Esplá (y Triay), Óscar

Emiliano García Alcázar

https://doi.org/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.09000
Published in print: 20 January 2001
Published online: 2001

(b Alicante, Aug 5, 1886; d Madrid, Jan 6, 1976). Spanish composer. In 1902 he began courses on
engineering, philosophy and literature at the University of Barcelona. On the advice of the writer
Gabriel Miró he switched to studying music, learning sol-fa from his father Don Trino Esplá, piano from
Fernando Lloret and harmony from Juan Latorre. He then studied composition with Francisco Sánchez
Gavagnac, counterpoint and fugue with Reger in Munich and Meiningen (1911) and composition with
Saint-Saëns in Paris (1912–13). In 1911 his Suite levantina for orchestra won the Vienna Prize, awarded
by the International Music Society. The jury, which included Richard Strauss and Saint-Saëns,
described it as ‘one of the greatest and definitive works to be written since César Franck’.

During his years in Barcelona (1902–09) Esplá also composed his first works for piano, Romanza
antigua, Impresiones musicales op.2 and the Scherzo op.5. These works are neo-Classical in style, and
were performed by Esplá himself. Esplá was not only an outstanding pianist, giving recitals in the
Alicante Ateneo and in Madrid, but he was also a music critic and gave lectures, for example at the
conference ‘Art and Musicality’ held in 1919 at the Alicante Círculo de Bellas Artes. During this period
he imbibed the refined literary and artistic atmosphere of his native city, whose residents included his
friend the poet Gabriel Miró, the sculptor Vicente Bañuls and the painter Emilio Varela, to whom he
was to dedicate his works Crepúsculum and Canciones playeras. He was in contact with the
‘Generación del 27’, the group founded on the tercentenary of the death of the poet Luis de Góngora in
1627 and whose members included García Lorca and three figures whose poetry Esplá set to music,
Gerardo Diego, Manuel Machado and Rafael Alberti. Esplá was also active in the Generation of the
Composers of the Republic, whose members included Remacha, Rodolfo and Ernesto Halffter,
Bacarisse, Bautista and the group’s spokesperson, the critic Adolfo Salazar. In 1932 he was appointed a
professor at the Madrid Conservatory (which he directed, 1936–9).

In his voluntary exile in Belgium as a result of the Spanish Civil War, he worked as composer and as a
music critic on Le soir. In 1946 he was made director of the Laboratoire Musical Scientifique in
Brussels, researching in the field of acoustics and the psychology of music. He was invited by UNESCO
in Paris to establish an international conference on the adoption of a single tuning standard (1948),
was a member of the International Music Council of UNESCO (1952) and was president of the Spanish
section of the ISCM (1956). From 1960 until his death he taught at the Óscar Esplá Conservatory in
Alicante.

Esplá was one of the chief exponents, together with Albéniz, Granados, Falla, Turina, Guridi and del
Campo, of the widely influential Spanish School. With a solid humanistic, scientific and philosophical
background, he was among the most intellectual and versatile composers of his generation. He not
only represents a Spanish school of music but also a school of the Spanish Levantine. However, his first
compositions, for example El sueño de Eros (first performed in 1913), recall the harmonies of Grieg
and of his teacher Saint-Saëns, and they reveal the influence of German post-Romanticism and the
world of Wagner. After receiving adverse criticism he embraced a Spanish manner, basing his
compositions on folk music and popular songs transmuted according to a scale of his own invention, C–

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D♭–E♭–F♭–G♭–G♯–A♭–B♭, inspired by the scales, rhythms, idioms and cadences of Spanish Levantine folk
music. Florent Schmitt, a critic and composer attached to ‘les Six’, maintained that ‘the Spanish
Levantine song is a personal creation of Óscar Esplá’. Esplá’s first work in this style was the cantata
Nochebuena del diablo, first performed in 1924. Some of his remarkably delicate and concise piano
pieces express this character very well, such as Evocaciones, Cantos de antaño, La sierra, the Suite
levantina and Lirica española. In other works for piano and voice, La pajara pinta and Canciones
playeras, with texts by Alberti, Esplá achieves subtle harmonies. He also proved a master of elegant
symphonic orchestration. His symphonic poem Don Quijote velando las armas, written at Falla’s
request and first performed in 1924, represents a refined, post-Romantic nationalist style and marks
the beginning of a symphonic trend. He leaves the nationalist phase behind in his Sonata del sur for
piano and orchestra, first performed in 1945. It is a mature work, as is the Sonata española (1949), a
piano work to commemorate the centenary of Chopin’s death, written under the auspices of UNESCO.

At the same time, Esplá’s output is to a considerable extent suffused with French Impressionism. In his
last works he shows his predilection for large forms, in the eloquent Sinfonía aitana, which he subtitled
‘A la musica tonal in memoriam’, and in the religious cantatas, De profundis and Llama de amor viva
based on the mystical writings of St John of the Cross, and in his more humanistic composition Cantata
para el XX aniversario de la Proclamación de los Derechos Humanos por la ONU to words by Gerardo
Diego. In these works he is seeking a new harmonic and contrapuntal language, ‘neo-symphonist’ and
polyphonic, with a rich variety of timbres within a highly developed tonal system. Although he carried
tonality to the point of dissolution, Esplá never accepted Schoenberg’s 12-note system as the only way.
Esplá made a performing edition of the 13th-century Assumption drama El Misterio de Elche
(performed in Elche in 1924), and also wrote dramatic works himself, such as his operas El pirata
cautivo, Plumes au vent, and Calixto y Melibea. These last two have not been performed.

Esplá was creative in many fields, as a composer, performer, musicologist, teacher, theorist and
scholar. The wide range of subjects covered in his writings (criticism, musicology, aesthetics, the
teaching and psychology of music, the philosophy of art, literature, musical drama, acoustics and
physics) reveal his deep wisdom as a humanist and as a thinker about music. He believed that it was
the affective energy, tonal relations and harmonic tensions of music that could produce spiritual and
emotional effects, as opposed to the cold technical and acoustic experimentation of the avant garde.
He composed with a sense of formal rigour, and with a clear aesthetic, scientific and intellectual
conception which, in its attempt to elucidate harmonic and acoustical problems, tended towards
abstraction and was somewhat removed from the creative musical act itself. His work shows a demand
for perfection and re-elaboration, and reveals a sense of art as both universal and having a markedly
Spanish, especially Spanish Mediterranean, character. For Esplá ‘music is a way of understanding
consciousness. And by its profoundly subjective nature, not only is it the freest of the arts but it also
takes its place in the highest class of human endeavour’.

Works

Stage

Operas

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 La bella durmiente (obra teatral, 3, C. Perrault, A. Hernández Cata, A. Insúa),
Vienna, 1909, rev. as La forêt perdue (P. Willems), 1943, ?unfinished; La montagne
(Roustan), 1912

Cirano, 1913

La balteira (op-ballet, 3, I. Lewisohn), 1934–40

Plumes au vent (op bufa, 1, J. Weterings), 1941, unfinished; Calixto y Melibea (F.
Romero, F. de Rojas: La celestina), 1973

El pirata cautivo (op, 1, C. de La Torre), 1974, Madrid, Teatro de la Zarzuela, 1975

La ira de Dios (Guadazu) (T. Luca de Tena), 1975, unfinished

Ballets

Los Cíclopes de Ifach (poema coreográfico, 2), 1916 [based on choral sym. Las
cumbres]

El ámbito de la danza (fantasía-scherzo), 1924

El contrabandista (C. Rivas Cherif), 1927, POC, 1928

Fiesta (poema coreográfico), 1931, unfinished

Other

Nochebuena del diablo, op.19 (scenic cant., 1, R. Alberti, after trad. children’s
legend), 1924, Madrid, Teatro de la Zarzuela, 1967, concert version, S, B, chorus,
orch, 1921–4, arr. S, orch; Restoration of Misterio de Elche (13–18th-century
anonymous liturgical drama, 2), 1924

Vocal

Choral

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 Coral religioso, op.8, 1912

Las cumbres, sym. poem, chorus, orch, 1924

Canto rural a España (M. Machado), chorus, pf/orch, 1931

Sinfonía coral, chorus, orch, 1942, unfinished; Polifonía, chorus, 1943

Oratorio profano, chorus, orch, 1947–8

Oratorio a la memoria de Manuel de Falla (J. Cassou), 1948, unfinished; Réquiem,

1949

2 tonadas levantinas (I. de la Sierra, canto de trilla after a trad. Sp. song; trad.
Mallorcan), chbr chorus, 1952, no.1 arr. S, pf, as Canción de trilla; De profundis (Ps
cxxix), 4 solo vv, chorus, orch, 1966

Cantata para el XX aniversario de la Proclamación de los Derechos Humanos por la

ONU (G. Diego), Bar, nar, chorus, orch, 1968

Llama de amor viva (cant., St John of the Cross), S, male chorus, orch, 1968–70

Réquiem a la memoria de sus padres, chorus, orch, 1975, unfinished

Solo

Soledades (Homenaje en el III centenario de su muerte) (L. de Góngora), S, orch/pf,

1927

Canciones playeras (R. Alberti), S, orch/pf, 1925–6, version for S, orch/pf, 1929,
version for S, pf, 1956

Campo de cruces (C. Miró), C, orch/pf, version for S, orch, perf, c1940, version for C,
orch, perf 1977

Lírica española-cuaderno III (Anon., F. Pedrell, A. Mingote), 3 songs, S, pf, 1940, arr.
S, orch; Lírica española-cuaderno VI, 3 songs, S, pf, 1940

Cantiga (Alfonso X el Sabio), S, pf, 1956

O Mayo (Galician song, M. Cúrros Enríquez), S, pf, 1958 [no.1 of 22 canciones sobre
poetas orensanos]

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Instrumental

Orchestral

El sueño de Eros, sym. poem after G. Miró, 1904

Suite, op.6, 1909, ?unpubd; Suite, A♭ (Suite levantina), 1910–11, rev. as Poema de
niños (Evocaciones de la infancia: serie sinfónica en 5 tiempos), 1914

Sym., D, op.4, 1912, ?unpubd; Antaño, estampa after trad. children’s song, pf, orch,
1913 [no.5 of Impresiones musicales, pf, orch]

Gil Blas, 1922 [collab. Rostand; sketch of Don Quijote velando las armas]

La veillée d’armes de Don Quichotte, épisode symphonique, chbr orch, 1924, version
for orch, 1926)

Sonata del sur, conc., pf, orch, op.52, arr. of Sonatina del sur, pf, 1928, rev. 1935,
1943, 1945

Suite schubertiana, 1928

Capriccio pastorale sobre el nombre de E.F. Arbós, 1932

Suite folklórica no.1, chbr orch, 1932

Suite folklórica no.2, chbr orch, 1934

Conc. de cámera, 1937

3 pequeñas piezas, orch, 1939

Música instrumentada, pf, orch, 1940

Sym. ‘Aitana’ (a la música tonal in memoriam), op.56, 1958

Sinfonia de retaguardia, 1969, unfinished

Chamber

Str Qt, op.12, 1912, ?unpubd; Sonata, b, op.9, vn, pf, 1912–13, 1915

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 Pf Trio, 1917

Str Qt no.1, G, 1920

Homenaje a Beethoven, vn, pf, 1927

Preludio, org, pf, 1927

Pf Qnt, 1927

Duo, vn, vc, 1928, 1938

Sonata concertante, str, 1939

Str Qt no.2, 1943

Danse de chants d’antan, fl, pf, 1975

Piano Solo

3 romanzas sin palabras, c1900

Romanza antigua, 1905, orchd for str, 1905

Impresiones musicales, op.2, 1905–9

Scherzo, op.5, 1906

Estudio fugado, op.1, 1907

Crepúsculum, 5 pieces, op.15, 1916

4 cantos sin palabras, op.3 (Leipzig, 1912)

2 preludios, op.11, 1912

Sonata, op.7, 1912

Suite de pequeñas piezas, 1913, orchd 1931 [from Danzas alicantinas and Confines]

Evocaciones, op.16, 1913

Confines, 1915, arr. pf, str, 1922, arr. inst ens, 1921–3, arr. chbr orch, 1925

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 La pájara pinta, op.25, 3 children’s pieces, 1916–20, orchd, 1955

3 movimientos, pf, 1921

Sonatina del sur, 1928 [part of Confines series]

Danzas y confines, 1929

Chants d’antan (Esquisses sur des cadences populaires espagnoles), 1930

La sierra (Suite folklórica en tres impresiones), 1930

Danzas alicantinas (Cancíon de cuna), lullaby, 1931

Levante (Melodías y temas de danza en 10 movimientos), suite, 1931 [7 movts arr. J.

Tomás and Esplá, gui, perf 1978]

Toccata y fuga, 1932, unfinished; Evocations espagnoles, 1936

Sonata española, op.53, 1949

Lírica española (Impresiones musicales sobre cadencias populares), op.54, 1952–4

Nocturno, 1954

3 piezas españolas

Organ solo

Andante religioso, 1908

Ricercare, 1937

Pequeño impromptu-rondino, 1973

Gui

Tempo di sonata, c1920, rev. J. Tomás, 1954

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Orchestral

I. Albéniz: Suite española no.1, 1962

I. Albéniz: 3 piezas españolas, 1962

Bibliography
H. Collet: ‘Les maîtres: le naturalisme de Pérez Casas et Esplá’, L’Essor de la musique espagnole
au XXème siècle (Paris, 1929), 89–99

A. Salazar: ‘La época actual: Óscar Esplá’, La música contemporanea en España (Madrid, 1930),
233–43

G. Chase: ‘Óscar Esplá’, MMR, 69 (1939), 199–203

K. Willems: Un grand musicien espagnol: Óscar Esplá (Amsterdam, 1952)

A. Iglesias: Óscar Esplá: su obra para piano (Madrid, 1962)

F. Sopeña Ibáñez: ‘Ayer y hoy de Óscar Esplá’, Atlántida, 6 (1968), 94–9

J. de D. Aguilar Gómez: ‘Óscar Esplá y Triay’, Historia de la música en la provincia de Alicante

(Alicante, 1970, 2/1983), 301–62

A. Fernández-Cid: La música española en el siglo XX (Madrid, 1973)

A. Iglesias: Óscar Esplá (Madrid, 1973)

F.J. León Tello: ‘Comentarios a la estética de Óscar Esplá’, Cuadernos hispanoamericanos, no.
312 (Madrid, 1976), 517–48

O. Esplá: Escritos, ed. A. Iglesias (Madrid, 1/2/1977, 3/1986)

E. Franco: ‘Óscar Esplá: impresiones e imágenes’, Cuadernos de música y teatro (1987), no.1,
21–41

E. García Alcázar: Óscar Esplá y Triay: estudio monográfico documental (Alicante, 1993)

T. Marco: ‘Los maestros, Óscar Esplá’, Historia de la Música Español: El Siglo XX (Madrid, 1983;
Eng. trans., 1993), 62–6

E. García Alcázar: ‘El legado musical de Óscar Esplá’, Información: arte y letras (1 Feb 1996), 1–
2

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 More on this topic
Esplá (y Triay), Oscar <http://oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/
9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-5000005143> in Oxford Music Online <http://
oxfordmusiconline.com>

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