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Showing posts with the label Maria Lejarraga

The Songs & The Plays - Kean on Shakespeare

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The Songs & The Plays Listen on Youtube Love’s Labours Lost (1593-94) A revised and polished version of this play was presented for Queen Elizabeth I and her court at Christmas 1598. However the elevated language and subject matter of the drama suggests it was always intended for a sophisticated and highly literate audience. There are two parallel plots – one ‘high’ comedy and one ‘low’ comedy. In the high comedy the King of Navarre and his friends make a pact to ‘fast and study’ and to have no contact with women for three years. No sooner have they agreed than the Princess of Aquitaine and her ladies in waiting arrive to discuss ‘state matters’. Inevitably the King falls in love with the Princess and his friends with the French ladies in waiting. The Gentlemen find loophole in their vows and woo and win women with a dance. The Ladies become aware of their broken vows and treat the noblemen with scorn. In the low comedy the page Moth and the clown Costard ridicule the exaggerated m...
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Manuel de Falla - Biographical Notes & My Translations

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Man uel de Falla 1876-1946   The port of Cadiz is one of Southern Spain’s most beautiful towns. Bordered on three sides by the sea, it is also the birthplace and the last resting-place of Manuel de Falla. Franco’s gunboats carried his embalmed body back from Argentina and laid him to rest in Cadiz cathedral. Falla was an austere man, exacting and yet modest, totally dedicated to his work and deeply religious. His precise personality is reflected in his music. There are no superfluous notes, yet it is always finely wrought, with a sensitive emotional impact and a sense of striving for perfection. He was an intelligent, cultured and brilliant musician, composing the most richly colourful and sensuous evocations of Spain. In Madrid he studied with Pedrell, from whom he developed a deep interest in indigenous folk music. In 1907 he went to Paris, where he was influenced by the Impressionism of Debussy, Ravel and Albeniz. By 1914, when he returned to Spain, he had written the “...
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