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Spanish Music's Golden Century
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# : |
18745 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
Date : |
12 / 1991 |
2,073 Words |
| Author
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Theodore W. Libbey, Jr
Theodore W. Libbey, Jr., formerly the senior editor of Musical
America, contributes regularly to national publications and is
currently at work on a selective guide to classical music on
compact discs. |
The siglo de oro or golden century of Spanish culture was the seventeenth--that is to say, the century after shipments of gold and silver from the New World had filled Spain's coffers and equipped her ambitious rulers with the means to achieve their goals of hegemony abroad and courtly splendor at home. It was a century of high accomplishment in Spanish arts and letters, ushered in by the publication of Don Quixote and given its most potent expression in the works of Pedro Calderon de la Barca (1600-1681) and Diego Velazquez (1599-1660). Even now, a brief look at the portraits Velazquez painted as court artist is enough to convey the atmosphere of power and confidence that surrounded the Spanish throne in those years.
One might have expected great strides to have been made in Spanish music during this era, but they were not. Elsewhere in Europe, above all in Italy, the rise of the Baroque brought sweeping changes in musical style by the middle of the seventeenth century. Not so in Spain. While the emerging aesthetic did have a profound effect on Spanish architecture, it was largely overlooked by Spanish musicians, for whom the attainments of Morales and Victoria a century earlier continued to serve as a beacon. Thus, at a time of ferment and redirection in mainstream European musical thought, Spain's composers busied themselves with the further development of Renaissance style.
If the seventeenth century was not the golden age of Spanish music, what was? While the answer depends on which genres one feels are important, a case can certainly be made for the present century. For it was only in the closing years of the last century that what had been cocooned on the Iberian peninsula for generations--the rich tradition of Spanish folk music--emerged like some arrestingly colored butterfly and came to be recognized as the vital, graceful, splendidly beautiful thing it is. The rhythmic energy and melodic exuberance of this indigenous music gave composers on both sides of the Pyrenees something new and appealing to work with, and as the twentieth century dawned Spain's classical composers at last began to spread their wings.
Just as the flight of birds differs from that of butterflies, so the purposeful assimilation of folk elements by these composers differed from mere mimicry. Nevertheless, the wonderful colors that marked the butterfly were now part of the plumage of the birds, making them far more interesting creatures. To identify them, and round off the zoological metaphor, let us give them a name: genus Pedrelliana. For without Felipe Pedrell (1841-1922), a composer by training and an indefatigable musicologist from
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