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Showing posts with the label Spain Heart of Fire

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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Jesús Guridi - biographical notes and my translations

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  Jesús Guridi 1886 –1961   Born in the Basque province of Alava, Guridi came from a talented musical family. His creative gifts were nurtured through a rigorous training, which took him to Paris, in 1904 and later Brussels, Liege and Cologne. In 1908 he returned to Spain and worked as an organist and chorus director in Bilbao. As a composer, vocal music was his priority and like Turina he was both a nationalist and a regionalist. His operas were internationally famous and his nine stage works included Zarzuelas based on Basque themes and customs. His compositions brought world attention to the wealth of Basque folk songs and dances, evoking the valleys and mountains in his 22 Basque Folksongs. He wrote the Seis Canciones Castellanas in 1936, using folk material, which he had compiled for a film score for Jacinto Benavente’s drama “La Malquerida”. The film’s premiere was postponed because of the Civil War. The originality and charm of these songs are considered second ...
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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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Xavier Montsalvatge - Biographical Notes & My Translations

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  Xavier Montsalvatge i Bassols 1912 The composer and critic Montsalvatge was born in Girona and studied at Barcelona Conservatory with Morera and Pahissa. His education was Castillian; to speak Catalan in public could invite a slap in the face; to write it was seen as an open defiance of Franco. He was a musician of broad culture and a talented journalist: he was a music critic for “Destino” and “La Vanguardia”. Most of his music was written in the 1940’s, during the Republic. The Catalan composer Mompou was a strong influence, but Montsalvatge explored Catalan, Spanish and Cuban/Antillean music in his compositions. Spain still had strong ties to Cuba and the popular Habanera style had been re-imported from the West Indies by émigrés from Spain’s Mediterranean coast. There are still very distinctive Catalan folk qualities in his West Indian pieces. He collected the Habaneros of Catalan fishermen from the days of their fathers and grandfathers sailing in windjammers to Cuba...
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Joaquin Turina - biographical notes & my translations

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  Joaquin Turina 1882-1949 At the age of 20, Turina left his home in Seville, to study in Paris where he studied composition with D’Indy. However it was his first meeting with Albeniz and Falla that had a profound effect on his life. Albeniz had taken Falla and Turina to a café on the Rue Royale: “There I realised that music should be an art, and not a diversion for the frivolity of women and the dissipation of men. We were three Spaniards gathered together in that corner of Paris and it was our duty to fight bravely for the national music of our country.” In 1914, the war prompted his return to Spain. He performed his piano works and songs at a concert in honour of him and Falla, at the Ateneo de Madrid. He travelled extensively performing his work and wrote theatrical pieces with Gregorio Martínez Sierra, all Andalusian in essence, brilliant, vigorous and lyrical and inspired by Spanish folk music. During the Civil War, Turina was one of the musicians welcomed to the open...
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Fernando Obradors - biographical notes & my translations

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  Fernando  Jaumandreu  Obradors                                          1897-1945 The Catalan composer Ob radors was born in Barcelona. Here he studied with Lamote de Grignon and Antonio Nicolau, although he was eventually self taught. He composed minor zarzuelas and symphonic works and became a conductor, directing the Orquesta del Liceo of Barcelona and Radio Barcelona. He subsequently became a teacher at Las Palmas Conservatory and conductor of the Orquesta Filarmónica of the Grand Canaries. There is little documentation about Obradors and his life, but he is most famous for his “Canciones Clásicas Españolas”, composed in the 1920’s. This wonderful collection of four volumes includes brilliantly effective folksongs from diverse regions of Spain. Each song is full of noble lyricism and treated with a personal style. A selection of his songs are included in vo...
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Cuba: The Pearl of the Antilles - behind 'Cincos Canciones Negras' by Xavier Montsalvatge

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  Cuba: The Pearl of the Antilles * The first African slaves were brought to Cuba in 1522, after the Spanish had destroyed the local Arawak population with disease and ruthless exploitation. Even during the eleven-month British occupation of Havana, 4000 more slaves were brought into Cuba. In 1763, the Anglo-Spanish Peace Treaty returned Cuba to Spain in exchange for Florida and the Real Compania de Comercio of Cadiz had the monopoly on Cuban trade until 1765. When Cuban trade was extended, fortresses were built around Havana, which became prosperous from the slave trade. The fortress called “La Cabaña” was built in 1766 to prevent the other fortress “El Morro” being taken and to improve the defences following the exchange with Britain. Havana was then the most fortified city in the world. It was known as “The Bulwark of the Indies”. The fortress’ high stone walls still dominate the port and city. By 1791, Cuban whites were demanding the right to import slaves. The black sla...
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