FEDERICO
GARCÍA LORCA AND MUSIC
On 7 August 1929, the “Mixed
Choir of the Instituto de las Españas in the United
States” gave its first concert in its headquarters in New York. The repertoire,
which of course was Spanish, was chosen and meticulously rehearsed by its
director, who even played some songs at the piano. The concert was a remarkable
success, one of many which that young artist was to garner in America. That man
was Federico García Lorca… -“ Because I am above all a musician”-
he once said in an interview.
Music
was always present in the García Lorca household. His mother, Vicenta,
encouraged her children’s musical studies and their father, Federico, and their
uncle Luis, an amateur pianist even, at one point, put up a whole zarzuela
company in their house. They staged Las
Campanadas ( The bells tolling), with uncle Luis at the
piano and little Federico in the role of a child. But what truly captivated the
boy were the popular songs the family maids sang.
According
to his brother, Francisco, “Federico’s
artistic inclinations at that time veered clearly more towards music, more so
than towards literature”. His formal musical education started in Granada
where Federico studied piano and theory. His teacher, Antonio Segura, even encouraged the young artist’s parents to send
him to Paris to pursue his musical vocation.
During
the autumn of 1919 Federico met Manuel
de Falla. The composer, from Cádiz, represented for the poet both a source
of musical knowledge and a clear way to amalgamate Federico’s two musical
veins, the classical and the popular. He shared with Falla a love for popular
songs, cancioneros (songbooks) and flamenco, in particular, which in those days
was rather discredited. In 1922, together they organised in Granada the First
Competition of Cante Jondo, with high hopes of revitalising this kind of music.
The tournament was a success; singers from all over Andalusia joined, with the
first two prizes going to El Tenazas
and El Caracol.
At
the beginning of 1923 Federico and Manuel de Falla joined forces once again in
another enterprise, another shared love: a puppet play, “a play for my little sisters” Federico called it, with original
scenery, some of it painted by the poet himself ( yet another facet of his
artistic genius) and with Falla’s musical illustrations at the piano and
conducting a small orchestra created for the occasion: The celebration of the
festivity of the Three Wise Men, or Three Magic Kings, as they are known in
Spain, on the 6 January. The musical repertoire was truly exquisite: Cantigas by Martín Codax and Alfonso X the Wise, canons of the Llibre Vermell, some piano pieces by Albéniz, Debussy and Ravel, a selection of The soldier’s tale by Stravinsky ( première in Spain), etc… a
real musical feast.
There
is no doubt that Federico García Lorca had a special passion for popular music.
As he himself used to say “ I am just mad
about songs”. He never ceased to delight his friends by singing these
songs, and he himself recorded some of them for His Master’s Voice,
accompanying La Argentinita at the piano, one of our most valued documents of
Lorca’s musical art. These songs were later published under the title Old Spanish Songs and have been
incorporated into the classical
Spanish recital repertoire thanks to the efforts of, among others, Victoria de los Ángeles and Teresa Berganza. Most of them come from old songbooks and the
popular tradition. Lorca paid special attention to them in his conferences How a town sings from November to November,
The early Andalusian songs and
Spanish lullabies. This folk aspect of the poet must be taken seriously. He
studied traditional songbooks thoroughly: “Unfortunately,
in Spain, songbooks have been plundered or spoilt and murdered… As Falla has
already said: - It is not possible to copy songs onto stave paper, they must be
recorded on gramophones so that they do not lose that indefinable element which
contributes more than anything else to their beauty-… Songs are delicate
creatures which have to be looked after so that their rhythm is in no way
altered. Each song is a marvel of balance, which can easily be broken”.
Federico
knew well the different European schools. He was well acquainted with the stay
in Granada in 1845 of Mikhail Glinka, father of the Russian
national school: “Russia and Spain have
in the rich vein of their folklore an
enormous potential which, it should be said, is not the same in other nations of the world”. He was also
greatly interested in the world of Impressionism. How often he was to recall
the name of Debussy as he went up to the Alhambra and through the Wine Gate,
which inspired the French composer to
write one of his most famous preludes, La Porte du
Vin, the echo of which Falla
picked up in his only piece for guitar. Lorca and Falla shared musical preferences: the French
impressionists, the Russian Group of Five, Stravinsky’s ballets, the classics,
especially Bach, Mozart and Beethoven, the liturgical chant and,
thanks to the influence of don Manuel, the staged tonadilla (light- hearted song) and the zarzuela. And so Federico discovered the Romantic music inspired by
Andalusia: the songs by Manuel García,
an extremely popular singer, father of both La Malibrán and La Viardot,
and founder of the Spanish school of bel
canto. El Polo, El marabú and La canción del contrabandista (The smuggler’s song), the latter
included by the poet in his play Mariana
Pineda, were Federico’s favourite songs, which he performed so gracefully
in numerous musical gatherings. He used to illustrate his
conferences and talks with these and other favourite songs: El burro de Villarino, La Tarara, Los cuatro
muleros, El café de Chinitas, etc. Even though he was competent at the piano, his love
for the guitar was no lesser, as he used to boast: “ I am learning to play the guitar. I think flamenco is one of the
most gigantic creations of the Spanish
people. I can already play along fandangos, peteneras and gipsy songs: tarantas,
bulerías and romeras…”
Following
his tragic and early death, the works of
Federico García Lorca have inspired the most varied amount of music:
operas: La zapatera prodigiosa (The
shoemaker´s prodigious wife) and Bodas
de Sangre (Blood Wedding) by the Argentinian Juan José de Castro; ballets:
La Romería de los Cornudos (The pilgrimage of the cuckolds), by Gustavo Pittaluga; orchestral pieces: Llanto por Ignacio Sánchez Mejías (Lament for Ignacio Sánchez Mejías), by Maurice Ohana; theatre plays: Retablillo de don Cristóbal ( Don
Cristobal’s little puppet theatre), by Salvador
Bacarisse; countless songs: Nin,
Bautista, Mompou, Poulenc,
Montsalvatge, García Abril; music for the guitar: Chaviano, Brouwer, and a great amount of choral music: Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Remacha, etc.
Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco
(1895-1968), Italian born, later nationalised American, is mainly known for his
guitar works, which include two concertos and numerous smaller pieces. He was
very interested in Spain and a friend of Andrés
Segovia, for whom he wrote some of his works. This interest is more than
evident in his Coplas, op.7, for
voice and piano, Platero y yo,
op.190, for voice and guitar, El Encanto,
op. 165, for piano, La guardia cuydadosa,
Escarramán, op.177, and the 24 Caprichos de Goya, op.195, for guitar. In
fact, he was so prolific that part of his works have not yet been published. In
1939, like many other Jews, he emigrated to the United States, where he
successfully wrote the music of some twenty films. His Romancero Gitano, op.152 (1951), is one of the most original works
of his choral repertoire. The songs are actually from Lorca´s Poema del Cante Jondo, but perhaps the composer chose his title due to the
intrinsic difficulty of the original and because the music is far removed from
the flamenco world.
Fernando Remacha,
(1898-1984), born in Navarra; was one of the most important artists of the Generation of ’27, a pioneer in Spanish
film music and a friend of Buñuel and
Lorca. He achieved the highest distinctions, among which two National Music
Prizes. He used Lorca’s texts twice: the suite Juegos (Games), 1951, and the Llanto
por Ignacio Sánchez Mejías, both for choir.
Today,
one hundred years after Federico García Lorca’s birth, his very well-chosen
words still ring true: “All the arts are
capable of duende (magic charm), but
naturally there is more space for it in music, dance and spoken poetry… with
words we say human things, with music we express what nobody knows nor can be
defined, but something which exists in all of us, with a bigger or smaller
strength. Music is the art of nature. One could say that it is the eternal
field of the ideas”.
Carlos Fernández Aransay
©
Translated by Toñi Martín-Elena ©
Federico
García Lorca y la Música Federico
García Lorca and Music
La fiesta de reyes ( enero de 1923 ) / The
feast of the three wise men ( January 1923)
( Arreglos de/ arranged by Felipe Pedrell)
Llibre Vermell (s. XIV):
Laudemus Virginem
Splendens Ceptigera
Cantigas de
Alfonso X el Sabio (s. XIII):
Entre Ave et Eva
A creer devemos
Las tres morillas ( versión original del Cancionero de Palacio/ from the Palace Songbook,
s. XV)
Las tres morillas
Las tres hojas
El café de chinitas
Sevillanas del siglo XVIII
Fandanguillo. ( Solo
Guitar) Joaquín
Turina
La Tarara (popular) arreglo de/ arranged by Carlos Fernández Aransay
Canción de los segadores José Luis López García
El burro de Villarino (popular) arreglo de/ arranged by Hilario
Goyenechea
Juegos: Fernando
Remacha
A Irene García
Despedida
Recopiladas
y recogidas por/ collected and arranged by Federico García Lorca
Anda jaleo
Los cuatro muleros
Nana de Sevilla
Zorongo
Homenaje. Pour le tombeau de Claude Debussy ( Guitar solo) Manuel de Falla
Romancero gitano: Mario
Castelnuovo-Tedesco
Baladilla de los tres ríos
Guitarra
Puñal
Procesión, paso, saeta
Memento
Baile
Crótalo