¡HISPANIA! A Voyage from Spain to the Americas

Notes on the Program

Hispania: the ancient Roman name for the Iberian peninsula – a land that burns with life, color, and romance. From Galicia in the North to Andalusia in the South.… Hispania was home to a vibrant mix of European Christians, Moors (Muslims from North Africa), Sephardic Jews, and the Gitanos (the Romani people or Gypsies).

For nearly 800 years, from the 8th century to the 15th, most of Hispania was occupied by the Moors. Eight centuries! – almost four times the history of the United States. As one can imagine, the Moorish influence on Spain was deep and lasting. Beginning with their arrival in 711, the Muslims brought deep cultural richness with them – nurturing a sophisticated Arab and Western mélange throughout Spain. Music, dance, poetry, and scholarship all blossomed during the Moorish reign.

The Moors brought their Arab melodies and rhythms as well as their musical instruments. They were also quite tolerant of Christians and Jews. Thus, a famous illustration in the 13th-century musical manuscript of the Cantigas di Santa Maria shows a dark-skinned Moor playing the oud, and a fair-skinned European playing the lute – together.

And so it was that Spanish music developed a distinctly Arab/North African influence. Just as English baroque music is heavily influenced by English country dancing (think of Handel’s Water Music, for example), Spanish early music is influenced by the folk and classical music of the Moors. If played well, in my view, it is closely related to flamenco – the art form based on the folkloric music traditions of southern Spain, where the Romani (Gitano) subculture mixed with North African Muslims. Thus, the sounds of plucked strings, snapped fingers, stamping feet, and lively African rhythmic syncopations combine to make Spanish music a uniquely colorful genre.

I. Memorias de la antigua España (Memories of Ancient Spain)

Our program begins in the northeast corner of Spain, by evoking the beautiful landscape of Catalonia. My arrangement of the traditional Catalan folk melody, El Cant dels Ocells (Song of the Birds), seeks to paint the ambiance of Catalonia at dawn, when the birds are singing. We then get swept up in a joyous procession in the form of the 13th-c. Spanish cantiga, “Santa Maria, Strela do Dia” (Saint Mary, Star of the Day). Our performance is inspired by the vibrant street festivals of the Feast of the Assumption, still seen in Spanish and Italian communities today. The melody and lyrics of this song are found in the 13th-century manuscript known as the Cantigas de Santa Maria Codex. This is a beautifully illuminated manuscript with many colorful illustrations of musicians – including Christian (white) and Muslim (brown) musicians playing together.

As with all medieval manuscripts, only the melody was provided, and there is no indication of what instruments should play, if any. I have lightly arranged these pieces for our ensemble of strings and plucked instruments.

The 16th-century Spanish composer Diego Ortiz left us a wealth of beautifully composed instrumental variations, mostly on folk themes of the period. He Tratado de Glosas is considered a masterpiece of literature for the viola da gamba. Intending it to serve as a manual for string players, Ortiz provided several different sets of variations (which he called “Recercadas”) on each theme, showing the many ways to compose ornamented melodies upon a theme or cantus firmus. We have chosen his second Recercada on La Spagna (a Spanish theme that was set by many composers of the time) and his second Recercada on the Passamezzo moderno (a lively Italian dance).

II. Leyendas del Nuevo Mundo (Legends of the New World)

In 1492, the Spanish kingdoms of Castile and Aragon were united when their monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella, were married. The couple immediately consolidated their power by defeating the Muslims and expelling the Sephardic Jews. They also dispatched Christopher Columbus to discover the “New World.”

As we know, the Spanish conquistadors who went to Central and South America did not practice the religious tolerance that the Moors had shown in Spain. The violence that Spanish colonialism brought to Latin America is a tragedy that still echoes profoundly today. Nevertheless, Latin American cultures have continued to inspire the world with their sense of optimism and joy in life. This spirit rings through their music.

The ballad of Marizápalos was a widely popular song in 17th-century Spain and Latin America. Several baroque composers wrote variations on the song. Our guitarist William Simms plays a solo guitar setting by the Spanish-Aragonese baroque composer Gaspar Sanz as an introduction to our performance of the ballad. The source for the ballad is a 17th-century manuscript from Peru. Known as the Zuola Codex, this songbook was compiled by the Peruvian friar Gregorio de Zuola. The lyrics recount how Marizápalos, the beautiful young niece of a village priest, meets her boyfriend Pedro in a grove. The two have a joyous celebration of erotic love-making before hearing the footsteps of the girl’s uncle, the priest. Pedro runs off quickly. The manuscript contains only a melody, so I have arranged the piece for our ensemble.

We follow this with an instrumental jam-session on the vivid folk rhythms of the traditional Mexican Xacara.

III. El Barrio Sefardí (The Sephardic Quarter)

In Medieval Spain, the Sephardic Jewish community developed a vibrant and flourishing culture. Both their language (Ladino) and their music embraced Spanish influences. However, following their expulsion from Spain in 1492, they were scattered to Italy, Turkey, and North Africa – thus encountering exotic new musical styles. And beginning in the 18th century, some of them made the voyage to the Americas. The Sephardic communities in Buenos Aires, Argentina and Montevideo, Uruguay are especially large.

Our three Sephardic songs in Ladino evoke the rhythms of daily life. Nani Nani is a devastating soliloquy, sung by a mother who lulls her baby to sleep while she knows that her husband is with another woman. This is followed by the lively Sephardic folk song Kuando el Rey Nimrod – a ballad about the birth of Abraham. Legend has it that the Sephardim sang this song as they marched out of Spain in 1492. Though merry on the surface, the song is tinged with defiance. The breakfast song La Komida la manyana concludes the set by wrapping themes of courtship, romance and a bit of defiance into a Mideastern-tinged casserole.

IV. Vamos a Bailar (Let’s Dance!)

The second half of our program celebrates the intersection between baroque and folk music in both Spain and the New World, as they influenced each other in both directions during the Baroque and beyond. We open with Santiago de Murcia’s Gaitas (“Bagpipes”), depicting the piping tradition of the Galicia region in Spain.

Martin y Coll was prolific keyboard composer of the early baroque. His Danza dell Acha is a set of short variations on a popular dance theme of the Renaissance. Andrea Falconieri was an Italian composer living and working at the Spanish court of Naples (which was under Spanish rule at the time). Like so many other baroque composers, he left us at set of variations on the popular dance tune Folias de Spagna (or La Folia, meaning “folly” or “madness.”). Falconieri’s version has a more Spanish flair than most other baroque folia settings.

V. Amor y Vida (Love & Life)

Born in 1852, the Spanish Flamenco guitar composer Francisco Tárrega learned the flamenco guitar tradition from his father, as a young child. Flamenco is an improvisatory art form that has been burning for 400 years in Andalucía (southern Spain), where music and dance are part of everyday life. Emerging out of the heady mix of Gitano (Romani) and Moorish influences, flamenco music has structural elements from North African music. The tradition includes finger-snapping and stamping of feet to highlight the vivid rhythms. Eventually, castanets were added.

From the age of 10, Tárrega repeatedly ran away from home, trying to start a musical career on his own by playing in coffeehouses and restaurants. At age 13 he joined a Romani family of musicians. He eventually studied composition at the Madrid Conservatory. His Capricho Arabe, performed in our concert by Jeremías Garcia, is an example of Tárrega’s gift for blending Spanish, Moorish and Arabic elements in his music.

Manuel de Falla’s opera La Vida breve (Life is Short) was composed in 1904. Focusing on class divisions in Spain, the opera tells the tale of a young gypsy woman, Salud, who is passionately in love with a wealthy man. The man has deceived her, as he is in fact engaged to marry a wealthy woman of his own class. Before dying of a broken heart, Salud sings the bitter, ironic aria “Vivan los que rien” (Long live those who laugh) as she reflects that poverty brings suffering and a short life.

The early 20th-century composer Rafael Hernández Marín was the most beloved musical voice of Puerto Rico. He is the author of hundreds of popular songs in the Latin American repertoire, and delved into Cuban styles such as the canción, bolero and guaracha. One of his most beloved songs is the Lamento Borincano – a lament for the people of Puerto Rico, whose traditional way of life has been upended by colonialization and globalization.

Juan Arañes’ “Un Sarao de la Chacona” (“A Chacona Party”) is a 17th-century setting of the folk ciacconas heard in the Spanish villages in baroque times. The song tells the stories of villagers – men, women and children – who sang together, danced together, and shared laughter and stories together. We hope that their joyous spirit resounds.

We offer this music with love and respect for all the Hispanic peoples – in Spain, in Latin America, and in the U.S. Their colorful artistic contributions have enriched our world for centuries, and continue to inspire us today.

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