Spanish Music as Perceived in Western Music Historiography: A Case of the Black Legend?

Author(s): Judith Etzion

Reviewed work(s):
Source: International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music, Vol. 29, No. 2 (Dec.,
1998), pp. 93-120
Published by: Croatian Musicological Society
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3108383 .
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 SPANISHMUSICAND WESTERN
J.ETZION, IRASM29(1998)2, 93--120
HISTORIOGRAPHY, 93

SPANISH MUSICAS PERCEIVEDIN

WESTERNMUSICHISTORIOGRAPHY:
A CASEOF THE BLACKLEGEND?*

UDC: 78.03 (=60)

JUDITHETZION
Original Scientific Paper
Izvorni znanstveni dClanak
Bar-IlanUniversity (RA), Received:December13,1998
Faculty of Humanities, Primljeno:13. prosinca1998.
Accepted:December21,1998
Departmentof Music, Prihvateno:21. prosinca1998.
52900RAMAT-GAN,Israel

Abstract - Resume
This study postulates that the marginal
position of Spanish music in Western music
historiographycannotbe attributedunilaterally
to Spain,but is the consequenceof the political
and culturalfactorsthat underlay the Western
attitudetoward Spain.It was not merelythe in-
accessibilityof Spanishmusicsourcesin theWest
that relegatedSpain to the periphery,but, even
more so, the lackof sufficientinterestin a coun-
try that did not live up to the expectationsof
Westernaestheticprecepts.
Spanishnationalidentity as an Otherwas
so deeply entrenched in Western perception
since the seventeenth century, that it was re-
duced to a series of negative topoi, known to-
day collectively as the 'Black Legend'. (This
termencompassesall the falsificationsand mis-
informationthataccumulatedagainstSpainfor
centuries,as well as the consequent omission
of what counted in Spain'sfavor and the exag-
geration of what counted against it.) The ex-
tent to which the BlackLegend infiltratedinto
Western music historiography is examined
throughmajorsources fromthe seventeenth to
the twentiethcenturies.

I
Hardly any other civilized nation in music historyhas erectedso few milestones
[and] left behind so few traces,as has the Spanish[nation].'
This is how EduardHanslickepitomizesthe positionof Spainin Westernmusic
history, in the opening paragraphof his concertreview of Tomas Bret6n'sopera
Losamantesde Teruel(NeueFreiePresse,October6, 1891).In continuation,he echoes

* This
study was facilitatedby a grantfrom the Departmentof Musicologyat the ConsejoSupe-
riorde InvestigacionesCientificas(Barcelona).
I >>Kaum hat eine zweite Kulturvolkin der Geschichteder Musikso wenig Posten errungen,so
geringe Spurenhinterlassen,wie das Spanische.<<
94 SPANISHMUSICANDWESTERN
J.ETZION, IRASM29 (1998)2, 93-120
HISTORIOGRAPHY,

the most prevalent topoi of Spanish music as perceived in European music

historiography: following its illustrious age of the sixteenth and the first half of the
seventeenth centuries, Spain was considered to have fallen into a state of >infertil-
ity<<(>>unfruchtbarkeit<<), cultivating church music of little artistic significance, or
popular music (such as the zarzuela) which did not rise to a high artistic level. In
addition, Spain had long been seen as an >Italian province< since it provided a
>sanctuary<<for Italian opera companies. Hanslick, in short, initiates his review
with the above-cited quotation not merely to justify his unfavorable judgment of
Bret6n's opera, but also to neutralize the entire history of Spanish music.2
In response to Hanslick's review, Felipe Pedrell issued an open letter, unleash-
ing bitter criticism against the inveterate Western condescension toward Spanish
music.3 Not only do eminent Western music historians exhibit profuse ignorance
of Spanish music, he alleges, but whenever they do write about Spain, they draw
upon secondary, unreliable sources:
Themodem music historians,imperturbablyreduplicatingone another,draw our
attention to the sparse flow of data and the miserly contingentof opinions that had
already appeared,with hardlyany modifications,in the [worksof] the old historians.
It appearsonly naturalthat in the briefinterval,more or less, between the publication
of each one of their history books, the authorsmight have filled in those lacunae that
requirenew evidence, generaland partialaspects that had hithertobeen overlooked,
extensive revisions, and, above all, solid conclusionsupon well-based considerations
and aestheticevaluation.
F6tis, Ambros, and even Gevaert, [the latter]cited in your article- have they
writtenanythingmorethatmereconjectures,therebyinculcatingerrorsand falseevalu-
ations,which, if you permitme to say so, have not been challengedby any criticalanaly-
sis ...?4

It appears that Pedrell's remarks have not completely lost their relevance, for
until very recently Western music historiography has tended to maintain essen-
tially the same attitude, to the point of virtually paralyzing the history of Spanish
music after its so-called 'Golden Age' of the sixteenth century. The subsequent
centuries have generally been described as a prolonged, static period of musical
>>decline<, during which the Spaniards essentially clung to church music, prefer-
ably in the stile antico.Although it was often noted that Spain did embrace Italianand
French musical fashions, its national ingenuity lay, supposedly, in the cultivation
of 'low' musical idioms, such as popular songs and dances, local dramatic genres

2 Hanslickhad
apparentlyexpectedthis Spanishoperato displaya genuine >national character,<<
which he believed he had encounteredin the Spanishsongs and dancesof Weber'sPreciosa,Auber'sLa
MuettedePortici,and Bizet'sCarmen.Insteadonly one ariaand one chorusin Bret6n'swork,he claims,
can be characterizedas ))national,<(while the remainderis poor imitationof Italianopera,especially
Verdi's.
3 ,>CartaAbiertaal insigne criticomusicale ilustradoprofesorde Est6ticaEduardoHanslick,<<23
October1891;republishedin Musicalerfas, (Barcelona,1906/R1996),23-29.
4 Ibid.,24.
 SPANISHMUSICAND WESTERN
J.ETZION, IRASM29 (1998)2, 93--120
HISTORIOGRAPHY, 95

(e.g., the tonadillaescinicaand the zarzuela),and folk instruments(e.g., the guitar

and castanets).Only toward the end of the nineteenthcenturydoes Spain re-enter
the Europeanscene - with the 'trilogy' of Granados-Alb6niz-Falla - following
resurgent interest in the peripheral national schools. Moreover,when old music
sources began to be systematically catalogued in Western Europe, the limited
number of Spanish sources known abroad could not have possibly provided a
sufficient basis for reconstructingthe music history of Spain, not to mention the
fact that the Spanish archives were notoriously impenetrableto Europeanschol-
ars. From this Western perspective,in short, the blame is laid on Spain for its in-
ability to place itself on the map of Westernmusic history.
It is not my intentionhere to espouse the Westernperspective,or, conversely,
to defend Spain by showing that its music history has indeed been treated un-
fairly. What I contend, rather,is that the marginalposition of Spain in Western
music historiographycannot be attributedunilaterallyto Spain, but is the conse-
quence of the political and culturalfactorsthat underlay the Westernattitude to-
ward Spainfrom the seventeenthcenturyon. In otherwords, it was not merely the
inaccessibilityto Spanishmusical sources thatpushed Spain to the periphery,but,
even more so, the lack of sufficientinterestin a countrythathad not lived up to the
expectations of Western aesthetic precepts. My attempt, then, is to explore how
the particularperception of Spanish music began to crystallizein Westernmusic
historiographyin the seventeenthcenturyand was thereafterperpetuatedthrough
a series of mostly negative conceptionsuntil Hanslick'sreview, and even well into
the present century.
To begin with, Spain may be characterized as the closest Other of the
Occidental world. Although it always maintainedclose political and cultural ties
with Western Europe and was, moreover, a formidableEuropeanpower during
the sixteenth century, its subsequent political decline and tendency toward cul-
tural isolation resulted in its alienationfrom the Europeanmainstream.When the
Western culturalboundaries were clearlydelineated between center and periph-
ery, Spain was relegated to the latter:by the eighteenth century the Spanish na-
tional identity as an Other became so deeply entrenched in Western perception,
that it was reduced to a series of negative topoi, known today collectively as the
>>Black Legend((.
Briefly,the term BlackLegend (LeyendaNegra),first coined by JulianJuderfas
at the beginning of the twentieth century, is used to encompass all those
falsifications,fabricationsand misinformationthathad accumulatedagainstSpain
for centuries.5Although Judarias'slengthy exposition of the inveterate negative
image of Spain in Westernhistory has been criticizedfor its nationalisticbias, his
definition of the BlackLegend is still considered seminal:

Negra.Estudiosacercadelconceptode Espafiaen el extranjero

5 LaLeyenda (Madrid,1914/R1967).
96 SPANISHMUSICAND WESTERN
J.ETZION, IRASM29(1998)2, 93--120
HISTORIOGRAPHY,

By the BlackLegend we understandthe reputationcreatedby those fantasticac-

counts of our land that have been published in nearlyall countries;the grotesquede-
scription of Spaniards,individually and collectively;the denial, or at least the igno-
rance, of all that is favorableand honorableamong the many manifestationsof our
cultureand art;the accusationsthathave been made againstSpainin all periods,accu-
sations based on exaggerationsor on false interpretations;and finally the assertion,
found in respectableand purportedlytruthfulbooks,and frequentlyrepeatedand elabo-
rated in the foreign press, that our countryconstitutesan unfortunateexceptionin the
community of Europeannations in all that relates to toleration,culture,and political
progress.
In a word we understandby the BlackLegend the legend of an inquisitional,ig-
norant,and fanaticSpain,incapableof takingits placeamongcultivatedpeoples either
now or in the past, disposed always towardviolent forms of repression,the enemy of
progressand change.The legend was spreadabroadwith the Reformationin the six-
teenth century,and it has not ceased to be used against us, particularlyin the critical
moments of our nationallife.
The characteristicsof the anti-Spanishlegend in our own time are curious and
worthy of study. Despite the passage of time, they have not changed.They are based
now, as they have been in the past, on two principalelements:omission of what counts
in our favor, and exaggerationof what counts againstus.6

Although Juderias does not deny that sixteenth-century Spain was intolerant,
he emphasizes that other European countries were equally culpable at the time.
What distinguishes Spain's culpability, however, as Charles Gibson observes, is
the assumption that >>aunitary Spanish personality has been unmodified by time.<7
In other words, Spain's negative image was prolonged far beyond its historical
context, to the point of becoming anachronistic.
Thus, vis-a-vis the Occidental yardsticks of reason, progress, and moral supe-
riority, the Spaniards gained ill-repute for their haughtiness, cruelty, ignorance,
religious fanaticism (as manifested in the Inquisition), superstitions of all kinds,
racial impurity (due to Jewish and Moorish 'contamination'), sexual promiscuity,
indolence, passivity, and extreme jealousy. Positive Spanish qualities, notably honor
and gravite, were admittedly praised, but in their exaggerated manifestation they
were viewed as somewhat incompatible with European manners. All the above
characteristics further served to justify the country's political and social decline,
and hence its perennial lingering behind the progress of Western civilization. The
widely circulated Encyclop6dieM6thodique(Paris, 1782) claimed that Spain had not
contributed anything worthwhile to Western civilization in the past one thousand
years,8 a precursor to Hanslick's statement made more than a century later. Like-
wise, the well-known expression ))L'Afriquecommenceaux Pyrendes<< (attributed to

6
Ibid., pp.14--16; quoted from the English translation in Charles GIBSON (ed.), The BlackLegend.
Anti-Spanish Attitudeson theOld WorldandtheNew (New York,1971),194.
7 Ibid.,p. 14.
8 I, 565. >Mais que doit-on a l'Espagne? Et depuis deux siecles, depuis quatre, depuis dix, qu'a-t-
'
elle fait pour l'Europe? Elle resemble aujourd'hui ces colonies foibles & malheureuses, qui ont besoin
sans cesse du bras protector de la metropole.<<
 SPANISHMUSICANDWESTERN
J.ETZION, IRASM29 (1998)2, 93--120
HISTORIOGRAPHY, 97

Voltaire)is perhapsthe most emblematicaffirmationof Spain'spositionas an Other

who does not quitebelong to Europe.Even when Spaindid begin to assume a posi-
tive image in the nineteenthcentury,it merelymoved to the otherside of the same
coin:viewed now as an 'exotic'country,it still remaineda sort of 'internal'Other
with an Orientaltinge, to be excludedfromthe canonicpreceptsof the Occident.
Europeanmusic historiography,to be sure, has rarelygone that far in depict-
ing Spain and Spanishmusic in such slanderousor, inversely,exotic terms.9Much
more glaring, however, is the near obliviousness to Spanish music found in the
European historiographicsources, whose interest lay, first and foremost, in the
musical hegemony of Italy, France,and Germany.Such interest first arose in the
heated conflict between the aestheticpoles of Italy and France,as exemplified in
the Raguenet-LeCerfdebateand culminatingin the Rameau-Rousseaurivalryand
the Guerrede Bouffons.Subsequently,Germanyentered the historiographicscene
with its significantrise of music scholarshipin general,and its involvement in the
Italian-Frenchcontest in particular(especiallythroughMatthesonand Marpurg).
The consolidation of this tripartitenucleus - Italy-France-Germany - relegated
the remaining Europeannations, including Spain, to a secondary position. What
makes Spain's position unique, nonetheless, is not merely the perception that it
meritedlittleattentionbecauseit was culturallyremoved,but becausethe approach
to Spanish music was often colored by the prejudicesarising from the BlackLeg-
end. This marginalizationthus generateda particularimageof Spanishmusic, and
this image had its own history with its own topoi, as will be demonstratedhere.

II

Perhaps the first unequivocal presentationof the negative image of Spanish

music in Western historiographyappears, paradoxically,in El Melopeoby Pedro
Cerone (Naples, 1613).10To be sure, the Italian-borntheorist was evidently very
attached to Spain, as is apparentfrom his religious metamorphosisfollowing his
pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela and his long service at the Spanish royal
chapels of Madridand Naples. Thathis treatise(writtenin Spanish)was dedicated
to King Philip IIIand designed to improve musical education in Spain also attests
to his close bond with the country."Yet El Melopeomay nonetheless be regarded
as the first example of the BlackLegend in Western music historiography.More
specifically,what Ceroneapparentlyintended to emphasizein his chapteron >>The
Reason why there are more music masters in Italy than in Spain<<12 was not the

9Suchextremecharacterizationis indeed palpableparticularlyin Frenchand Italianoperalibretti

and in the genuine, or imagined,Spanishstylisticfeaturesincorporatedin many works of European
composers.This topic is currentlythe subjectof a separatestudy.
10Facs.ed., AlbertoGallo (Bologna,1969).
" For a biographicalsketch see Jose LOPEZ-CALO, Historiade la musicaespafiola.3. SigloXVII
(Madrid,1983),231-237.
12(Lacausaporque ay masprofessores
deMusicaenItalia,queen Espafia),ibid.,I, chapter53,148--153.
98 SPANISHMUSICANDWESTERN
J.ETZION, IRASM29(1998)2, 93-120
HISTORIOGRAPHY,

superiority of the Italian music masters, who are anyhow underscored throughout
his treatise, but, directly or by insinuation, the negative qualities of the Spaniards.
Accordingly, the moral corruption of Spanish church musicians is presented as
evident in their ignorance, indolence, greed, insufficient love of music, and poor
attention to their pupils. Such allusions to the >>Spanishcharacter<<are remarkably
similar to others which appeared in the contemporary literary sources in Italy.13
Cerone further inculcated the notion that Spanish music was centered mainly
around the church and that it often consisted of popular villancicos unsuitable for
true religious devotion.14 He laid the blame on the members of the Spanish nobility
who, with a handful of exceptions, demonstrated repugnance toward music and
therefore discouraged its cultivation among their subordinates.15 This also ac-
counted, so he alleges, for the absence of academies in Spain (a claim that has
remained unchallenged until recently), in contrast to the flourishing academies in
Italy. At one point he even states: >...is music almost dead in Spain? I can only
wonder rather than give the reason; only those with a more astute judgment than
mine might know.<(16
Since El Melopeo was highly esteemed and frequently cited throughout the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, its negative attitude towards Spain struck
deep roots in European music historiography. More than a century and a half later,
Sir John Hawkins cites in detail the above-mentioned chapter from El Melopeoin
support of his assessment of Spanish music as having made >>slowprogress.7."
(This particular expression might have been picked up from contemporary Eng-
lish travelers, who employed it to denote the social, economic, and cultural >back-
wardness< of Spain."8)Such >>slowprogress< was associated, above all, with the
Catholic church (recalling automatically the loathed Spanish Inquisition), which
was incompatible with Hawkins's enlightened, anti-clerical outlook:

It appears very clearlyfrom this work of Ceronethat the studies of the Spanish
musicians had been uniformly directedtowards the improvement of church-music;

3 See Sverker ARNOLDSSON, La LeyendaNegra. Estudiossobresus origines (Goteborg, 1960); and

Ricardo GARCIA CARCEL, La LeyendaNegra. Historia y opini6n (Madrid, 1992), 27-31.
14 El Melopeo, I, chapter 68.
15 >We see that in
Spain there are very few Cavalleros who would like to familiarize themselves
with music; above all, they detest, and destroy, and banish it from their houses as a vile, condemned,
and damaging thing; and it appears to have been invented only for ecclesiastics and clerics.< Ibid., 150.
16Ibid.,149.
17 TheGeneral Historyof theScienceandPracticeofMusic(London, 1776/R1969), 391.
18 The impressions of English and French travelers to Spain are studied in Mario Ford
SpainandEuropein Eighteenth-century
BACIGALUPO, TravelLiterature:
An Aspectof the'Leyenda
Negra'
(Doct. Diss., Brown Un., 1973); Patricia SHAW FAIRMAN, Espafiavista por los ingleses del siglo XVII
(Madrid,1981);Ian ROBERTSON, Loscuriososimpertinentes:
ViajeroinglesesporEspafiadesdela accesidn
de CarlosIIIhasta1855 (Madrid,1988);Ana ClaraGUERRERO, en la Espafiadelsiglo
Viajerosbritdnicos
XVIII (Madrid, 1990). For observations on the attitude of these travelers toward Spanish music, see
Judith ETZION, The Spanish Fandango - From eighteenth-century >lasciviousness< to nineteenth-
century exoticism, Anuario Musical 48 (1993), 229-250.
J.ETZION,SPANISHMUSICANDWESTERN IRASM29 (1998)2, 93-120
HISTORIOGRAPHY, 99

and for this disposition thereneeds no otherreasonthan that in Spain,music was part
of the nationalreligion... Withthis predilectionin favourof the ecclesiastical,it cannot
be supposed thatsecularmusic could meet with much encouragementin Spain.In this
huge volume [ElMelopeo],consistingof nearlytwelve hundredpages, we meet with no
composition for instruments,all the examples exhibited by the author being either
exerciseson the ecclesiasticaltones, or motets,or Ricercatas,and such kind of compo-
sitions for the organ;neitherdoes he mention,as ScipioneCeretto,Mersennus,Kircher,
and other have done, the names of any celebratedperformerson the lute, the harp,the
viol, or other instrumentsused in concerts.19

Hawkins further estimates that in the long span >between St. Isidor and Salinas<<
there were only a handful of significant Spanish composers; he also embraces G.B.
Doni's conclusion that Spain >had in a course of a century [i.e., the sixteenth cen-
tury] produced only two men of eminence in music, namely, Christopher Morales
and Franciscus Salinas.<20Beyond the sixteenth century, Spanish art music does
not appear to merit any special discussion by Hawkins since it is regarded as an
extension of Italian music (>their operas are Italian, and performers come chiefly
from Milan, Naples or Venice<<).21
Challenging Hawkins's verdict of Spain's >slow progress,<<Charles Burney
dedicates a brief chapter to Spain in his GeneralHistory of Music, which he pur-
posely labels >Of the Progress of Music in Spain during the Sixteenth Century<<.22
Intending to demonstrate that Spanish musicians are far from >scanty< (alluding
directly to Hawkins's expression), he offers a long list of sixteenth-century Span-
ish composers and theorists, and notes the significant position of Spanish singers
in the Papal Chapel. By isolating sixteenth-century Spanish music from previous
and subsequent centuries, and also eulogizing it, Burney may have been the first
Western music historian to imply the notion (though not as yet the term) of Spain's
'Golden Age':

The work of Guerreroof Seville, Flechaof Catalonia,Ortiz and Cabezon [sic] of

Madrid,Infantasof Cordova,Duran of Estramadura,and Azpicueta of the Kingdom
of Navarre, appear in the musical catalogues for the sixteenth century of Italy, the
Netherlands,and Spain.And this list might be swelled, for the honour of Spain,with
many more sonorous names of composersand performersof that kingdom, who had
contributedto the delight of severalcountriesin Europe,besides theirown; but a suf-
ficient numberhas alreadybeen specified to acquitthe Spaniardsof the chargeof hav-
ing made a slow progressin an art, which at this time, and indeed at all times, is so

l9Op. cit., 588.

20Ibid.,448 and 587; also see 404-412 (fora detaileddiscussionof Salinas).
21
Ibid.,834. Hawkins'sobservationis takenfrom Bourdelot-Bonnet(see below). Rousseau,like-
wise, views Spanishmusic as an extension of Italianmusic: >InMadrideverythingis Italian:the or-
chestra,the actors,the singers,and up to the candlesnuffers.The leadingeunuch [Farinelli]was deco-
rated by a royal decree with a pension higher than that of a general.<<Dictionnaire
de musique(1767),
Introduction,iv.
22A GeneralHistoryof Musicfromthe EarliestAge to thePresentPeriod(London,1776-1789 in 4
vols.; R1935/1957by F. Mercerin 2 vols.), II,235-241.
100 SPANISHMUSICANDWESTERN
J.ETZION, IRASM29 (1998)2, 93--120
HISTORIOGRAPHY,

connectedwith the language,poetry,and generalcivilizationof a country,that is often

regardedas a markof barbarismto have neglected its cultivation.23
That both Hawkins and Burney, despite their opposing attitudes, refer chiefly
to sixteenth-century Spanish musicians is attributed primarily to the sources at
their disposal. Their main biographical source was apparently Johann Gottfried
Walther's MusikalischesLexicon(Leipzig, 1732), which did not extend beyond six-
teenth-century Spain. Walther himself drew the names of about 30 Spanish musi-
cians from the alphabetical list of over 900 European musicians in the third part of
Sebastian de Brossard's Dictionnairede musique (Paris,1703). He then filled in most
of their biographical data, as he himself indicated, from Georg Draud's Bibliotheca
Classica (1625) and Nicolao Antonio Hispalensi's BibliothecaHispana Nova (1672;
2nd ed., 1683-88).24It should also be pointed out at this juncture that the best-known
sixteenth-century Spanish musicians were precisely those who had spent a sub-
stantial part of their career away from Spain and/or whose works had been pub-
lished and diffused abroad. That Salinas also held a chair in music at the Univer-
sity of Salamanca would become a proof of Spanish learnedness, at least for those
who viewed Spanish music favorably. During the two subsequent centuries, how-
ever, when Spain receded from the European mainstream, there was obviously no
interest in recording any of its sources, with the exception of the handful of Span-
ish treatises that became accessible abroad (such as those of exiled Jesuits, Antonio
Eximeno and Estevan de Arteaga), or were translated into other languages (e.g.,
those of Pablo Nasarre, Padre Feijoo, and the widely known poem, La Masica by
Tomas de Iriarte).
Walther's entries, moreover, were routinely copied or paraphrased in subse-
quent German dictionaries, such as Johann Nicolaus Forkel's Allgemeine Litteratur
derMusik (Leipzig, 1792) and Ernest Ludwig Gerber's Neues historisch-biographisches
Lexikonder Tonkiistler (Leipzig,1790-1792, 1812-1814).25 All inculcated thereby
the idea that the only Spanish musicians of note had indeed all been active in the
sixteenth century. Forkel even justified such assumptions by stating condescend-
ingly:

23 Ibid.,
241. It is unlikely that Burney had any first-hand familiarity with the Spanish treatises or
music publications appearing in his chapter, perhaps with the exception of the treatises of Salinas and
Cerone, both of which he admired, and the two motets of Morales which he transcribed.
24Among the best-known musicians appearing in Walther's Lexiconare (in alphabetical order)
Correa de Arauxo, Juan Bermudo, Ludovico de Briqeno, Antonio Cabez6n, Juan del Encina, Vicente
Espinel, Mateo Flecha (son), Miguel de Fuenllana, Francisco Guerrero, Luis Milan, Crist6bal de Mo-
rales, Luis de Narvaez, Diego Ortiz, Diego Pisador, Bartolome Ramos de Pareja, Philippe Rogier, Fran-
cisco Salinas, Tombs de Santa Maria, Enrique de Valderribano, Luis Venegas de Henstrosa, and Tomas
Luis de Victoria. Hawkins and Burney overlooked or were unaware of many important musicians
listed by Walther, particularly the vihuelists.
25 Forkel and Gerber exclude some of Walther's entries and add a handful of seventeenth- and
eighteenth-century Spanish musicians (e.g., Eximeno, Arteaga, Valls, Nasarre, and Feijoo). In addition
to relying on music sources posterior to Walther's, they also copy from contemporary general bio-
graphical dictionaries containing Spanish musicians, notably Diego Barbosa Machado's BibliotecaLusitana
Historica,Critica,e cronologica...(Lisbon,1741-59).
 SPANISHMUSICANDWESTERN
J.ETZION, IRASM29 (1998)2,93--120
HISTORIOGRAPHY, 101

Spain's lustrous period (glnzendePeriode)which gave us a Salinas... is long by-

gone. Since that time this country has yielded so many ascetics that no art philoso-
phers, no aestheticianscould come forth there. This also explains why most of the
musical writings in modern times consist of instructionbooks on plainchant.26

Neither did other German scholars known to Hawkins and Burney, such as
Wolfgang Caspar Printz, Johann Mattheson, and Friedrich Wilhelm Marpurg, to
name the most prominent ones, show any interest in Spain's past or its present.27
Spain was so politically and culturally remote from Germany at the time - as was
Spanish music from German absorption in contemporary thought and in the rela-
tive merits of Italian, French, and German music - that it would be unrealistic to
expect their interest in what was considered a priori inconsequential.
Needless to say, the French sources which were available to Hawkins and
Burney focused primarily on French and Italian music. These sources eventually
incorporated German music as well, thereby formulating the concept of the three
European odcoles<.28Yet, unlike the German lexicographers who principally accu-
mulated biographical data and lists of published music and treatises by the >old<
Spanish church musicians, the French historians were interested in the position of
Spanish secular music in relation to the assumed supremacy of French music. (It
should also be born in mind that France had taken over from Spain the role of the
mightiest European power and that France and Spain had a long history of politi-
cal and cultural ties, culminating in the ascent of the Bourbons to the Spanish crown
in 1700.) For example, in his Comparaison
de la musiqueitalienneet de la musique
franqoise (Paris, 1704-5), Jean Laurent Le Cerf de la Vieville regards Spain as a
'pawn' in his debate with Raguenet." In order to highlight the superiority of French
music and underplay the pervasive diffusion of Italian opera, he divides Europe
into two equal geographical zones, one subjected to the French musical dominion
and the other to the Italian. Any other nation is thereby assigned an inferior posi-
tion: Spain and Austria (specifically Vienna) fall under Italian influence, while
England and the Netherlands fall under French influence.30The musicality of the
Spanish language, as exemplified in Don Quixote, is also enlisted by Le Cerf when

derMusik,x.
26FORKEL,AllgemeineLitteratur
27I have examined Wolfgang Caspar PRINZ's Historische Beschreibungder edelen Sing und Kling-
Kunst (Dresden, 1690/R1964 [Graz]), which mentions only Morales; Johann MATTHESON's Critica
musica (Hamburg, 1722-25/R1964 [Amsterdam]) copies Brossard's entire list of musicians, including
the Spanish ones, without any additional details about them (II, pp. 109-115). His biographical essays
in Grundlageeiner Ehren-Pforte(Hamburg, 1740/R1969 [Berlin]) do not include any Spanish musicians.
Friedrich W. MARPURG's CritischenMusicus an der Spree (Berlin, 1750/R1970 [New York]) does not
mention any Spanish musicians either.
28See CharlesH. BLAINVILLE,
HistoireGendrale, de la Musique(Paris,
Critiqueet Philosophique
1767/1972 [Geneva]), 90ff.
29Since Le Cerf's book was incorporated into Bourdelot-Bonnet's Histoire de la musique et des ses
effets,the references here are taken from the latter's Amsterdam edition of 1723, facs. ed. Othmar Wessely
(Graz, 1966; 4 vols. in 2 books). As the Histoire de la musique et des ses effets was originally written by
Pierre Bourdelot, expanded by Pierre Bonnet, and updated (with Le Cerf's book) by Jacques Bonnet, I
refer to them collectively as Bourdelot-Bonnet.
3 Ibid., I, vol. 2, 131.
102 SPANISHMUSICANDWESTERN
J.ETZION, IRASM29(1998)2, 93-120
HISTORIOGRAPHY,

confronting his pro-Italian adversaries. Attempting to tone down the problematic

Italian descent of his revered Lully, he proclaims that >Had Fortune led Lully to
Spain, I am sure that, aside from the language, he would have done better than in
Italy.<<31Le Cerf, however, appears to have been unfamiliar with either old or con-
temporary Spanish music and musicians.32He offers, instead, some vague impres-
sions which he most probably gleaned from travel literature:

I confess to you that I have never encounteredon my way any music that came
from Spain; I only read, in some parts, that Castilianmusic has no cadences at all,
which is distasteful,and that it has strainedpassages, which is an unfortunateshort-
coming.33
Bourdelot-Bonnet's Histoire de la musiqueet des ses effets (1715), in contrast, of-
fers the most extensive description of Spanish music in eighteenth-century French
historiography. Intending to convey the grandeur of the Spanish royalty, it nar-
rates assorted episodes from the reign of Isabel and Ferdinand through that of
Charles II and describes the important role of feasts, theatrical spectacles, and Ital-
ian operas at the Spanish court.-' Nonetheless, there is hardly any concrete evi-
dence of the authors' familiarity with any Spanish composers or theorists. They
believe, indeed, that >rarely does one find Spanish musicians who compose in
their own language, although they are as capable as the Italians,< and that Spain
was, in any case, dominated by the Italian opera.35They resort, instead, to the de-
scription of the Spanish musical moeurs, which, similar to Le Cerf, was probably
drawn from some travel memoir. The following paragraph became one of the most
cited references to the character of Spanish music in European historiography:36

There are few nations that have passion for music more than the Spaniards,as
thereis hardly [a person]therewho does not know how to play a little the guitaror the

31 Ibid., II, vol.1, 167.

32
Spanish dances and songs, nonetheless, were quite well known from the court ballets in Lully's
time; see Albert COHEN, Spanish National Character in the Court Ballets of J.B. Lully, Revista de
Musicologia 36/5 (1993), 277-87.
33 BOURDELOT-BONNET, II, vol. 1, 166. Le Cerf perhaps paraphrases this passage from Relation
du voyage d'Espagne (1691) by Mme. d'Aulnoy (Marie Catherine Le Jumel De Barneville). In her first
letter d'Aulnoy describes how she had been followed by a group of musicians who >played each one in
his own manner, all at the same time, without any coordination; it was really cacophonous music
(charivarie).<< Aulnoy's travel memoirs served as the most influential source of anti-Spanish sentiments
in Europe well into the nineteenth century. (It was eventually postulated that she had never been to
Spain but rather based her writings on earlier travel literature.)
34 Op. cit., I, vol. 1, Chapter 11 (>Des Fetes & des Jeux particuliers que sont en usage dans differentes
Cours de l'Europe...)0.
35 Ibid., I, 263. Guerrero is the only composer mentioned, in the well-known anecdote about Em-
peror Charles V's detection of some borrowed >endroits<< in the composer's motet. As Spain had re-
cently fallen under French dominion, the author had to pay a tribute by claiming that the Emperor's
>great taste for music passed as a hereditary trait to the Royal House of the Bourbons<< (381).
36 E.g., HAWKINS, GeneralHistory, 834; J.B. de LABORDE, Essai sur la musiqueancienneet moderne
(Paris, 1780), vol.1, 294; William STAFFORD, A History of Music (Edinburgh, 1830/1986), Chapter 18
(>>TheMusic of Spain and Portugal<), and The QuarterlyMusical Magazine, vol. III (1824), no. 24, 545.
 SPANISHMUSICANDWESTERN
J.ETZION, IRASM29(1998)2, 93--120
HISTORIOGRAPHY, 103

harp,instrumentswhich they employ to offerserenadesto theirmistresses.Thus every

night in Madrid,as well as in the othercities of the kingdom, one observes an infinite
numberof loverswho runthroughthe streetswith theirguitarand dark-lanterns.There
is no artisanwho after his work does not take the guitar in order to loosen up in the
public squares, [nor] a laborerwho goes to his work without hanging the guitar or
harp on his back; there are few Spanish men and women of distinctionwho do not
know how to accompanytheirvoice with these instruments.In short,one can say that
they have a naturalinclinationtoward music.37

Although this description is outwardly much more positive than Le Cerf's

comment, both convey the notion that Spanish music reflects what we would de-
fine today as, the >>lowOther.<<Le Cerf's reference to the lack of proper cadences in
Castilian music and unruly passages suggests those same symptoms of the 'undis-
ciplined' Spanish character described in the contemporary travel literature.
Bourdelot-Bonnet's account, likewise, emphasizes the >>naturalinclination<< of the
Spaniards, which reflects the antithesis of the restrained, civilized European goat.
That the predilection for the guitar crossed all barriers of class distinction and,
moreover, bore sexual overtones, had a >transgressing< quality that set Spain even
further apart from Europe, as did many contemporary Spanish social customs (e.g.,
bullfights, tournaments, autos sacramentales,and religious processions)."
Hawkins paraphrases the above description of Bourdelot-Bonnet in order to
bolster his own conclusion regarding the >slow progress<< of Spanish music.39In line
with the opinion of his enlightened contemporaries regarding the attribution of Span-
ish backwardness to Moorish 'contamination', he further surmises that this >>slow
progress... may in some degree be accounted for by the prevalence of Moorish man-
ners and customs for many centuries in that country. The Spanish guitar is no other
than the Arabian Pandora a little improved; and it is notorious that most of the Span-
ish dances are of Moorish or Arabian original [sic].<<40His low regard for the guitar,
as the epitome of defective education, is accentuated in a highly caustic comment:

About the year 1730 a teacherof the guitar, an Italian,arrived at London, and
posted up in the RoyalExchangea bill invitingpersonsto becomehis scholars;it began
thus:'De delectablmusic calit Chittarafit for te gantlmane ladis camera;'the bill had
at the top of it the figure of the instrumentmiserablydrawn,but agreeingwith that in
Mersennus.The poor man offeredto teachat a very low rate,but met with none that
could be prevailed on to learnof him.41

Similarly, the castanets are ,,artless instruments<, the ,,Morrice Dance< reflects
the >unabrogated< traces of the Moorish corruption of Spanish manners, and the

I, p. 259.
37BOURDELOT-BONNET,
8
These Spanish ,,bizarre< customs constitute a considerable portion in the travel literature (see
Note 19). See also Peter STALLYBRASSand Allon WHITE,ThePoliticsand Poeticsof Transgression(Ithaca,
1986), Introduction.
39Op.cit., 834.
soIbid., 891 (Note).
41 Ibid.,588 (Note).
104 J. ETZION,SPANISH MUSICAND WESTERNHISTORIOGRAPHY,
IRASM29 (1998) 2, 93-120

Fandango, also of supposedly Moorish origin, >>consistsof a variety of the most

indecent gesticulations that can be conceived.<<42
Although Burney, as already noted above, contests Hawkins's negative view
of Spain, he too expresses certain typical anti-Spanish sentiments that were circu-
lating in Europe at the time. We may well question why, in view of his high esteem
for sixteenth-century Spanish music, he was not prompted to inquire into the
>>presentstate of music< in the Peninsula during his two long journeys to the Con-
tinent. The exclusion of Spain from the itinerary of the Gentlemen's Grand Tour is
the most reasonable answer; but it appears, in addition, that Spain did not arouse
Burney's curiosity because he had already assumed from earlier musical sources,
or perhaps from some travel literature, that the Spanish contemporary scene did
not merit a special excursion. In both The Present State of Music in France and Italy
(1771-73) and ThePresentStateof Music in Germany,TheNetherlandsand United
Provinces (1773-75), Burney indeed echoes the opinions of those 'impertinent'
travelers who did cross the Pyrenees and reported on the religious fanaticism and
superstitions of the Spaniards. For example, he attributes the decline of Antwerp,
a city he had been so anxious to visit, to the residues of the bygone Spanish domin-
ion. Witnessing a religious procession one evening there (>>inhonour of some leg-
endary saint<) he observes:
The Spaniardshave left this good people a largeportionof prideand superstition;
the former is shewn by the dress and inactivity of the nobles, and the latter by the
bigotry and lively faith of the rest;thereare more crucifixesand virgins, in and out of
churcheshere, than I ever met in any other RomanCatholictown in Europe.<<43

Or, in his biographical account of Signora Mignotti, one of the foremost Euro-
pean singers at the time (whom he met in Munich), he describes how during her
stay in Spain (as a protege of Farinelli) she was requested to sing for >>apregnant
woman of high rank who longed to hear her. ?>>The Spaniards,< he remarks, >>have
a religious respect for these involuntary and unruly affections in females thus
circumstanced, however they may be treated as problematic in other countries.<
Upon royal command, Mignotti had to comply finally with the lady's desire, and
Burney concludes cynically that her singing perhaps prevented the infant >>from
being marked, in some part of his body, with a music paper, or from having an
Italian song written with indelible character on its face.<<44
Burney probably knew more about Spanish music than he chose to disclose in
his writings, which from the standpoint of the Black Legend may be seen as a
deliberate omission of what >>countsin Spain's favor.<< For example, it is highly
conceivable that during his long visits with Farinelli in Bologna, the latter prob-
ably told him many details about the musical life of the Spanish court, where he
had resided for twenty-three years.45Burney's lengthy and fascinating account,

42
Ibid., 216, 588 (Note).
43The Present State of Music in Germany,TheNetherlandsand United Provinces, 44.
" Ibid., 161--62.
45The Present State Music in Franceand
of Italy, pp. 204ff.
 SPANISHMUSICANDWESTERN
J.ETZION, IRASM29 (1998)2, 93-120
HISTORIOGRAPHY, 105

however, ignoresthis significantstage in the singer'scareer.He only recountssome

well-known anecdotes, such as how Farinellicalmed Philip V's nerves by singing
the same arias every evening, in returnfor control of the court opera in Madrid
and the permission to import the best Italianoperas and singers. Burneyadmires
Farinelliall the more for having endured so many years in Madrid, since >>itis a
great proof of his characterthat in a countryand court,where jealously and pride
are so predominant,he continued so long to be the king's chief favorite,a distinc-
tion odious to every people, without the least quarrelor differencewith any of the
Spaniards.<<"
Neither does Burney'spersonal acquaintancewith other musicians who had
been to Spain extend beyond passing referencesin his travelmemoirs.Describing,
for example, his meeting with the tenor SignorPanzachiat the Bavariancourt, he
comments:
I was likewiseindebtedto this gentlemanfor a very particularaccountof the
musicof Spain,wherehe hadresidednineyears;andhe wasnotonlykindto lendme
manycuriousSpanishbooks,on thesubjectof Music,buttosingmeseveralTonadillas
andSeguidillas,whichhe is said,by personswho havebeenin Spain,to do as well,
thatis, as truly,as is possibleforonenotnativeof thatcountry.47
In short, whatever Burneylearnedfrom this singer, or from Farinelli,or from
any other person aboutcontemporarySpanishmusic, is not discussed in his books;
and the few Spanish music scores he acquiredare evident only from the auction-
ing of his libraryafter his death." No less significantis the fact that both Burney
and Hawkins underplay the long and productive Spanish careers of Domenico
Scarlattiand Boccherini.

III
The eighteenth-centurynotion that genuine Spanish music consisted prima-
rily of old-fashioned churchmusic and popularmusic left a deep imprinton West-
ern music historiographythroughout the nineteenth century. Notwithstanding,
these two stylistic categorieswere now approachedfrom a new aestheticperspec-
tive, which appearsto be commensuratewith the generaltransformationof Spain's
image in Western Europe. In contrast to the eighteenth-centurydepreciation of
Spanish music from the Rationalistperspective of 'progress,'the nineteenth-cen-
tury Romanticsensibility was nourishedby it to satisfy its exotic palate.Suffice it
to outline here that following the discovery of Spain, as a consequence of direct
Frenchand Englishinvolvementin the PeninsularWars(1808-1814), Spainserved

6Ibid.,219.
o Ibid.,124-25.
4 The auction
catalogueincludes threebooks of tonadillasand seguidillas (publishedin Madrid
in 1773,which could conceivablyhavebeen presentedto himby Panzachi);six harpsichordsonatasop.
1 by Gomes;and Iriarte'spoem, >LaMuisica<(see below).
106 SPANISHMUSICANDWESTERN
J.ETZION, IRASM29 (1998)2, 93-120
HISTORIOGRAPHY,

as a Romanticlandscape of mysticism and escapism, notably through the forlorn

Moorish paradise or the Gypsy sensuality of Andalusia,and the idealized chival-
ric past of barrenCastilia. Paradoxically,the more Europebecame familiarwith
Spain,the more it engaged in exotic reveriesaboutits nature.At the same time, the
attitudetowardSpainremainedambivalent,as many negativefeaturesof the eight-
eenth-centuryBlackLegend were perpetuated.49
Spanish exoticism had indeed manifoldmanifestationsin the nineteenth-cen-
tury Europeanmusical repertoire,which in itself deserves a separateand compre-
hensive study.50However, it is only partiallyreflectedin Westernmusic historio-
graphy.Fromjournalisticpublications,music historiesand dictionaries,as the most
representativehistoriographicsources, it becomes evident that the preoccupation
with Spanishmusic was limited to begin with. Thesesources eitherfocus on Span-
ish popular music (especiallyon thatof 'exotic'Andalusia),which by then became
palpable in the Europeanscene; or, they generally continue to rely on previous
allusions to Spanish church music of the remote 'Golden Age', which in fact was
unknown except for a handful of works (e.g., by Moralesand Victoria).All other
aspects of Spanishmusicallife, with the exceptionof importedItalianoperas,were
ignored because it was assumed thathardlyany other genresexisted, or were con-
sidered a priori insignificant.
The music journalsare the most revealing sources with respect to the crystal-
lization of the image of Spanishmusic in the Europeanscene during the first three
decades of the nineteenth century.5'Their attitude is often ambivalent, for they

49 See GARCIACARCEL,
op.cit., 163-197.
0
Let me briefly point out here that the so-called >exoticism<< of Spanish music, which will be
treated in length in my forthcoming study, should be viewed in the broader context of the considerable
dissemination of Spanish literature in Europe from the seventeenth century on, rather than examined
on the basis of the musical repertoire only. Moreover, although the list of nineteenth-century European
instrumental and vocal dramatic works containing Spanish musical elements is enormous, it appears
to have generally been outshone by the lasting popularity of Bizet's Carmen.Among the vast literature
on this subject, see (in chronological order) Ernest MARTINENCHE, Histoire de l'influenceespagnolesur
la littiraturefranqaise.L'exotisme
dansla littiraturefranqaise.LeRomanticisme
(Paris,1922/1938);Pierre
JOURDA,L'exoticismedans la littiraturefranqaisedepuisChataubriand (Paris, 1956);Leon-Francois
HOFFMANN,Romantique Espagne.L'imagede l'Espagneen Franceentre1800et 1850 (Princeton,1961);
Isle Hempel LIPSCHUTZ, SpanishPainting and the FrenchRomantics(Cambridge, 1972); Heinz BECKER
(ed.), Die Couleurlocale in der Operdes 19. Jahrhunderts(Regensburg, 1976), especially 47-73, 131-159;
JacqulineBERBEN,TheQuestfor Self-Knowledge:
A Morphology
of theFrenchRomanticVoyageto Spain
(Doct. Diss., University of Texas, Austin, 1980); Imagen romdnticade Espafia (Ministerio de Cultura,
Madrid,1981); Christiane LE BORDAYS, L'hispanisme musical franqais, Revue internationaldu musique
frangaise6 (1981), 40--52; Thomas KOEBNER & Gerhart PICKERODT (eds.), Die Andere Welt. Studien
zumExotismus(Frankfurt,1987);Anke SCHMITT,DerExotismusin derdeutschenOperzwischenMozart
und Spohr (Hamburg, 1988), chapter 2 (>Das Maurische Spanien<); Judith ETZION, The Spanish fan-
dango..., Anuario Musical 48 (1993), 229-250; and Francisco CALVO SERRALLER,La imagenromdntica
de Espafia.Artey arquitectura
delsigloXIX(Madrid,1995).
51 The journals examined are the Quarterly Musical Magazine and Review (1818-1828), The
Harmonicon(1823---1833), LaRevueMusicale (1827-35), AllgemeineMusikalischeZeitung (Leipzig, 1799-
1822), and Cdcilia(1825-29). The extent to which music journalism of subsequent decades reflects the
impact of Spanish popular songs and dances on the European public and composers has not yet been
explored.
 SPANISHMUSICAND WESTERN
J.ETZION, IRASM29 (1998)2, 93--120
HISTORIOGRAPHY, 107

reflect the typical Romantic fascination with the 'genuine' national qualities of
Spanish songs and dances, yet maintain an air of superiority towards a culture
that was seen to lack the European highbrow decorum.52Perhaps the earliest ex-
ample (still prior to the Peninsular Wars) of such ambivalence appears in an article
titled >Etwas iiber den jetzigen Zustand der Musik in Spanien,<<issued in the first
year of the Leipzig Allgemeine MusikalischeZeitung (1799).53Written as a travel re-
port by a German music amateur who had spent two years in Madrid, it contains
some of the pivotal topoi of Spanish music throughout the nineteenth century. The
author is particularly impressed by the exceptional musical proficiency of the rela-
tively >cultured& (i.e., urban) Spaniards, whose impassioned performance of songs
and dances is accompanied by expressive corporeal gestures and sexual insinua-
tions. He is also struck by the technical effects and expressive qualities of the gui-
tar, which cannot be fully appreciated unless eyewitnessed in Spain.54In short, his
encounter with this new, exotic musical experience carries him away to the point
of >forgetting the entire world,<< a sensation he has not experienced in any Italian,
German or French operas.
Spanish >>national music,< according to his report, consists of >fandangos, bo-
leros, seguidillas, tonadillas and tiranas.<<Special attention is paid to the bolero,
which by that time had already begun to assume in Europe the emblematic role of
the exotic, carnal dance of love:

One can imagine a tall, beautifuland elegantly dressed Spanish girl alongside a
slim fellow - how are they both waiting anxiouslyfor the conclusionof the ritornello
[i.e., estribillo],and then approacheach other reticentlywith a few fine steps, while
expressingtheirgreatpassion throughthe clankingof theircastanets!They are staring
yearninglyat each other,declaringtheirlove in pantomime.And only when the sign is
given to both, they bounce joyfully around each other, abandoningthemselves to the
delirium of pleasure,often throughvery passionatemovements,until they are intoxi-
catedby joy and fatigue.Upon the last syllableof the singer,they stand still momentar-
ily, in an artful yet naturalposture, and then the musician enters with the ritornello
and lets them rest.5

That the Spanish dance was seen to represent the sum and substance of Span-
ish exoticism is evident from remarkably similar descriptions in numerous travel

52 A survey of some majorliteraryjournalsof the 1820s

(e.g., TheLiteraryGazette,New Monthly
MagazineandLiterary Journaland LeGlobe)shows, likewise,thatSpainevoked at once repugnanceand
fascination,derisionand admiration,and, in short,a superciliousattitudetowardsthe country'sback-
wardness alongside the Romanticcompassionfor its 'ill-fated',yet 'unspoiled'and courageous,peo-
ple. The literaryworks reviewed in thesejournalscomprisehorrorstoriesabout the Inquisition,politi-
cal reportson the deplorablesituationin Spain,and travelmemoirsof ambiguousattitudes;but, at the
same time, also popularnovels and poetryon chivalricand chivalric-likethemes,patrioticsongs, pub-
licationsof medieval Spanishromances,and Orientaltales and poetry relatedto Andalusia.
3No. 25, 391-95 (20 March,1799)and no. 26, 401--405 (27 March,1799);signed by >B...n<<.
5 As an illustrationthe authorenclosestwo musicalexamplesof instrumental boleras<
(known in the West simply as ,seguidillas
and two populartunesaccompaniedby castanets and violins
(the latterreplacingthe guitar).,boleros<<)
SIbid.,no.25,393.
108 SPANISHMUSICANDWESTERN
J.ETZION, IRASM29(1998)2, 93--120
HISTORIOGRAPHY,

books throughout the first half of the nineteenth century."Spanish dance, in ef-
fect, became totally identifiedwith Spanishmusic, or as the authorputs it, >Speak-
ing of Spanish music without alluding to dance is impossible<<. The fandango,bo-
lero, and cachucha,in particular,ignited the Europeanimaginationbecause they
defied the decorumof Europeanbongoat (i.e.,symmetricalmusicalphrasing,poised
dance movements, restrainedphysical posture,elegant attire,'proper'sexual con-
duct, etc.). Viewed as the epitome of Spanish sensuousness, they nurturedthose
very desires prohibited by Europeansociety, as did so many other phenomena
associated with the Other.
Reading in between the lines, however, the Germantravelernonetheless ex-
hibits a condescending attitudetowards the Spaniards,mainly because they >nor-
mally have little culture.< The firstSpanishsongs he heard led him to assume that
the singers were insane because of theirbad intonationand monotonous style; or,
believing that some distantscreamswere coming froma victim of bandits,he soon
discovered that it was instead a shepherdin the >>Elysianfields,< who was singing
while grazing his >pious? flock. The educated classes (with whom he evidently
had little familiarity)were considered not to appreciateart music, as they pre-
ferred the bolero to the most beautiful works by Haydn and Pleyel. In addition,
Spanish composers were believed to have little chanceof succeeding in their own
country,even if they were reputableinstrumentalists(and in any case they rarely
excelled on Europeaninstruments).57 In sum, the only positive qualitiesof Spanish
music conveyed in this particulartravel reportare the fervent nationalsongs and
dances of the urban Spaniards.
A differentperspectiveof Spanishmusicis apparentin the contemporarymusic
dictionaries(thatis, priorto the PeninsularWars),which tend to convey a sense of
historicalcontinuity of art music, ratherthan to reporton contemporarypopular
music. The earliestexamples arethe conciseentriesof >>L'Espagne<by PierreLouis
Ginguen6 in the Encyclop6die Mithodique(Paris,1791)58and the >>Historyof Music
of Spain,< writtenby Burneyin his lastyearsand appearingposthumouslyin Rees's
Cyclopedia.59 Both entries begin with the paraphrasingof Burney'schapteron six-
teenth-centurySpanishmusic in his earlierGeneral History,alreadydiscussedabove;
thereafter,each bringsit up to date by outliningdifferentaspects.Ginguen6briefly

s6The above descriptionmighthave been paraphrasedfromC.A.FISCHER's ReisevonAmsterdam

iiberMadrid,issued in the same year (1799).Similardescriptionsfrequentlyappear in other, widely
diffused travelbooks,such as JosephTOWSEND,A JourneythroughSpainin theYears1786-1787 (Lon-
don, 1792);JeanFranqoisBOURGOING, TheModernStateofSpain(London,1807fromthe Frenchorigi-
nal of 1788--89);and Alexandrede LABORDE, del'Espagne
descriptif
Itindraire (Paris,1808).See ETZION,
)The Spanishfandango...((Forrecentcomprehensivestudies of the bolero,see Encuentro Internacional.
LaEscuelaBolera,ed. RogerSALAS(Madrid,1992);TheOriginsof theBoleroSchool,an issue devoted to
the bolero in Studiesin DanceHistory,4/1 (1993);and PilarLLORENSet al., ))LaEscuelaBolerao el
'EspafiolismoRomantico',<<in Historiadela Danzaen Catalufia(Barcelona,1987),42-69.
57 The author concludes with brief biographicalanecdotesrelating to a handful of musicians,
mostly foreigners,who did achieve distinctionin Spain,includingBoccheriniand Ronzi.
- Eds. Nicolas EtienneFRAMERY and PierreLouisGINGUENE;vol. 1 (1791),520-24.
59 Samuel REES,TheCyclopedia; or an UniversalDictionaryof Arts Sciencesand Literature.
39 vols.
(London,1802-1819). Burney'sentryappearswithin the generalentryof ))Spain(((n.p.).
 SPANISHMUSICANDWESTERN
J.ETZION, IRASM29 (1998)2, 93-120
HISTORIOGRAPHY, 109

discussesthe eighteenth-centurypopulargenres(i.e.,the sainete,zarzuela,tonadilla,

and Spanish dances) and emphasizes the presence of Farinelliand the Italianop-
era in Madrid.Whatstands out in this entryis the severe criticismof the vast sums
spent on church music, which, he claims, amount to 400,000ducats annually for
the Spanishcathedralsand collegiatechurches,and 20,000pesos annuallyfor every
musician participatingin the Madrilenianfeasts. These figures are cited here, as
well as in later sources, in order to underscorethe power of the Spanish Catholic
Churchas contrastedwith EnlightenedEurope.>This money,<<he observes,>would
have been well spent in a country where the people are rich, or where one values
artisticaccomplishment;if [only] this musical pomp did not serve to foment the
superstitiousinclinationsof these people, and if superstitiondid not do them more
damage in one day, than the joy procuredby music in one century.<
Burney,on the otherhand,updates his own GeneralHistoryin Rees'sCyclopedia
by incorporating a handful of earlier eighteenth-century published Spanish
sources that found their way to Europethrough translationsinto English and/or
French.In addition to emphasizing the treatises of Nasarre and Feijoo,60he dis-
cusses in some detail Iriarte'spoem LaM"tsica,whose vivid descriptionof Spain's
multiple musical activitiesand divergent styles, including the recentClassicstyle,
signifies for him that Spain has finally caught up with the taste and progress of
modern Europe.61He regardsIriarteas an enlightened Spaniardindeed, >whose
judgment and taste are correctand elegant, and who has no prejudices,except in
favour of good music of every kind and country.<< Yet,since Spanishchurchmusic
is still grantedthe highest esteem in Iriarte'spoem, Burneycopies the names of the
church composers listed there (without knowing anything about most of them)
and arrives at the conclusion that Spanish church music >was more solemn and
learned than elsewhere.< As Burneywas unfamiliarwith the recentinfluences of
Europeanoperaticand instrumentalstyles on Spanishchurchmusic, he continued
to perpetuateits image in terms of the old, veneratedmastersof the stileantico.

60 PadreFeijoo'sMisica de los Templos (1726)becameaccessibleto Burneythroughan anonymous

Englishtranslation(AnEssayon ChurchMusic,1778).He criticizesthe authorfor his oconstantcompliant
[sic]andcensure<< regardingtheinfiltrationof ItalianoperaticelementsintoSpanishchurchmusic.Feijoo's
views on music, on the otherhand, were embracedby most nineteenth-century Spanishscholars,who
depreciatedSpanishmusicof the seventeenthand eighteenthcenturiesbecausetheirferventnationalism
would not admit any foreign 'contamination'.See Antonio MARTINMORENO,El PadreFeijooy la
esteticamusicaldel siglo XVIII,in II Simposio sobrePadreFeijooy su siglo(Oviedo,1981),423--441.
Burneyallots to Nasarrea separate,more extendedentryin Rees'sCyclopedia, where he outlines
his Fragmentos Mzisicos( 2nd ed., Madrid,1700).He was evidently unfamiliarwith Nasarre'smonu-
mental Escuelamtsicasegin la prdcticamoderna(Zaragoza,1724).
61Iriarte'spoem (publishedoriginallyin 1779)enjoyedtremendouspopularityin Spainand abroad
throughmultipleeditionsand translations.Thethirdedition(1789)appearsin thecatalogueof Burney's
library.See Jose SUBIRA,El poeta-compositor 2 vols.
Iriartey el cultoespafioldel meldlogo(melodrama),
(Barcelona,1949-50); EmilioCOTARELO Y MORI,Iriartey suOpoca (Madrid,1897);AntonioMARTIN
MORENO,Historiadela muisica Vol.4:SigloXVIII(Madrid,1985),279-288; andJavierSUAREZ
espaiiola.
PAJARES,T6mas de Iriarteen el II Centenario,in Cuadernos deMisica (Madrid,1992),111-149. The
poem is also reviewed in an articletitled UJberdas spanischeGedicht:La Musica,von d. Thomasde
Yriarte,<<in the AlllgemeinemusikalischeZeitung,no. 49, 821-23 (4 September,1799).
110 SPANISHMUSICANDWESTERN
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HISTORIOGRAPHY,

IV
Following the PeninsularWars,the flow of Spanishpopular music to Europe
increasedconsiderably,as reflectedin its frequentpromotionin the music journals
of the 1820s and 1830s. The most eye-catching items are advertisement and re-
views of recent publicationsof Spanish songs and dances, generally arrangedfor
voice with guitar or piano accompaniment.These also include Spanish patriotic
songs, which not only served as pro-Spanishand anti-Frenchpoliticalpropaganda,
but also as the reflection of the Romanticdeference to the Spanish struggle for
freedom.62Certainly,the Spanish musicians residing in Paris and London as po-
litical exiles played a decisive role in spreading this vogue. The seguidillas-boleras
and patrioticsongs of FernandoSor,the popularsongs of ManuelGarciaand Jose
MelchorGomis, and the Spanish songs sung by the legendaryMariaMalibran,in
her voluptuous coupde gosier,are the most salient examples.63Obviously, while
such songs or dances had constituted an integral part of most social activities in
Spain, in Europethey became transformedinto couleurlocale.Although they were

62Among the patrioticsongs, Riego'sMarchis the most notableexample.Itsarrangementforvoice

and piano accompanimentwas publishedin the supplementto TheHarmonicon (1823),with the follow-
ing comment:
The melody upon which this Marchis constructed,is the popularair of Spain.The present
Song was frequentlysung by the Soldiers,preparatoryto their going into action,and excited in
them the greatestenthusiasm.When GeneralRiego left the isle of Leon, for the purpose of pro-
claimingthe Constitution[in 1820],the division by which he was escortedchantedit in triumph;
the Cortesultimatelydeclaredthat it should be adopted by the whole SpanishArmy, and it is
[sic],consequently,become the NationalMarch.- This air is printedin exact conformityto the
SpanishMS.transmittedto us.
An Englishtranslationis also provided alongsidethe Spanishtext of the song. On Sor'spatriotic
songs, see BrianJEFFREY, FernandoSor,Composer andGuitarist(London,1977),24-29.
3 TheQuarterly MusicalMagazineandReviewsummarizesit as follows (no. 30, 1825,252):
When SignorGarcia(a Spaniardby birth)was in England,and when the Spanishwere first
driven from theircountry,he and his daughter[la Malibran]and familyintroducedSpanishna-
tionalairs, some of which in high fashionat the privateconcertsof London.Hence,we presume,
comes the taste which encouragesthe publicationof the petty and peculiarthings containedin
this set [i.e., six Spanishairs with guitaraccompaniment].It is curiousto observeby what singu-
lar circumstancesknowledge is propagatedin variouscountries.By these events, the emigration
of the unfortunatepatriotsof Spainand the casualresidenceof a Spanishsingerof eminence,the
language of Spain has made more way in Englandthan for centuries.It sings agreeably.(A re-
view of >>SixSpanishairs with accompanimentfor the Spanishguitarby C.M.Sola<<)
The music journalsalso containnumerousreviews of benefitconcertsfor the Spanishrefugees,
although most of their programsdid not contain Spanish music. On Spanish exiles in Europe, see
Miguel ARTOLA,Los afrancesados(Madrid, 1989);Vicente LLORENS,Liberalesy romdnticos.Una
emigracidn espafiolaen inglaterra(1823-1834) (Madrid,1968),66---72;and JEFFREY,op. cit., 43ff. An
excellent monographicstudy of the nineteenth-centurySpanishcancidnappears in Celsa ALONSO
GONZALEZ,LaCancidnLfricaEspafiola enelsigloXIX(Madrid,1998).Forrecentpublicationsof Garcia's
songs, see ManuelGarcwa (1775-1832). Canciones y capriciosIfricos,ed. CelsaAlonso Gonzalez(Madrid,
1994);and La canci6ncon acompafiamiento de guitarra,ed. JavierSuarez-Pajares(Madrid,1995). See
also JohnDOWLING,JoseMelchorGomis,compositor romdntico (Madrid,1974).Among the dozens of
studies on MariaMalibran,I cite here Howard BUSHNELL,MariaMalibran.A Biography of theSinger
(UniversityPark,Penn.,1979);and AprilFITZLYON, MariaMalibran. DivaoftheRomantic Age(London,
1987).
 SPANISHMUSICANDWESTERN
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HISTORIOGRAPHY, 111

often incorporated as an exotic touch within dramatic and instrumental works of

Western composers, their widest dissemination was through easy arrangements
and imitations, which served as salon pieces to be played by women, and they
were hence conceived as having inferior aesthetic value.
Similarly, the guitar features in the music journals in the emblematic role of
Spanish genuineness. The public concerts of Spanish guitarists such as Trinidad
Huerta, Dionisio Aguado, Mariano Ochoa and, above all, Fernando Sor, evidently
left a profound impression on their English and French audiences, giving rise to
numerous publications of guitar instruction books and guitar arrangements. One
of the reviews describes it as follows:

Thanksto the effortsof Messrs.Sor,Sola, Huertaand otherprofessors,the guitar

instead of remaining an almost unknown instrument,or at least considered only as
proper for romanticcavaliersof Spain,and Spanishserenades,has graduallymade its
way into the circleof fashion,and is now prettygenerallyto be found in the saloons of
their fair votaries. The instrumentis become an objectof manifest importancein the
art, especially to all arrangersof music, for arrangementis particularlyadapted to the
powers of the new favourite,and accordinglywe have in our latter numbershad to
notice some quantityof guitar music for guitaralone - for guitarand piano-forte-
for guitarand flute, etc. etc. and a great deal of this has been very good."

Notwithstanding the admiration for the virtuosity of Sor and his compatriots,
the guitar did not acquire the social prestige conferred on the European 'art' in-
struments. It was even regretted that Sor's >talent and industry should have been
so misapplied; for the same quantity of labour would have given him great, per-
haps unrivalled superiority upon an instrument in every way more worthy of his
Thus, similar to the Spanish songs and dances, the guitar is recommended
genius.<<•
only to the >young ladies - not as a substitute, but as an alternative amusement to
relieve the graver parts of their musical studies.<<66
This nineteenth-century aesthetic distinction between >graver(( art and mere
musical >>amusement< also permeates the handful of travel reports on the 'state of
music' in Spain which appeared in the music journals after the Napoleonic Wars.
For example, a very unfavorable attitude is voiced in letter from Madrid (1824) by
a German diplomat and amateur flutist:67

" The
QuarterlyMusicalMagazineand Review,no. 34 (1827),254-55 (a review of ))ACourse of
PreceptiveLessons for the SpanishGuitar,designed for the mutualassistanceof Masterand Pupil;by
JamesTaylor,in two Books.J. Lindsay;<< and ,,L'Aurore,ou Journalde Guitare,Choix des plus beaux
Morceauxpour cet instrument,Nos. 1 and 2. Ewerand Johanning<).
65 TheQuarterly MusicalMagazineandReview,vol. 6 (1824),547. For similarobservations,see The
Harmonicon, 1824,48;and Revuemusicale7 (1830),267 and 12 (1832-33), 22 (citedin JEFFREY, op.cit.,
pp. 105, 106).
66 Ibid.,544.
67 )Auszug aus einem Privatbriefeaus Madridim December1824<< 2 (1824),
(signed )>M<),Caicilia,
119-121. In the following year it was translatedas >ThePresent State of Music in in The
Harmonicon, 1825,130.My quotationis takenfromthat translation. Spain,<
112 SPANISHMUSICANDWESTERN
J.ETZION, IRASM29(1998)2, 93-120
HISTORIOGRAPHY,

The taste of the Spanish public requires,of all things, subjectsthat are merely
pleasing, somewhat like those of the elder Pleyel.Upon the whole, instrumentalmusic
is much less liked than vocal music, and boleros.The native composersare, generally
speaking,extremelyinsignificant.Spaincanboastbut onegood composer- Carnicer.
He at present directs the Operaof the capital,and has acquiredconsiderablefame by
several works written in the style of Rossini,without, however, attainingto the high
genius of his prototype.The productionsof the other composersdo not often exceed
the limits of waltzes, country-dances,variations,and the like; and whatever is pro-
duced as original in church music is very shallow, and deficient in knowledge and
harmony... the Spanishgenius is not, or seems not, capableof giving birthto any mu-
sical work of importance.

That the cultivation of music in Spain is regarded as less 'advanced' by the

German diplomat is understandable in view of his conviction concerning the su-
periority of the latest German instrumental music." It is, however, his conclusion
that musical excellence is not inherent in the Spanish >>genius<<that underlies the
entire article, to the point of downgrading even the most favorable musical im-
pressions he encountered in Spain. The appearance of the English translation of
this letter in The Harmoniconduring the same year suggests that this attitude was
not confined to an isolated private opinion.
A highly positive approach, on the other hand, appears in a brief excerpt from
pendantlesannies
surlaguerred'Espagne,
S6bastianCastil'sMimoiresd'unApothicaire
1808 i~ 1814 (Paris, 1828). It was also published in the Revue Musicale (1828) and
subsequently translated or cited in other sources as the most up-to-date survey of
Spanish music history.69Although its chronological narrative and biographical data
are often confused, it does succeed in sketching for the first time an updated out-
line of the most significant landmarks of Spanish music, without any supercilious
overtones. Opening with a brief paragraph on the important contribution of the

68His criticism of the lack of appreciation for German instrumental music in Spain is described by
him as follows:
Among the instrumental performers of note resident here, I name to you, above all others, a
first-rate pianoforte player, Madam Medeck, of Russian origin, and brought up in the Conserva-
tory of Music at Paris. Her husband, a native of Germany, is a good violoncellist, and possessed of
profound acquirements in harmony. His compositions are, however, of too serious a character to
please the taste of the >>gayworld< of Madrid. This clever couple came here from Valencay [sic],
and were afterwards received in the King's chapel. But, a few months ago, both lost their places,
and they now support themselves by giving instructions. A grand piano-forte of six octaves, which
they had procured at a great expense from Vienna, passes for the very best in the kingdom. In
their house one hears, from time to time, selections of German music by Mozart, Himmel [sic],
Dusseck, Klengel, Cramer, Kalkbrenner, etc., which are here considered to be great rarities, since
foreign printed compositions can, strictly speaking, be only obtained by being smuggled into the
country.
See further, Judith ETZION, >)Musicasabia:The Reception of Classical Music in Madrid c1830--
c1870,< forthcoming in the InternationalJournalof Musicology.
69This source has often been attributed erroneously to Franqois Henri Castil-Blaze, perhaps due
Literatur
Darstellungdermusikalische
to its listing as such in C.F. BECKER,Systematisch-chronologische
von derfriihesten bis die neueste Zeit (Leipzig, 1836), 95. My quotations are taken from the English trans-
lation in TheHarmonicon, 1829, 29--30.
 SPANISHMUSICAND WESTERN
J.ETZION, IRASM29 (1998)2, 93--120
HISTORIOGRAPHY, 113

Andalusian Moors to Spanish music theory and education (therebychanging the

Moors' image from a 'contaminating'race to a people of scientific wisdom),70the
author proceeds to enumerate various leading Spanish theorists, composers and
performersfrom the fifteenth century to his own time, including many who had
not appeared in previous sources. While observing that Spanish composers have
been mostly chapelmasterswho produced only sacred music, he does emphasize
the cultivation of Italian,Frenchand Germanmusic in some majorcities. He con-
cludes with a highly favorabledescriptionof the >>distinguished characterof mu-
sic purely Spanish< (i.e., popular songs and dances, and the guitar) although,
from his Frenchstandpoint, it is not quite considered ,,music, properly so called<
by its very nature.
Turning to music dictionaries and history books of the early decades of the
nineteenth century, it becomes apparent that their interest in the up-to-date his-
tory of Spanish music, as presented in the Mimoiresd'un Apothicaire,is indeed
very scant. As their selection of material was based on art works of the Italian,
French and German ,,schools,< Spanish music in general, and Spanish popular
music in particular,did not fit their prescribedcriteria.They continued therefore
to paraphrasethe same eighteenth-centurysources, such as the music histories of
Boudelot-Bonnet,Burney, and Hawkins, the dictionary entries of Ginguen6 and
Burney,or the biographicalmusic dictionaries.At best, they also drew upon more
recent informationprovided in some of the above-mentionedjournalisticarticles.
As a result, they read like a continuous deja1vu: the handful of entries on Spanish
musiciansin Choron-Fayolle'sDictionnaire historiquedesmusiciens(Paris,1810--11)
are taken from the dictionariesof Walther,Forkeland Gerber;PietroLichtenthal's
entry of >>Spagna<in Dizionarioe Bibliografia dellaMusica(Milan, 1826) is based
mainly on Bonnet-Bourdelot'sand Burney'shistorybooks, as well as on the travel
report in the AllgemeineMusikalischeZeitungof 1799. Thomas Busby's A General
Historyof Music (London, 1819)condenses the discussion of Spain from Burney's
and Hawkins's music histories and embraces the negative attitude of the latter;
William C. Strafford'sA Historyof Music (London, 1830) paraphrasesBurney's
entry in Rees's Cyclopediaand the Mimoiresd'un Apothicaire... (from its English
translation in The Harmonicon,1829); and the bibliographical sources listed in
Carl Ferdinand Becker's Systematisch-chronologische Darstellungder musikalische
Literatur(Leipzig,1836--39/1964) are Walther's,Forkel'sand Gerber'sdictionar-
ies, Burney's entry in Rees's Cyclopedia(translatedinto German in Cacilia,1829),
the travel report in the AllgemeinemusikalischeZeitung,and the Mimoiresd'un
Apothicaire...71

7 See Philip V. BOHLMAN,The EuropeanDiscovery of Music in the IslamicWorld and the

>>Non-Western<in 19th-CenturyMusicHistory,Journalof Musicology5 (1987),147-163.
7nSimilar'recycling'of the same sources also appears in the music journals.For example, The
QuarterlyMusicalMagazineandReview(vol. 3, 1821,477--484) presentsa briefsketchof Spanishmusic
historywhich draws on Ginguene'sand Burney'sentries,as well as the above-citedtravelreportfrom
Musikalische
the Allegemeine Zeitung(1799).
114 IRASM29 (1998) 2, 93--120
J. ETZION,SPANISH MUSICAND WESTERNHISTORIOGRAPHY,

Nonetheless, the aftermath of the Peninsular Wars did eventually awaken the
understanding that Spanish music history must contain more than just the same
old circulating data about old Spanish church composers and theorists, or more
than brief journalistic sketches of Spanish popular music. First, the foreign visitors
to the Peninsula, who marveled at its archeological, architectural and artistic treas-
ures, must have presumably become aware of the myriad of untouched musical
manuscripts scattered in the cathedral archives. Second, the comprehension that
archival research was indispensable for the study of Western music history - and
that music history, like art history, was constituted by accumulating masterpieces,
whether already known or not yet discovered - began to be viewed by the 1830s,
at least hypothetically, as applicable to Spanish music history as well. It was per-
haps Louis Viardot (the Parisian writer, translator, director of the Italian opera in
Paris, and specialist in Spanish art), who first articulated the lamentable state of
research on Spanish music:

The music history [of Spain] would be interestingand curious: it would have
special attraction,which has not yet been treateddirectlyor indirectly.Nothing, abso-
lutely nothing, has been written about Spanish music... Without any guide or any
material,except for my memoirs and the aid of my friend'smemoirs, I am unable to
give this subjectall the elaborationit merits... The true music of Spainis sacredmusic,
a genre that can defy all the othercountries,and the archivesof its chapelshave price-
less and innumerabletreasures.But similarly to the Egyptiantreasures,they do not
leave the temple. Not only does Spainnot informEuropeaboutits musicalwealth,but
even in Spainitself the provincesdo not informeach other.Eachcathedralhas its own
tradition,repertoire,masters,and disciples... In Spainthere is no school, no common
works;and Spanish music, namely sacredmusic, is not a corpusbut a sheaf.n
Viardot also proposes an 'evolutionary' approach to the history of Span-
ish art music, in conjunction with Spanish literary history.73Accordingly, both the
literary and musical 'Golden Age' extend from the second half of the sixteenth
century to the first half of the seventeenth. (The composers he names are Salinas,
Juan Ginds Perez, and Monteverdi; the latter is often mentioned in nineteenth-
century Spanish sources as a Spanish composer.) The eventual decline of Spanish
literature to culturanismo(as exemplified in the poetry of Luis de G6ngora) is analo-
gous to the degeneration of Spanish church music into the sterile erudition of >>can-

72Sur l'histoiredes institutions, de la litterature,du

thfdtreet des beaux-artsen Espagne(Paris, 1835), pp.
376,379. TheHarmonicon (1832,p. 82-83), for example,offersa similarcomment:
It were to be wished thatsome well-informed,activemusician,possessed of discrimination
and real taste, could visit the comparativelyunknown librariesof that country;for a nation that
could produce so early as the sixteenthcentury,such a writerof the art, or ratherof science, as
Salinasof Burgos,must, it may be fairlypresumed,also have producedcompositionsworthy of
being generallyknown.
73Viardot probably based his approach on Antonio Eximeno's Dell'originee delle regolede la musica
(Rome,1774),or on its Spanishtranslation(Madrid,1796).
J.ETZION,SPANISHMUSICAND WESTERN IRASM29(1998)2, 93--120
HISTORIOGRAPHY, 115

ons, fugues, and contrapuntalintricacies.<< In sum, Viardot'scontinues to perpetu-

ate the notion that Spanish music history consists mainly of churchmusic, as well
as popular music.74
It took the colossal positivist scholarFranqoisJ.Fetis to attempta compilation
of all the biographicaldata and publicationsof Spanishmusicians known hitherto
in Europe. His first edition of the Biographie universelledesmusiciens(Paris,1835--
1846), despite its numerous inaccuracies,contains the largest number of Spanish
items documented since Walther'sfirst systematic attempt in the previous cen-
tury.7 In the second edition of the Biographie universelle(1860--65) he updates the
biographical entries and adds new ones, after having consulted recent Spanish
studies, notably those by Hilari6n Eslavaand Mariano SorianoFuertes.76 Altogether,
including the two supplementary volumes by Arthur Pougin (1878-1880), it con-
tains close to 300 biographicalentries extending from Medieval to contemporary
Spanish musicians active in Spain and abroad.
Nonetheless, not only did F6tis's Spanish entries remain meager within the
total output of his prodigious lexicographicstudy, but they certainly could not
have affected the prevalent Europeoutlook on Spain because, a priori,he did not
consider Spanish musicians to be among the great Europeanmasters,nor to have
produced>>great< works.At best,the Biographie servedas the majorsource
universelle
for other Europeanmusic dictionariesthroughoutthe remainderof the nineteenth
century, albeit, with substantiallyfewer entries on Spanish musicians. These are,
for example, Gustav Schilling's der Gesamten musikalischen
Encyclopaidie
Hermann Mendel's MusikalischesConversa-
Wissenschaften (Stuttgart,1838--41),7

74Viardotprobablyreached this conclusionon the basis of the absenceof a >genuine< operatic

school in Spain.This should be viewed in light of his deep involvementwith the operaticworld, as the
directorof the Italianoperain Parisand as PaulineGarcia'shusband.Forthe biographyof Viardot,see
April FITZLYON,ThePriceof Genius.A Lifeof PaulineViardot(London,1964).
7 Similarlyto Viardot,F6tisis completelyawareof his limitationswith regardto accessibilityto
biographiesof Spanishmusicians.In the Introductionto the firstedition he comments(xxvi):
The Spanish musicians,for example,who certainlyhad names of great merit in previous
centuries,arenot known, even among theircompatriots.Theirworks,encounteredin greatabun-
dance in the churchesand convents,attest to talentsof the firstorderand of originalgenius;but
we lackalmost completelyreferencesabouttheircomposers,and these referencescanbe found in
the accounts,the registers,and the originalworks deposited in the archivesof the country.
It should also be noted thatF6tismaintainedvery close contactswith Spanishmusicians.Among
his outstandingstudents were JuanCrisostomoArriaga,Jesusde Monasterio,GuillermoMorphy,and
Franciscode Asis Gil. His theorybooks,which were translatedintoSpanishand employed at the Royal
Conservatorio in Madrid,also served as a model for instructionmethodsby Spanishtheorists.
76Hilari6nESLAVA,LiraSacro-Hispana (Madrid,1852-1869, 10 vols.) and Brevememoria histdrica
de la muisicareligiosaen Espafia(Madrid,1860);and MarianoSORIANOFUERTES, Historiade la muisica
espafiola desdela venidadelosfenicioshastaelailode1850(Madrid,1855).Fetis'scorrespondencewith both
authors has not yet been studied.
7 In addition to drawing many of its entrieson Spanishcomposersfrom the firsteditionof F6tis's
Bibliographieuniverselle,Schilling'sentry on >Spanien-Spanische Musik<< paraphrasesearliersources,
particularlythe translationof Burney'sentryforRees'sCyclopedia (fromits Germantranslationin Cicilia,
1829)and the Mimoiresd'unApothicaire...
116 SPANISHMUSICANDWESTERN
J.ETZION, IRASM29 (1998)2, 93-120
HISTORIOGRAPHY,

tion-Lexicon (Berlin, 1870-1883),78 Robert Eitner's Bibliographieder Musik-

Sammelwerkedes XVI. und XVII. Jahrhunderts(Berlin, 1877) and Biographisch-
bibliographischesQuellen-Lexikon (Leipzig, 1900-1904), and up to the first edition
of Hugo Riemann'sMusiklexikon (Leipzig, 1882-1905).
The conviction that Spanishmusic history lies outside the confines of the Eu-
ropean orbitbecause Spain has rarelyproduced greatmusical geniuses, or that its
musical works are incompatible with the transcendentRomantic experience of
German instrumental music, is equally conspicuous in the music history books
from the 1830son. CertainlySpanishpopularmusic, no matterhow well-received
on the Europeanscene, was consideredevanescentby natureand thereforecould
not be dignified as 'high' art. Thus RaphaelGeorge Kiesewetterconsigns a hand-
ful of Spanish composers and theorists to an obscure corner in his Geschichteder
europaische-abendldndischen oderunsrer[sic] heutigenMusik(Leipzig, 1834)because
they are viewed as marginalto his conceptionof the principalEuropeanmusical
>epochs,<< headed by the greatEuropean>>geniuses<< Considering,in
or >>heroes.<<"
addition, the long history of animosity towards Spain in the Netherlands,
Kiesewetter'spatrioticmonograph,Die VerdienstderNiederlinderum die Tonkunst
(Amsterdam,1829)does not admit the importantrole of the Spanish court in the
cultivationof Franco-Flemishmusic. Likewise,the firstedition of August Wilhelm
Ambros's GeschichtederMusik(Leipzig, 1862-68), which extends only until the
end of the sixteenth century,introducesonly those Spanish composers who lived
in Rome as >forerunners<<of Palestrina (i.e., Bartolombde Escobedo, Francisco
Salinas,JuanEscribano,FranciscoGuerrero,FranciscoMorales,and Diego Ortiz),
or as belonging to the >>Ageof Palestrina<<(i.e.,TomasLuis de Victoria).Otto Kade,
who revised Ambros'sedition posthumously (1891),furtherobserves that despite
their genuineness, the old Spanish churchcomposers do not institute any >>Span-
ish school,<<but are ratheran extension of the Netherlandsschool.,
What particularlyhindered any genuine curiosity about Spanish music his-
tory was Francois-AugustGevaert'sreporton the state of music in Spain (1852).1

78Mendel's
entry (>,SpanischeMusik<) is the most extensive presentationof Spanishmusic his-
tory the nineteenth-centurylexicographicsources.He presentsa generalhistoricaland musicalsur-
in
vey of the multipleethnicregionsof the Peninsulaand also draws fromearlierhistoriographicsources,
as well as fromrecentstudies by Gevaert,Eslava,and SorianoFuertes.Theauthoris completelyaware
of the need to undertakeseriousresearchof Spanishmusic and indicatessome of its historicallacunae.
His entrieson Spanishcomposersare largelyderived fromF~tis'sBiographie universelle.
I Ramosde
Parejais theonly Spanishmusicianlistedby Kiesewetterduringthe>>Epochof Josquin.<<
He furthercommentsthat >TheSpaniards,too, were muchliked in the Pontificalchapelas singers [this
is takenfromBurney],and many of thembecameeminentas composersin the followingepoch [i.e.,the
epoch of Willaert];in the present,however, thereis no Spaniarddeservingof noticeas such.<<[Quoted
from the English translationby RobertMULLER,Historyof theModernMusicof WesternEurope(Lon-
don, 1848/ R1973).]TheotherSpanishfiguresof subsequentepochslistedby KiesewetterareGuerrero,
Morales,Escobedo,Vaqueras,Victoria,Aguilerade Heredia,Perez,Teradeglias(Terradellas),Eximeno,
and Martiny Soler.
80GeschichtederMusik(facs.ed. by HeinrichReimann,Hildesheim,1968),vol. 3, 353--4.
stRapporta M. le Ministrede l'interieursur l'Ytatde la musique en Espagne,par M. Gevaert,
laureatdu grandconcoursde compositionmusicale,BulletinsdeL'Acaddmie Royaldessciences,desletters
et desBeaux-arts,vol. 19, no. 1 (1852),184-205.
J.ETZION,SPANISHMUSICAND WESTERN IRASM29 (1998)2,93--120
HISTORIOGRAPHY, 117

In view of his high standing as a scholar and his professed interest in Spanish
music, he was considered an'expert' whose opinion had significantweight. How-
ever, Gevaert's special trip to Spain did not result in any essentially new outlook
on Spanish music. In fact, he too often relies on earlier historiographicsources,
presenting them as if they were drawn from his own personal experience. To
begin with, similarly to earlier authors, he claims that the only proper Spanish
>>genres<< are church music and popular music. His report further contains pa-
tronizing, and often derogatory statements on most aspects of Spanish music.
Polyphonic church music, accordingto him, appearedin Spain only at the begin-
ning of the sixteenth century,with the arrivalof Flemishmusicians,because until
then Spain had been subjected to the legacy of the Moorish influence. In subse-
quent centuries only a handful of church composers were distinguishable (e.g.,
Jose de Torres,Jose de Nebra, PadreSoler,and ManuelJose Donyagiie), although
they did not match their Europeancounterparts.He also deplores the >distorted<
chant tradition in Spain, the inferior cathedral organs, the poor musical profi-
ciency of the organists, and the lack of >>asingle piece for this instrumentwritten
by any native artist.< Church music, he concludes, had ceased to exist since the
abolition of most of the Spanish monasteries,82 with the exception of a handful of
clergymen still dedicated to it (e.g., Hilar6n Eslava).
Gevaert'sbrief description (which he considered to be the first ever done) of
the 'genuine' featuresof Spanish popular music is largely imbued with the exotic
notion of Spanish Orientalism,taken from Fetis's'scientific'observationson Arab
music.3 Accordingly, he claims that the songs of Old Castile do not merit any
particularattention, because they >did not participatein the artistic and refined
civilization< of the Arabs,and that Catalonianpopular music does not exist at all.
Attempting to show, on the other hand, that in other peninsularregions popular
music is much more diverse than the typicaltriple-metersongs and dances known
in Europe,he commends the musical originalityof the Basquesprovinces, of cen-
tral Spain (which despite its exposure to >Northern< music, is >>indirect line from
Arabic music<<)and of Andalusia (for its pervasive Arab influence).Since the ex-
pulsion of the Moors, he observes, little genuine popular music existed in Spain
(e.g., the seguidillas, boleros,jotaaragonesa,and other songs or dances).Concern-
ing the present cultivationof music in Spain,other than churchor popular music,
Gevaert is disappointed at the low educational level of the Royal Conservatorio
in Madrid, the lack of any >>civilized<music outside Madrid and Barcelona,and
the predominanceof the Italianopera ever since Farinelli'sarrivalat the Spanish
court.

82This refersto the MendizAbalreformsin the mid 1830s,which resultedin the dismissalof hun-
dreds of churchmusicians.
0 F tis's de la musique,containedin the
survey of Arabmusic appearsin the Rdsume' philosophique
introductionto the first edition of the Biographie
universelle.
118 SPANISHMUSICANDWESTERN
J.ETZION, IRASM29(1998)2, 93--120
HISTORIOGRAPHY,

VI

One suspects that Gevaert, like many nineteenth-century travelers, saw in Spain
what he had expected to see and that during his journey he made little effort to
explore below the surface. His report, moreover, leads us back to the Hanslick-
Pedrell dispute, since Hanslick's assessment of Spanish music draws largely upon
it.84Francisco Asenjo Barbieri, one of the prominent Spanish musical figures dur-
ing the second half of the nineteenth century, and certainly the first Spanish musi-
cologist who based his studies on meticulous scrutiny of sources, was in close con-
tact with both Pedrell and Gevaert. Upon reading Pedrell's open letter to Hanslick
he sent him the following note (28 October 1891):

I liked very much your Openletter[to Hanslick]although in your place I would

have said to Hanslick:>>Youare a very good aestheticianbut you made a blunder in
citing Gevaert,not knowing that when he came to Spain to write his Memoria,instead
of studying Spanishmusic, he was busy courtingRoaldes[a femaleharpistin Madrid]
and takinglessons fromBarbieriin how to wrap himselfin the cape he had bought.<...
Hanslickis like Gevaert,and like FRtis,and like Scudo,and like all the foreignerswho
set out to discuss Spanishmatters(>cosasde Espafia<).But we are to be blamed [for it]
because we take them seriously and, even more so, becausewe areso slovenly thatwe
do not like to work in order to instructEuropethat we have been, and are, worthy. A
justifiedpunishment for our idleness!85

The issue, needless to say, is more complex than the sarcastic tone of this note.
Both Barbieri and Pedrell were surely aware that Hanslick's deprecatory attitude
merely voiced, albeit in his own typical and highly provocative manner, what had
been deeply ingrained in Europe for centuries. What underlies both Pedrell's re-
sponse to Hanslick and Barbieri's note to Pedrell is a sense of helplessness in the
face of this inveterate attitude. As Spanish nationalists they lament the neglect of
music research in Spain; as European-oriented positivists they cannot tolerate the
lack of scholarly rigor on the part of leading European figures who, as has been
demonstrated in this article, continued to recycle very limited, second-hand data,
without making the least effort to undertake a more responsible approach to their
research. (The only exception was Edmund Van der Straeten, who, in addition to

" Hanslick was apparently unaware of, or ignored, the fact that Gevaert eventually revised some
of his historical observations (e.g., the supposedly non-existent Spanish polyphonic music before the
sixteenth century), due to his eventual close contact with Spanish musicians and scholars. See Emilio
CASARES RODICIO, Las relaciones musicales entre los Paises Bajos y Espafia vistas a traves de los
investigadoresdel siglo XIX,in MusiquedesPays-BasAnciens.MusiqueEspagnolAncienne(1450-1650).
Actes du ColloqueMusicologique International (Brussels, 28/29. 10. 1985), ed. Paul Becquart and Henri
Vanhulst (Louvain, 1988), 19-68.
85Reproduced in Francesc BONASTRE, Documents epistorals de Barbieri adreqats a Felip Pedrell,
Recercamusicolhgica5 (1985), 165. I am indebted to Prof. Robert Stevenson for drawing my attention to
this letter.
J.ETZION,SPANISHMUSICAND WESTERN IRASM29 (1998)2, 93--120
HISTORIOGRAPHY, 119

his own research,reliedheavilyon Barbieri'ssources.)1ThesesameEuropeanschol-

ars would not have accepted such an attitude with respect to music researchin
other Westernnations. Thatthe immense contributionof both Barbieriand Pedrell
to the scholarlyfoundationof Spanishmusic historyremainedgenerallyunknown
or unappreciatedabroadonly added to the frustrationof these eminent scholars.
In retrospect,however, Pedrell was rather naive in believing that a greater
awareness of the availableSpanish musical sources would transformthe Western
attitudetoward Spain.During the second partof the nineteenthcentury,Spain did
in fact produce a substantialnumber of historicalstudies, music journals,critical
essays and music publications, but these hardly left any imprint on European
historiographyprecisely because of the insufficientinterestin Spanish music his-
tory. Had the Europeanscholarstakenthe troubleto becomeacquaintedwith these
studies, they would have realized that many leading Spanish historiansand crit-
ics, despite their strong nationalisticbias, were not only well-informedabout Eu-
ropean music scholarship,but that in adopting a European-orientedoutlook, they
were also the first to criticizethe >>backwardness<of their own country.87Even at
the turn of the twentieth century,when the scope of Spanish music history began
to be more widely outlined through the accumulationof scholarly studies ever
since the middle of the nineteenth century - such as those of Hilari6n Eslava,
Mariano Soriano Fuertes, FranciscoBarbieri,Rafael Mitjana,Edmund Van der
Straeten,AlbertSoubis,GuillermoMorphy,HenriCollet,J.B.Trend,EmilioCotarelo
y Mori, and Pedrell himself, to name the most prominent- they did not essen-
tially affect the Europeanconcept of Spanish music history. At best their studies
only intensified the focus on Spain's'Golden Age,' with its tinge of religious mys-
ticism, as part of the Europeanromantizationof the Middle Ages and the Renais-
sance. Neither did the subsequentstudies of outstandingmusicologistsas Higinio
Angles, Jose Subird,and Adolfo Salazairgenerate a turning point in the Western
attitude. It would be superfluous to illustrate once more how the most widely
disseminatedbooks of Westernmusic historyuntil very recentlyhave paraphrased
and regurgitatedthe same old limited data on Spanish music. With the exception
of a handful of Western'impertinents'who have ventured into the Spanishcathe-

86Les musiciensn6erlandaisen Espagnedu douziemeaux dix-huiteme sidcle,2 vols. (Brussels,1885--

88). As EmilioCasaresobserves (op.cit.),Van der Straetenspent only six months in Spainand subse-
quently drew much of his materialfrom Barbieri'sresearchthroughcorrespondence.His impressive
study of sixteenth-centurySpanishmusic,however,emphasizesthe Flemishinfluenceon Spanishmusic
and nearly ignores the ingenuity of Spanishcomposersdue to his nationalistbent. It should also be
pointed that even Paul Becquart'soutstandingmonography,Musiciensn6erlandais a la courdeMadrid.
PhilippeRogieret son 6cole(1560-1647) (Brussels,1967)views the presenceof the Flemishcomposersat
the Spanish court primarilyas a chapterin the music history of the Netherlands.However, most of
these composers were recruitedas young choristersand maturedin Spain. Aside from Latinchurch
polyphonyin the Franco-Flemish tradition,theycomposednumerousvillancicos and SpanishandFrench
polyphonicartsongs.Theirfamiliaritywith the Italianmadrigaland recentItalianpolychoralmusic is
amply evident in theirworks.
7See CarlosGOMEZAMAT,Historiadela mzsicaespaiiola.5. SigloXIX(Madrid,1984),233-245;
CASARESRODICIO,opcit.,and La
mtisica espafiolahasta1939,o la restauraci6nmusical,in Espafiaen
la Musicade Occidente(Madrid,1987), II,261-322, esp. 264-266.
120 SPANISHMUSICANDWESTERN
J.ETZION, IRASM29(1998)2, 93--120
HISTORIOGRAPHY,

dral archives (Robert Stevenson is the most salient example), the study of Spanish
music has generally remained within the closed orbit of Spanish musicologists
who, unfortunately, have often discouraged foreign 'intruders,' while simultane-
ously complaining about the lack of outside interest in their own studies.
Thus, the illusion that Spanish music could occupy a 'worthy' position in
Western historiography if only its sources would be accessible to Western schol-
ars, as Pedrell had believed, fails to take into account that any fundamental change
of attitude would be contingent upon a long process of deconstructing those po-
litical and social factors that had forged the particular perception of Spanish music
in Western music historiography. The current general situation is that those rela-
tively few studies which were published in the English or French languages ap-
pear to have drawn reasonable attention; while the majority, in the Spanish lan-
guage, have largely remained within the restricted interest of 'experts'. Conse-
quently, as far as Spanish music is concerned, fashionable European concepts, such
as cultural relativism, the 'Significant Other,' and dissolution of the Eurocentric
canonicity have largely remained mere slogans. The inevitable conclusion is that
since historical recognition (or shall we say, 'political power') must be instituted
by those who desire it, rather than be granted from outside, it is up to scholars of
Spanish music to bridge the gulf between theorizing about and acting toward chang-
ing Western attitudes. As Spanish music scholarship has undoubtedly taken a tre-
mendous stride in the last two decades or so, I do hope that this will ultimately
lead, indeed, to a greater recognition of the relevance of Spanish music history in
Western historiography.

SaZetak

9PANJOLSKEGLAZBEU ZAPADNOJGLAZBENOJ
PERCEPCIJA
SLUCAJCRNELEGENDE?
HISTORIOGRAFIJI:

U dlankuse utvrdujeda se marginalnipoloZajSpanjolskeglazbe u zapadnojglazbenoj

historiografijine moZe jednostrano pripisati ?panjolskoj,nego je posljedica polititkih i
kulturnih faktora koji leZe u pozadini zapadnih stavova spram Spanjolske.Ono Sto je
?panjolskuprognalona periferijunijebila samo nedostupnostSpanjolskihglazbenihizvora
ved, StoviSe,pomanjkanjedovoljnog zanimanjaza zemljukojanije2ivjela prema oCekiva-
njimazapadnih estetiCkihpravila.
?panjolski nacionalni identitet kao nesto drugo bio je tako duboko >ukopan< u
zapadnu percepcijuod 17. stoljeCanadalje da je bio sveden na seriju negativnih toposa,
danas kolektivno poznatih kao >crna legenda<<.(Ovaj termin obuhvaCasve falsifikate i
dezinformacijekojisu se kroz stoljeCanagomilaliprotiv?panjolske,te posljeditno izostav-
ijanjeonoga Sto je bilo u prilog Spanjolskei pretjerivanjeu onome Stoje bilo protiv nje.)
Dosezi do kojih se >crna legenda< infiltriralau zapadnu glazbenu historiografijuispituju
se na temelju glavnih izvora od 17. do 20. stoljeCa.