 3-8 ;--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! Ol?, la Lola, ol? la Carmen! qu? gracia! qu? 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 .... All this becomes extraordinarily alluring with two curls, a pair of castanets and a guitar. It is impossible to write down the malague?a. It is a melopoeia, however, which has a form and which always ends on the dominant, to which the guitar furnishes 3-8 time, and the spectator 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! qu? gracia! qu? elegancia! Anda! Ol?! Ol?! 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...."

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 Espa?oles Pintados por si Mismos" .

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 malague?a 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 , the crack of fingers and castanets, the supple swaying of the dancers, fill the spectators with ecstasy.

"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 caf? 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.

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 . 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 r?le 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.

Manuel Garc?a 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 . F?tis enumerates seventeen Spanish, nineteen Italian, and seven French operas by Garc?a. He had works produced in Madrid, at the Op?ra in Paris , at the Italiens in Paris , at the Op?ra-Comique in Paris , and at many other theatres. However, when all is said and done, Manuel Garc?a's reputation still rests on his singing and his daughters. His compositions are forgotten; nor was his music, much of it, probably, truly Spanish.

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.

Juan Bautista Pujol 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 Land of Joy

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 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.

Very often whisperings of art life in the foreign theatre cross the Atlantic. Very often the husks of the realities 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.

Here are singers! The limpid and lovely soprano of the comparatively placid Mar?a Marco, who introduces figurations into the brilliant music she sings at every turn. One indecent 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.

I cannot resist further cataloguing; details shake their fists at my memory; for instance, the intricate rhythms of Valverde's elaborately syncopated music , the thrilling orchestration , the utter absence of tangos , and habaneras , 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 . 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 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.

From George Borrow to Mary Garden

Th?ophile Gautier's "Carmen."

From George Borrow to Mary Garden

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