notesBy Dr. Richard E. Rodda
MAURICE RAVELborn March 7, 1875 in Ciboure, Basses-Pyrénées, France;died December 28, 1937 in Paris.
ALBORADA DEL GRACIOSO (1905; ORCH. 1919)• Orchestral version first performed on May 17,
1919 in Paris, conducted by Rhené-Baton.
• These concerts mark the first performances of
this piece by the Des Moines Symphony.
(Duration: ca. 8 minutes)
The alba, or “song at dawn,” is one of music’s
most ancient forms — the earliest extant
example, from the repertory of the troubadours of
Provence in southern France, dates from the
11th century. These poems dealt with a lover’s
departure in the early morning after a night spent
with his beloved, and are often cast in the form of
a dialogue between the lover and a watchman
who warns of approaching danger. (Wagner
revived the form in the second act of Tristan und
Isolde, during which Brangäne alerts the fated
couple of King Marke’s return.) As the alborada, it
was later taken over by the musicians of Galicia in
northern Spain, who made of it a type of dance
played on a rustic oboe, called a dulzaina,
accompanied by a small drum. Ravel, a native of
the Basque region of southern France that shares
many aspects of its cultural heritage with its
Spanish neighbors, knew the alborada and other
Spanish music, and he incorporated its spirit and
style into several of his important works, including
the Alborada del gracioso, the fourth of five pieces
written in 1905 for the piano suite Miroirs. In
1918, he made a glittering orchestral transcription
of the Alborada, first heard the following year at
a concert of the Pasdeloup Orchestra.
“The title Miroirs,” Arbie Orenstein wrote,
“implies an objective, though personal, reflection
of reality, and each composition is pictorial to
some extent.” The picture Ravel painted in the
outer sections of Alborada del gracioso is one of
thrumming guitars ringing across a sun-baked
landscape: vibrant rhythms shifting with subtle
allure between complementary metric patterns;
harmonies full of spice and color; orchestral
30 SECOND NOTES: Maurice Ravel was born in the Basque region of southwestern France, and the Alborada del gracioso (“Morning Song of the Jester”) is one of his works influenced by the spirit and music of neighboring Spain. The Concierto de Aranjuez is Joaquín Rodrigo’s musical evocation of the elegant 18th-century court set in that verdant oasis city in the barren plateau of central Spain. Manuel de Falla’s ballet El amor brujo (“Love, the Magician”) is the tale of a couple exorcizing the ghost of the girl’s dead lover.
November 18/19
RITUAL FIRE DANCE with SIUDY GARRIDO
sonorities evoking the guitar’s steely brilliance.
However, the soulful bassoon solo of the central
section of this miniature tone poem calls forth
another image — the gracioso, or Spanish
“clown” or “jester.” The gracioso was a popular
character in the Spanish theater who was
depicted by Calderón and Lope de Vega as the
fool in love in the household of a noblemen. The
jester soon forgets his love, however, and the
scintillating music of the opening returns to bring
Ravel’s Alborada del gracioso to a whirling
conclusion.
The score calls for piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, bass drum, cymbals, snare drum, triangle, tambourine, xylophone, crotale (A), castanets, two harps and the usual strings consisting of first violins, second violins, violas, violoncellos and double basses.
JOAQUÍN RODRIGOborn November 22, 1901 at Sagunto, Valencia;died July 6, 1999 in Madrid.
CONCIERTO DE ARANJUEZ (1940)• First performed on November 9, 1940 in
Barcelona, conducted by César Mendoza Lasalle
with Regino Sainz de la Maza as soloist.
• First performed by the Des Moines Symphony
November 22 & 23, 1980 with Yuri Krasnapolsky
conducting and Ernesto Bitetti as soloist;
subsequent performances occurred on
November 17 & 18, 2001 with Joseph Giunta
conducting and Manuel Barrueco as soloist.
(Duration: ca. 22 minutes)
Though Joaquín Rodrigo, born on November 22,
1901 at Sagunto, Valencia, on Spain’s eastern
coast, lost his sight when he was three from
diphtheria, he early showed a pronounced
aptitude for music. His parents enrolled him in a
school for blind children in the nearby city of
Valencia, and at age eight, he began formal
lessons in harmony, piano and violin. During the
1920s, Rodrigo established himself as a pianist
with performances of challenging recent works
by Ravel, Stravinsky and other contemporary
composers, and he began composing seriously
in 1923 with the Suite para Piano and the Dos
Esbozos (“Two Sketches” ) for Violin and Piano.
His first work for orchestra, Juglares (written,
like all of his scores, on a Braille music
typewriter and then dictated to a copyist), was
played in both Valencia and Madrid in 1924; his
Cinco Piezas Infantiles, also for orchestra, won a
National Prize the following year. In 1927, he
followed the path of his compatriots Albéniz,
Granados, Falla and Turina, and moved to Paris,
where he enrolled at the Schola Cantorum as a
pupil of Paul Dukas; he later also studied at the
Paris Conservatoire and the Sorbonne. The
outbreak of civil war in Spain in 1936 prevented
Rodrigo from returning home, and he spent the
next three years traveling in Germany, Austria
and Switzerland, and living in the French capital.
He returned to Madrid after the Spanish Civil War
ended in 1939, and established his position
among the country’s leading musicians with the
premiere of the Concierto de Aranjuez for Guitar
and Orchestra the following year. His prominence
in Spanish musical life was recognized with
many awards, honorary degrees and
memberships, and, in 1947, the creation for him
of the Manuel de Falla Chair at the University of
Madrid. In addition to teaching at the University,
Rodrigo also served as Head of Music
Broadcasts for Spanish Radio, music critic for
several newspapers, and Director of the Artistic
Section of the Spanish National Organization for
the Blind. He died in Madrid on July 6, 1999.
The small town of Aranjuez, thirty miles
south of Madrid on the River Tagus, is a green
oasis in the barren plateau of central Spain. In
the mid-18th century, a palace, set amid verdant
forests and parks, was built at Aranjuez as a
summer retreat for the Spanish court. Generations
of Spanish kings thereafter settled into Aranjuez
every spring, when the countless nightingales
would serenade them from the cedars and
laurels, the court ladies would promenade in the
cooling shade, and the men would hone their
equestrian skills with the famous cream-colored
Andalusian horses bred nearby. When Rodrigo
sought inspiration for a new concerto in the
difficult, war-torn year of 1939, it was to the
elegant symbol of by-gone Spain represented by
Aranjuez that he turned. “Having conceived the
idea of a guitar concerto,” he recalled, “it was
necessary for me to place it in a certain epoch
and, still more, in a definite location — an epoch
at the end of which fandangos transform
themselves into fandanguillos, and when the
cante and the bulerias vibrate in the Spanish air.”
He further stated that he had in mind the early
decades of the 19th century when composing this
Concierto de Aranjuez. Of the work’s mood and
the character of its solo instrument, the composer
wrote, “Throughout the veins of Spanish music,
a profound rhythmic beat seems to be diffused
by a strange phantasmagoric, colossal and
multiform instrument — an instrument idealized
in the fiery imagination of Albéniz, Granados,
Falla and Turina. It is an imaginary instrument
that might be said to possess the wings of the
harp, the heart of the grand piano and the soul of
the guitar.... It would be unjust to expect strong
sonorities from this Concierto ; they would falsify
its essence and distort an instrument made for
subtle ambiguities. Its strength is to be found in
its very lightness and in the intensity of its
contrasts. The Aranjuez Concierto is meant to
sound like the hidden breeze that stirs the tree
tops in the parks, as dainty as a veronica.”
In his Concierto de Aranjuez, Rodrigo
adapted the three traditional movements of the
concerto form to reflect different aspects of the
soul of Spanish music — the outer movements
are fast in tempo and dance-like, while the
middle one is imbued with the bittersweet
intensity of classic flamenco cante hondo (“deep
song”). The soloist opens the Concierto with an
evocative, typically Spanish rhythmic pattern of
ambiguous meter that courses throughout the
movement. The orchestra, in colorful fiesta garb,
soon enters while the guitar’s brilliant, virtuoso
display continues. The haunting Adagio, among
the most beautiful and beloved pieces ever
written for guitar, is based on a theme of Middle
Eastern ancestry, given in the plangent tones of
the English horn, around which the soloist
weaves delicate arabesques of sound as the
music unfolds. The finale’s lilting simplicity (one
commentator noted its similarity to a Spanish
children’s song) serves as a foil to the imposing
technical demands for the soloist, who is
required to negotiate almost the entire range of
the instrument’s possibilities.
The score calls for piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets and the usual strings.
MANUEL DE FALLABorn November 23, 1876 in Cádiz, Spain;died November 14, 1946 in Alta Gracia, Argentina.
EL AMOR BRUJO (1915)• First performed on April 15, 1915 in Madrid
conducted by Moreno Ballesteros.
• The movement Ritual Fire Dance was first
performed by the Des Moines Symphony on
March 16, 1947 with Frank Noyes conducting.
Subsequent performances occurred on
November 17 & 18, 2001 with Joseph Giunta
conducting. These concerts mark the first
Des Moines Symphony performances of the
entire ballet.
(Duration: ca. 25 minutes)
After his years in Paris absorbing the riches of
what was then the world’s most vibrant musical
city (and simultaneously befriending Debussy,
Ravel and Dukas), Falla retreated to Spain in
1914 in the face of the German invasion of
France. Soon after Falla’s arrival, Pastora
Imperio, the reigning doña of Gypsy music,
asked him to provide the accompaniment for a
“song and dance” for her act. For some
authentic inspiration, Pastora arranged for her
mother, Rosario la Mejorana, to meet with Falla
and the playwright Gregorio Martínez Sierra,
who was to provide the text for the song. So
fervent was Rosario’s singing of the traditional
songs and recounting of the Gypsy legends that
Falla and Martínez Sierra decided to create not
just a “song and dance” but a full ballet. The
playwright devised the scenario and Falla
worked feverishly on the score, completing it in
five months.
Despite the popularity of Imperio and her
troupe, the premiere of El amor brujo gained little
success. Perhaps the combination of such an
earthy subject with Falla’s new style, which
distilled native folk music to its most elemental
components, was not to the audience’s taste; or
perhaps the small instrumental ensemble of the
original version (piano, flute, oboe, trumpet,
horn, viola, cello and double bass) may have
been too limited to fully realize the glowing
orchestral colors inherent in the music. At any
rate, Falla immediately began revising the score,
mainly by cutting some numbers and expanding
the orchestra. In so doing, he created a work
that seems the very quintessence of the spirit of
his native land.
El amor brujo is set in Andalusia. A
passionate motto theme, which runs through the
ballet, is heard at once in the introduction. To the
accompaniment of singing, the heroine of the
ballet, Candelas, appears. She has been in love
with a dashing Gypsy, recently dead, who lives
on in her memory and keeps returning to haunt
her. Always Candelas remains under the
influence of this specter. A live and handsome
villager, Carmelo, loves Candelas and wants to
marry her but the ghost intervenes. His sorcery
prevents her from granting Carmelo the kiss of
perfect love. Desperate, Candelas tries to drive
off the specter through a Ritual Fire Dance. She
fails, so Carmelo tries to trick the ghost, whose
habits were known to him in life. Since the
deceased always had a strong taste for
attractive women, Carmelo decides to use Lucia,
a companion of Candelas, as a decoy. Carmelo
comes to woo Candelas. Jealous, the specter
appears, but when his eye is caught by the
pretty Lucia, he ignores Candelas and follows
her friend. Carmelo convinces Candelas that his
own devotion to her is greater than that of the
ghost. As morning dawns and the bells of the
village sound, the pair at last exchange the
perfect kiss and exorcise the ghost forever.
The score calls for piccolo, two flutes, oboe, two clarinets, bassoon, two horns, two trumpets, timpani, chimes, piano and the usual strings.
54 Des Moines Symphony
1. Introduction and Scene2. With the Gypsies — Night
3. Canción del Amor Dolido (“Song of Heartsick Love”)
¡Ay! Yo no sé qué siento, Ay! I don’t know what I feel,Ni sé qué me pasa I don’t know what happens to me
Cuando éste mardito gitano me farta. When this accursed gypsy’s away.Candela que ardes, Only Hell’s fire burns hotter
¡Más arde el infierno que toita Than all my blood burning with jealousy!mi sangre abrasá de celos!
¡Ay! ¿Cuando el rio suena, Ay! When there are rumors,qué querrá decir? ¡Ay! what could they mean? Ay!
¡Por querer a otra se orvía de mí! ¡Ay! For the love of another, he forgets me! Ay!Cuando el fuego abrasa, When the fire burns,
Cuando el rio suena ... When there are rumors ...Si el agua no mata el fuego, If they cannot kill the fire,¡A mí el penar me condena! Suffering condemns me!
¡A mí el querer me envenena! Love poisons me!¡A mí me matan las penas! Sorrow kills me!
¡Ay! ¡Ay! Ay! Ay!
4. The Ghost5. Dance of Terror
6. The Magic Circle — The Fisherman’s Tale
EL AMOR BRUJO (LOVE, THE MAGICIAN)
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7. Midnight — Sorceries8. Ritual Fire Dance
9. Scene10. Canción del Fuego Fatuo (“Song of the Will-o’-the-Wisp”)
Lo mismo que er fuego fatuo, Like the will-o’-the-wisp,Lo mismito es er queré. The very same is to love.
Lo mismo que er fuego fatuo, Like the will-o’-the-wisp,Lo mismito es er queré. The very same is to love.
Le juyes y te persigue, You run from it, and it follows you,Le yamas y echa a corré. You call it, and it runs away.
Lo mismo que er fuego fatuo, Like the will-o’-the-wisp,Lo mismito es er queré. The very same is to love.¡Malhaya los ojos negros Accursed the dark eyes
Que le alcanzaron a ver! That succeeded in seeing him!¡Malhaya los ojos negros Accursed the dark eyes
Que le alcanzaron a ver! That succeeded in seeing him!¡Malhaya er corázon triste Accursed the saddened heart
Que en su llama quiso ardé! That wanted to burn in his flame!Lo mismo que er fuego fatuo Like the will-o’-the-wisp
Se desvanece er queré. Love vanishes the same.
11. Pantomime12. Dance of the Game of Love
13. The Bells of Dawn