What Spanishness? Avant-garde Vs.

Nationalism, Neopopularism and Espagnolade in El

Amor Brujo de Manuel de Falla (1915-1923)
Author(s): Francisco J. Gim ne - Rodr gue
Source: International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music , Vol. 49, No. 1
(June 2018), pp. 95-114
Published by: Croatian Musicological Society

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/26844633

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms

Croatian Musicological Society is collaborating with JSTOR to digiti e, preserve and extend
access to International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music

This content downloaded from

128.151.124.135 on Thu, 23 Jul 2020 16:58:46 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 F.J. Giménez-Rodríguez: What Spanishness?
Avant-garde Vs. Nationalism, Neopopularism and IRASM 49 (2018) 1: 95-114
Espagnolade in El Amor Brujo de Manuel de Falla (1915-1923)

Francisco J. Giménez-
Rodríguez
Departamento de Historia y
Ciencias de la Música

What Spanishness?
Universidad de Granada
Facultad de Filosofía y Letras
Avant-garde Vs. Antiguo Observatorio de
Cartuja
Nationalism, Neopopularism Campus de Cartuja s/n
18071 GRANADA
and Espagnolade in El Amor Spain

Brujo de Manuel de Falla

Email: gimenez@ugr.es

(1915-1923)
UDC: 783.24
Original Scholarly Paper
Izvorni znanstveni rad
Received: January 21, 2018
Primljeno: 21. sije nja 2018.
Accepted: March 15, 2018
Prihva eno: 15. ožujka 2018.

Abstract - Résumé
No other work represents
Spanishness in the international
Nationalism, Neopopularism and context like Manuel de Falla’s El
Espagnolade: A Brief Introduction amor brujo. The score underwent
a series of adaptations from the
original gitanería (1915) to the
suite for concert version (1916)
Nationalism can no longer be seen as a catch-all and finally the ballet (1925),
containing all musical phenomena in the late 19th acclaimed all over the world. The
composer himself transcribed
and early 20th centuries – preferably from peripheral some of the more characteristic
nations – to thus hide a desire for domination and musical numbers for piano, like
the »Ritual fire dance«, which was
set the history of European music on a Germanic or played and recorded by Arthur
Rubinstein on several occasions.
French axis.1 Taking Carl Dahlhaus2 as a starting Although Falla is labelled as a
point, we should think about nationalism as a nationalist composer, the
première of El Amor Brujo
complex ideological concept – and even more – as a aroused sensitivities regarding
how Spanish it sounded, first in
matter of the way music is received by audiences Madrid, Valencia and Barcelona
rather than as a musical style. We can see it as a and later when it was premiered
in other countries. Not only did
conjunction of ideological, political and artistic the modern conception of the
work puzzle the audiences, but
also the peculiar use of popular
material and the colourful
character of the instrumentation.
1
This paper is one of the results of the R & D project: Micro- Thus it was described as nation-
alist, frenchified, popularist or
history of Spanish Music: Towns, Theaters Repertoires, Institutions espagnolade all at once.
and Musicians. MINECO: HAR2015-69931-C3-1-P. Keywords: Spanish Music •
2
Carl DAHLHAUS, Nationalism and Music, in: Between Ro- Manuel de Falla • El Amor
manticism and Modernism: Four Studies in the Music of the Later brujo • Spanishness • Nati-
onalism • Neopopularism •
Nineteenth Century, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980, Espagnolade • Music and
79-102. Press • Musical reception

95

This content downloaded from

128.151.124.135 on Thu, 23 Jul 2020 16:58:46 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 F.J. Giménez-Rodríguez: What Spanishness?
Avant-garde Vs. Nationalism, Neopopularism and
IRASM 49 (2018) 1: 95-114
Espagnolade in El Amor Brujo de Manuel de Falla (1915-1923)

factors which undergo a curious process of negotiation according to the interests

of those who interpret it.3
Although some basis of popular elements is always required to speak about
nationalism, we want to introduce the term ’neopopularism’ as a necessary
condition to understand how avant-gardes have approached the popular. Around
1910 new outbreaks of popularism began to appear in Spanish poetry, the fruit of
attention to folklore and popular tradition, but also of an aesthetic nationalism
that – from another perspective – impelled Pidalian neotraditionalism.4 Juan
Ramón Jiménez approached popular tradition in modern poetry in a different
way, looking for a reappropriation of that »popular tradition of art« characterized
by expressive simplicity and formal simplification; nothing to do with pictur-
esqueness and ’costumbrismo’, but rather a stylization of the popular in a modern
context. Hence the term neopopularism applied later here to the poetry by Lorca
and Alberti, which started with Juan Ramón Jiménez and, in the musical field,
with Manuel de Falla.
Finally, in this introductory section we should clarify the term ’Espagnolade’,
which relates French and Spanish music during the 19th and early 20th centuries,
and which has been subsequently used in other areas such as cinema right up to
the present. Around 1890 it was used in French literature to mean a smattering of
an impression of Spain.5 In the 20th century, the meaning »easy work with a
superficially Spanish theme, where Spain is represented according to a pictur-
esque and agreed vision« became generalized.6 Although it is widely applied to
French musical Hispanism,7 ’Espagnolade’ has been recently regarded as a pejora-
tive label hung on Parisian Spanish music pieces that »were therefore intricate
assemblages of exotic topic and markers of cultural identity, resulting from a
process of continuous cultural exchange.«8 It is therefore a double-direction influ-
ence in which Spanish musicians offer the French the elements for their exotic
compositions which – paradoxically – influence the nationalist determination of
Spanish composers. Both were seeking a cultural identity: the French after the
Prussian war, and the Spaniards after the loss of the last American colonies, which
»complicated the boundaries between exoticism and nationalism in music«.

3
This stimulating point of view has been developed for Spanish music in early 20th-century
Paris in: Samuel LLANO, Whose Spain?: Negotiating »Spanish Music« in Paris, 1908-1929, Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2013.
4
Juan José LANZ RIVERA, Entre popularismo y poesía revolucionaria: alta cultura y cultura
popular en la poesía española en el primer tercio del siglo XX, Hispanic Research Journal: Iberian and
Latin American Studies, 17/6, 2016, 539-53.
5
Edmon ROSTAND, Les musardises (1887-1893), Paris: E. Fasquelle, 1911, 192.
6
Le grand Robert de la langue française, Vol. III, Montréal: Dictionnaire le Robert, 2001, 187.
7
Francisco J. GIMÉNEZ-RODRÍGUEZ, El hispanismo musical francés: hacia una revisión de la
»españolada«, Revista de Musicología, 28/2 (2005), 1365-80.
8
Michael CHRISTOFORIDIS, Foreword, in: Samuel LLANO, Whose Spain?: Negotiating »Spanish
Music« in Paris, 1908-1929, xii.

96

This content downloaded from

128.151.124.135 on Thu, 23 Jul 2020 16:58:46 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 F.J. Giménez-Rodríguez: What Spanishness?
Avant-garde Vs. Nationalism, Neopopularism and IRASM 49 (2018) 1: 95-114
Espagnolade in El Amor Brujo de Manuel de Falla (1915-1923)

Nationalism, neopopularism and Espagnolade come together in the reception

of the original gitanería and the concert version of El amor brujo by Manuel de
Falla. Although already in 1929 J. B. Trend saw in Manuel de Falla the ability to
negotiate issues of popularness, national identity and musical modernity after the
post-war era, Falla had been viewed as a nationalist composer, »often at the
expense of his cosmopolitanism and radical engagement with the Parisian musical
avant-garde of the first quarter of the twentieth century.«9

1. The Creative Context: the First Act of Spanish Avant-garde

A New Musician: Manuel de Falla

I am finishing a piece for Pastora Imperio, something she always wanted to perform
without having any occasion to do so. The script is by María and Gregorio Martínez
Sierra, in two scenes, and its title is El amor brujo (...) I have used gypsy melodies as the
basis for this piece, some of which have been sung to me by Pastora herself. It will be
an interesting premiere because this great artist will show a new aspect of herself, and
because every last detail of the staging will be taken care of. You see, Néstor is painting
the set (...).10

In an interview with Por esos mundos in March 1915, Manuel de Falla high-
lighted the novel aspects of his coming première; it was an innovative piece
written for Pastora Imperio, a libretto by María (and Gregorio) Martínez Sierra,
with musical material based on gypsy themes and carefully-designed scenery.
Falla already conceived the score as a conjunction of music, text, scenery and
dance, and took care of every last detail in this regard.
At the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914, Falla was forced to
return to Madrid from Paris brimming with new ideas, eager to revitalize the
musical and theatrical scene that he had left years before. However, his difficult
financial situation led him to collaborate in theatrical production of comedies by
the Martínez Sierras composing incidental music.11 Falla did not abandon his

9
Michael CHRISTOFORIDIS, Manuel de Falla and Visions of Spanish Music, New York: Routledge,
2017, 18.
10
»Estoy ultimando una obra para Pastora Imperio, algo de lo que ella ha querido siempre hacer
sin tener nunca ocasión. Es un libro de María y Gregorio Martínez Sierra, en dos cuadros, y se titula El
amor brujo. (…) Yo me he basado para escribir esta obra en temas gitanos, alguno de los cuales me los
ha proporcionado la misma Pastora. Será un estreno interesante, porque la gran artista se presenta en
un aspecto inédito, y porque la escena se cuidará hasta el último detalle. Ya ve usted, Néstor está
pintando las decoraciones (...)«. Tomás BORRÁS, Los músicos nuevos. El maestro Manuel de Falla, Por
esos mundos, 1 March 1915, 268-70.
11
Antonio GALLEGO, Origen y evolución de El amor brujo, ¡Ay, Amor!, Madrid: Teatro de la
Zarzuela, 2012, 20-27.

97

This content downloaded from

128.151.124.135 on Thu, 23 Jul 2020 16:58:46 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 F.J. Giménez-Rodríguez: What Spanishness?
Avant-garde Vs. Nationalism, Neopopularism and
IRASM 49 (2018) 1: 95-114
Espagnolade in El Amor Brujo de Manuel de Falla (1915-1923)

ideals of innovation, which he also enunciated in a lecture at the Ateneo de Madrid

on June 14th of the same year.12 Still, we must also recall that the musical scene in
Madrid was dominated by a romantic nationalism, which deemed Debussy harsh.
Adolfo Salazar himself, when referring to Falla’s lecture, in which the composer
played pieces by Musorgsky, Stravinsky, Bartók, Debussy and Albéniz, recognized
that the audience was »scanty but select« and clapped loudly in appreciation.13

The Enthusiastic Writer: María Lejárraga

The originality of the gitanería lies both in the dramatic and musical concep-
tion of the piece and the strong link between the two reflects the close collabora-
tion between María Lejárraga and Manuel de Falla.
The libretto has a simple, two-scene structure but maintains the linearity of
the play and skilfully incorporates the language and certain key features from
gypsies such as letters, caves, spells, romances, songs and dances. Falla worked
on the structure of the piece to endow it with musical coherence and variety:

(...) We both sat at the piano, which sounded so bad! He, with his paper and his pencil;
me, with my fantasy and my longing. And I talked and he worked.
- Here I would like a slight tremor of anguished hope ...
»Broken arpeggios?« He murmured. »Listen ... like this? ... like this?«
Here, a tearing scream ...
- Clarinet? like this?
It must be noted that Falla – thanks to his accomplished art as a performer – managed
to reproduce the sound of any instrument on the piano.
- A bit more hoarse, because inside the scream, I want to see the tears that woman
swallows and that blur her voice...14

12
Conferences organized by the Ministerio de Instrucción pública y Bellas Artes. June 14. D.
Manuel de Fallas (sic): La música nueva, con ejemplos musicales, Boletín de la Biblioteca del Ateneo
Científico, Literario y Artístico, Madrid: December-May (1914-1915), VI, 14 , 77.
13
Adolfo SALAZAR, La música en España, Revista Musical Hispano-Americana (Madrid), 17-18-
19, July-September (1915), 14.
14
»(…) sentábamonos ambos ante el piano, ¡que sonaba tan mal! Él, con su papel y su lápiz; yo,
con mis fantasía y mi anhelo. Y yo hablaba y trabajaba él.
-Aquí me gustaría un ligero temblor de angustiada esperanza…
-¿Arpegios rotos?-murmuraba él- …Escuche usted… ¿Así?...¿Así?
-Aquí, un alarido desgarrante…
-¿Clarinete? ¿Así?
Hay que advertir que Falla, merced a su arte consumado de ejecutante, lograba reproducir en el
piano el sonido de cualquier instrumento.
-Un poco más ronco, porque dentro del grito, quiero que se noten las lágrimas que esa mujer se
traga y que empañan su voz…«. María MARTÍNEZ SIERRA, Gregorio y yo: medio siglo de colaboración,
Madrid: Pre-textos, 2000 (1953), 201.

98

This content downloaded from

128.151.124.135 on Thu, 23 Jul 2020 16:58:46 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms