Four Original Versions of the "Night Retreat from Madrid" by Boccherini
Granados
Goyescas: Intermezzo
Rodrigo
Concierto Andaluz
Falla
El sombrero de tres picos (The Three-Cornered Hat)
Program Notes
Luciano Berio
b. 1925 in Oneglia, Italy; d. 27 May 2003 in Rome.
Four Original Versions of "Ritirata notturna di Madrid." Composed 1975, age 50.
Luciano Berio in the course of a lengthy and internationally successful career never hesitated to follow where his gifts, taste, and curiosity led. With his friend and longtime colleague Bruno Maderna he was founder and co-director of the Italian Radio's electronic music studio in Rome (the Studio di Fonologia of RAI), which opened in 1957. Berio spent time in the late 1950s with the group of composers known as "the Darmstadt school," whose most famous members might have been Pierre Boulez and Karlheinz Stockhausen, but Berio kept what David Osmond-Smith in New Grove calls "a canny distance" from the rarified debates that took place. "As was so often to be the case, he instead chose to pursue a parallel but independent path."
Despite these and other esoteric pursuits, Berio stayed in close touch with the audience at large and with music of all sorts and in many contexts. One result is that his music consistently found a substantial and enthusiastic audience. Another result was a series of compositions--his works list in the New Grove lists 19--"arrangements" composed from 1964 to 2001: transcriptions, orchestrations, even recompositions, including his own completion of the unfinished third act of Puccini's Turandot.
Among these is his Four Original Versions of "Ritirata notturna di Madrid," commissioned in 1975 by the orchestra of the Teatro alla Scala as an opener for symphonic programs. The source for Berio's material is a programmatic string quintet by Luigi Boccherini (1743-1805), the Quintet in C, op. 29 no. 6, whose full title is "La musica notturna delle strade di Madrid"--the music of the night of the streets of Madrid. A second title (which I suspect is the title of one of the movements) is "Ritirata notturna di Madrid"--the night retreat from Madrid. At one time this was a well-known and popular piece of which there are multiple versions--at least four that might be by Boccherini. The piece sounds like a set of variations, but Berio is taking these four versions and superimposing them on each other to achieve a layered effect, resulting in a few delightfully piquant dissonances.
The tune is traversed completely 12 times. A distinctly military-sounding rhythm is established at the start that never varies. The listener can imagine standing or sitting near a street corner in Madrid as a military band approaches from the distance, passes by playing at an oppressively full volume, then gradually recedes as it heads for the barracks or a convenient tavern.
Enrique Granados
b. 27 July 1867 in Lleida, Spain; d. 24 March 1916 in the English Channel.
Goyescas: Intermezzo. Premiered 28 January 1916 in New York, age 48.
Granados was a near contemporary of Isaac Albéniz (1860-1909). They were both noted as pianists before they were known as composers, drew frequently on their nation's musical heritage in composing art music, and they both happened to die at the age of 48, but Albéniz had a more public and more successful career than Granados. Mark Larrad's evaluation of Granados' music (in New Grove) is that his "foremost strength is undoubtedly his melodic gift. . . . His most obvious failing, when deprived of a text, was a poor sense of formal design." His most successful compositions tend to be on a small scale and produced in the heat of sudden inspiration.
Among Granados' best known compositions is the suite of piano pieces titled Goyescas ("In the style of Goya"), the composer's response to 18th-century Madrid as portrayed by the painter Francisco Goya (1746-1828). Its first complete performance in Madrid in 1912 was sufficiently successful that a friend of the composer, the American pianist Ernest Schelling, suggested expanding the suite of piano pieces into an opera. Fernando Periquet developed a plot in the Italian verisimo style and wrote a libretto, but Granados, whether by accident or choice, had the music for the entire piece conceived before beginning to set the libretto. It was a painstaking task to make the text and music work together.
After World War I derailed a premiere at the Paris Opera in 1914, the Metropolitan Opera of New York took up the project for early 1916, with Granados making the voyage to New York with his wife to supervise the rehearsals. The opera is in one act, approximately 60 minutes long, with three scenes. A clear example of the composer's success when he got that flash of inspiration, the Intermezzo was composed overnight for the set change to the second scene when it turned out that a first intermezzo was too short. The production was generally well received, though not a triumph.
The return trip to Spain had to be rescheduled because Granados, the first significant Spanish composer to visit the United States, was invited to the White House by President Wilson. Having gotten back to England, the Granadoses took the S.S. Sussex across the English Channel to France. The War was still on, and the boat was torpedoed. The boat did not sink, but many passengers were thrown into the water by the impact. Granados was safely in a lifeboat and saw his wife in trouble in the water. He jumped in to bring her back to safety, and they drowned together.
The Intermezzo is far and away the best known number out of Goyescas. It isn't complicated or fancy, but is in a wistful E minor, with pizzicato low strings accompanying the simple yet expressive melody. No folk dance provides a model. In one sense, this movement could have come from any number of continental European countries, though Spanish origins are betrayed by the distinctive ornaments in the melody and bold flourishes in the central section.
Joaquin Rodrigo
b. 22 November 1901 in Sagunto, Spain; d. 6 July 1999 in Madrid.
Concierto andaluz. Composed 1967, age 66.
Rodrigo's success in 1939 with the Concierto di Aranjuez, for solo guitar and orchestra and his first concerto, made him internationally famous almost overnight. Never a modernist, Rodrigo chose to find his voice in the music of his homeland. The colorful harmonies are grounded in traditional tonality, and the melodies and rhythms are but once removed from their folk origins. One of the prolific composers of the 20th century, he took particular interest in instrumental concertos, writing them for numerous instruments and combinations of instruments.
In its broad formal plan, the Concierto andaluz clearly recalls the Concierto di Aranjuez, though in its details it takes specific inspiration from the music of Andalusia. Beyond that, Rodrigo draws from the four solo guitars a remarkable range of textures, using each player as a soloist and in various ensemble combinations. The dance music in the outer movements is well-nigh irresistible. The first movement, instead of the sonata form that would be "proper," is a rondo. The primary material is peppered with triplets, while two episodes explore contrasting minor keys.
The second movement evokes a cool Spanish night with splashes of stars and gentle moonlight. More than in the outer movements, the four soloists take on particular musical roles and own particular motives. Notice, for instance, the slow, steady descending scales in one guitar that underpin most of this section. The texture becomes contrapuntally enriched, but the mood is constantly hushed. The center of the movement is given over to a cadenza for the guitars, utterly magical and original. When the opening material returns, there are now two, sometimes more, scale patterns going, usually at different speeds.
Manuel de Falla
b. 23 November 1876 in Cádiz; d. 14 November 1946 in Alta Gracia, Argentina.
The Three-Cornered Hat. Premiered 22 July 1919 in London, age 42.
The Ballets Russes, led by the impresario Sergei Diaghilev, lost both personnel and funding when World War I started. In 1916 he brought his troupe to Madrid with the support of the ballet-loving King Alfonso XIII. In addition to the Spanish public's excitement at having such a cultural powerhouse in town, Diaghilev fell in love with Spanish music and dance. The next season he saw a new pantomime with music by Falla, El corregidor y la molinera, and began conversations with the composer about producing a distinctly Spanish ballet. Diaghilev was interested in staging Nights in the Gardens of Spain as a ballet, but Falla wanted a thoroughly new project, the result of which was El sombrero de tres picos--The Three-Cornered Hat--produced in London in 1919.
The story was a familiar folk tale that was made into a popular novel with the same title by Pedro de Alarcón, published in 1874. In 1916 and 1917, Falla’s pantomime treatment of it toured Spain extensively with great success, and this was revised--re-composed might be a more accurate term--for the ballet. This being a Diaghilev production, and one of the best of his later ones, every element of the production was brought to a level of world-class excellence. Besides Falla's music, the choreography was by Leonid Massine, in the early stages of his career, and the set, costumes, and drop curtain were by a new modernist painter by the name of Pablo Picasso.
The first production in London was sensational, as was the première in Paris in January 1920. The reception was far more mixed for the first Spanish production in Madrid in April 1921. Analyzed by Carol Hess in Manuel de Falla and Modernism in Spain, the judgements of the published critics of Hat were clouded significantly by a number of political motives. Many resented more or less the intrusion of the Russians, Diaghilev and Massine, and complained about how Picasso and Falla's modernism destroyed the faithfulness to the Spanish idiom. Picasso's drop curtain, for example, is a painting of a bullfight viewed from a balcony or box in an arena. To have anything about bullfighting with this piece is nearly a non sequitur, and in the painted drop itself, objects and people are not hard to recognize, though Picasso plays with proportions and perspective. Falla's "modernism" is more subtle. The clearest example is the shouts of Olé during the Prologue which are stressed on the first syllable instead of the second; and throughout the work dissonant pitches are added to harmonies that give them a nice little sting.
Texts and summary of the action. The Introduction begins with a fanfare. The main curtain rises, revealing the drop curtain. After castanet rolls and shouts of Olé, a woman's voice is heard from behind the curtain:
Casadita, casadita,
cierra con tranca la puerta;
que aunque el diablo esté dormido
¡a lo mejor se despierta!
Young wife, young wife,
Bolt and bar your door,
For though the devil may be asleep now
He's likely to wake up!
More castanets, more shouts, another fanfare.
Now the drop curtain rises and the full orchestra begins to play. There are three principal characters: a young miller, his pretty wife, and the corregidor--a local magistrate. Part I begins at about 2:00 in the afternoon. The miller is trying to train his blackbird in a cage to tell time. The bird insists on chirping three or four times. The wife approaches and shows the blackbird a grape. The bird immediately chirps twice and gets the grape. The couple dance to celebrate their domestic bliss. The miller fetches a bucket of water, with an insistantly squeaky mechanism portrayed in the orchestra. A slow march rhythm starts with drums and bass instruments: the corregidor enters with his wife and retinue. He wears a cape and three-cornered hat as symbols of his authority and takes himself far too seriously. The procession continues and exits, though the corregidor has noticed the pretty young wife. She begins a solo dance, during which the corregidor (portrayed by the principal bassoon) sneaks in again, thoroughly smitten with the wife. A fandango begins, during which the wife tempts the corregidor with grapes, keeping them just out of reach. The corregidor plays along and winds up falling on his face. He leaves angrily, while the miller continues the fandango with his wife.
Part II takes place that night. It is St. John's Eve, or Midsummer's Eve. Neighbors have gathered at the mill to celebrate and are dancing a seguidilla. The miller dances a farruca, started by flourishes on the horn and English horn. As the party breaks up, two alguacils (the corregidor's policemen) arrive and knock on the door to an amusing quotation of the opening of the Beethoven Fifth Symphony. They arrest the miller on trumped-up charges and take him to jail. The wife is left distressed and alone. A woman's voice is heard again:
Por la noche canta il cuco
advirtiendo a los casados
que corran bien los cerrojos,
que el diablo está desvelado.
Por la noche canta il cuco:
¡Cucú, cucú!
At night the cuckoo sings,
warning married men
to lock up well,
for the devil is on the prowl.
At night the cuckoo sings:
Cuckoo! Cuckoo!
A cuckoo clock strikes nine, assisted by the blackbird. The corregidor returns and begins a court dance in the old style for the wife, the beat marked by castanets. He falls into the mill stream, the splash eloquently portrayed by the orchestra. The wife fearfully flees. The corregidor removes his wet clothes, drapes them over a chair to dry, and falls asleep on the bed, drawing the curtain. The miller has escaped from the jail and returns to see the drawn curtain and the corregidor's clothes. The miller puts on the corregidor's clothes, leaving his own draped on the chair. He writes on the wall, "Your wife is as beautiful as mine," and runs off to court her. When the corregidor comes to, he can only put on the miller's clothes. The alguacils rush in looking for the miller, see their boss in the miller's clothes, and dutifully drag him back to the jail. In the ensuing confusion, the miller and his wife are reunited. The neighbors come by to see what is going on, and the ballet concludes with a jota celebrating the young couple and St. John's Eve.
