Conference Agenda

In reviewing the 1914 premiere of the zarzuela Las golondrinas by José María Usandizaga (1887-1915), critics in Madrid underscored the composer’s extraordinary proficiency in amalgamating traditional and contemporary elements. This sentiment found concurrence with Joaquin Turina, who highlighted Usandizaga’s adeptness in maintaining tonal consistency amidst a dramatic context marked by an unmistakably modernist approach. Usandizaga set to music a libretto by prominent realist writer María Lejárraga, adapted from the earlier play Saltimbanquis (1905). Echoes of Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci (1892), both direct and indirect, are evident in the story. Moreover, the verismo tradition is discernible through recurring verismo topoi, such as the incorporation of a play-within-a-play, a marker of the interplay between antiquity and modernity, as well as the overarching structural resemblance to Greek tragedy, which frames these intricate strata of influence. Upon closer inspection, we identify additional features, conventionally employed by verismo composers in Italy and, as this paper posits, later in Spain, such as counterpoint segments, dances akin to the zapateado, and most notably, the minuet—here encased within a pantomime reminiscent of the commedia dell’arte—, as well as the extensive use of violinata.
Usandizaga seamlessly merges old and modern elements in his rendition of the story. This is most apparent since the initial duet between Cecilia and Lina, where imitative counterpoint is masked by luxurious modernist sonorities. Italianate lyricism is sustained throughout the opera, interwoven with fragments of Puccini-like “mosaic” approach. Composers have traditionally explored the integration of the ancient within music, culminating with notable neoclassicist works such as Falla’s El retablo de maese Pedro (1923) or Stravinsky’s Pulcinella suite (1920). However, in this paper, I argue that Usandizaga masterfully constructs a bridge between tradition and modernity specifically through the inherent verismo configuration of the opera. By dissecting the macrostructures of the opera and analyzing the development of leitmotifs, this investigation will unveil instances where Usandizaga ingeniously initiates a modernist rupture in Las golondrinas —while concurrently anchoring it to the notion of antiquity— and how such interest with the past finds the closest and more meaningful reference into Italian and Spanish verismo works from the turn of the century.

Among the novel devices found in Cubist paintings is the use of multiple points of view. That is, one sees the same subject from various angles, a technique already apparent in the late works of Paul Cezanne, a post-Impressionist and pre-Cubist, and fully present in the mature works of Pablo Picasso. This painterly technique finds a parallel in music when a composer resorts to juxtaposing clearly defined tonalities against one another. In some cases, this could pose a serious challenge to a prevailing sense of tonality, but in the context of Neoclassicism in the 1920s and 30s, bitonality is used instead as a coloristic device, one that adds a twentieth-century harmonic patina to works that otherwise reject both Second Viennese atonality and late Romantic hyper-chromaticism, looking instead to styles before 1800 for inspiration, styles not informed by the nationalistic pathos that led to the cataclysm of World War One. This paper focuses on the first major composition by Joaquín Rodrigo (1901-99), the Suite para piano, composed in 1923. It is a work that announces its Neoclassical modernity by a disruptively diametrical opposition of E minor and E-flat minor at the very outset of the first movement, “Preludio,” an unmistakable nod in the direction of French Neoclassicists like Darius Milhaud. One critic referred to such stridently dissonant passages as “Rodericus disinfecting the piano,” something for which he would become famous, or infamous, in Valencian musical circles. And yet, the Suite is quite traditional in its presentation of dances such as the siciliana, bourrée, minuet, and rigaudon, its concomitant metricality, and its underlying adherence to tonal harmony, despite the tongue-in-cheek deployment of jarring dissonance. Though it is common now to think of this composer of renowned guitar concertos steeped in Spanish folklore as a conservative anomaly in the context of the post-1950 avant-garde, the Suite para piano serves to remind us that in the period between the world wars, he was a bold experimentalist who deftly danced on the leading edge of musical modernism.

Spain during the 1930s was having one of the richest periods of the 20th century, which had begun the previous decades. Composers from different backgrounds, origins, and esthetical ideas shared spaces, projects, and commitment to renovating and creating pieces following the modernism promoted in Europe and based on the Spanish folklore with a clear nationalistic pattern. Composers followed the path marked by Felipe Pedrell and Manuel de Falla, something that the coup d’etat and the subsequent Franco dictatorship reconfigured. The blind composer Rafael Rodríguez Albert (1902-79) was not unaffiliated with it but was a dynamic intellectual working between Madrid and Alicante, an active member in the Ateneo Científico de Alicante, a critic for different newspapers covering concert programs in Madrid, and a renown pedagogue in both cities. Avid of more knowledge and musical development, he visited and stayed in Paris three times: in 1929, 1931, and 1937. He met several composers, such as Darius Milhaud, Arthur Honegger, and Maurice Ravel, from whom he received advice and inspiration. Once he returned from his second trip to Paris, he composed four pieces between 1931 and 1935. In 1931, he composed Meditación y Ronda for orchestra and El cadáver del príncipe for piano. In 1935, he composed Introducción recitado y marcha for guitar and Cuatro canciones sobre versos de Lope de Vega for voice and guitar. Immersed in cosmopolitan Spain, his works show an untiring composer who does not subscribe to one specific tendency of the so-called modernism. In this paper, I will analyze and contextualize these four pieces, shedding light on the profound influence that Ravel and Falla had on him. Additionally, I will explore how these compositions illuminate not only their impact but also reveal his distinctive personality. This can also be observed in his varied instrumentation choices, revealing a versatile composer who employs different approaches to suit each composition's artistic objectives. From programmatic to purely instrumental music, tradition and modernism converge to shape the multifaceted nature of compositions in the Spanish Silver Era.