Hesperia by Anna Cazurra

Hesperia (West) was the name that ancient Greeks used for the Iberian Peninsula, the most western land known to them. In Greek mythology this was the place where Hesperides, the daughters of Hespero, grew a tree producing fabulous golden apples possessing the essence of immortality. To me, the word Hesperia suggests the mixture of cultures of the western Mediterranean, principally the Iberian and Arab, traditions and this idea unifies the series of four pieces presented in this cycle. “Azahara” is freely inspired in the tradition of Andalusian music, evoking the mix of exuberance and sweetness of the orange trees. It presents two contrasting themes; the first, passionate and dynamic, is based on the alternation of a compound binary rhythm and a simple ternary one, and the second is lyrical and evokes two singers accompanied by the guitar’s strumming. “Crepuscle” is the most emotional among these pieces, presenting some oriental elements (the interval of augmented second), and using a whole array of shadings of light and a changing harmony, the piece describes the atmosphere of serenity conveyed by a sunset. “Mediterrània” evokes the voice of the orient inherited in the Mediterranean Sea, the cradle of some of the most ancient civilizations. It presents two contrasting themes that, in the end, are restated with richer textures and a brilliant conclusion.

Anna Cazurra (Barcelona, 1965). Composer and musicologist. She studied piano and violin at the Barcelona conservatoire and, later, composition and instrumentation under Josep Soler. With a PhD in art history majoring in musicology, she has focused her research on the historical reconstruction of Hispanic music and on Spanish musical heritage recovery. As a composer, her oeuvre features pieces for piano, and chamber, vocal and symphonic music, the most noteworthy of which are Petit poema, a composition for brass quintet, winning an award at the 16th Concurs de Joventuts Musicals de Barcelona; Quatre evocacions, for piano; Yashira, for soprano saxophone and piano and Suite Evora, for string orchestra. She has published Historia de la música (Quaderns Crema, 2001) and articles in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (2001), Diccionario de la música española e hispanoamericana (1999) and Historia de la música catalana, valenciana i balear (2002).  She was the composer- and scholar-in-residence at the Foundation for Iberian Music (2002/03) and was the Guest Editor of the issue of Music in Art dedicated to Iberian music iconography and film.

by Antoni Pizà

In a newspaper column collected in his popular book about Spain Voyage en Espagne (1840), Theóphile Gautier reports:

In a few more turns of the wheels I will perhaps lose one of my illusions and see the Spain of my dreams vanish – the Spain of the Romancero, of Victor Hugo’s ballads, of Mérimée’s novellas, of Alfred de Musset’s stories. In crossing the frontier I am reminded of what the good and witty Heinrich Heine said to me at Liszt’s concert, with his German accent full of “humour” and malice: “How will you manage to speak about Spain once you have been there?”

 What seems remarkable about Gautier’s account is that – contrary to the authors he talks about – he promptly acknowledges the divergence that exists between the reality of a country, its people, and culture, and the idealized descriptions generally offered by writers (he could have also mentioned Chateaubriand, George Sand, Washington Irving, and even an occasional writer like Glinka), artists (Manet, Sargent), and musicians. The roll of composers who sent musical postcards about Spain to their (mostly) Parisian audiences is a long one. Of course, there are Bizet, Glinka, Lalo, Debussy, and Ravel, but also (and more surprisingly) there are Chopin, Schumann, Liszt, and Wolf. The degree of idealization and exotization of Spain can vary, but it is not difficult to spot a few recurring characters: the Gypsy, the Moor, the conquistador, and the bandolier. This last, incidentally, very much loved and highly idealized in France during the Napoleonic wars because, in fighting against the French and succeeding in liberating his country, he represented the quintessential bearer of revolutionary liberté.

For the most part, French audiences wanted to see Spaniards as free spirits less constrained by the burdens of civilization than themselves and, of course, their music also had to be different. Even Glinka, who in his field trip to Spain had the rigor of a modern ethnographer and wanted to go beyond Moorish and exotic images, complains in a letter that when both Spanish and foreign composers “perform national [Spanish] melodies, they immediately disfigure them and give them a European character, even when they are purely Arabian melodies.” As a matter of fact, in many cases, the opposite was true: many Spanish and foreign composers writing in the internationally established Spanish idiom adopted a few musical formulas that most audiences identified with Spain. Their musical Spanish idioms were learned by deduction, not induction. These included the Phrygian mode, triplet turns and similar embellishments, cascades of descending thirds, Spanish dances and airs such as the bolero and the habanera, and the use or the imitation of certain instruments (castanets and guitar, for instance).

It is no surprise that these types of musical postcards generally come from the “edges.” Russia and Spain, located on Europe’s perimeter, were the source of inspiration for many composers. However, whereas some Russian composers, most notably Glinka and Rimskij-Korsakov, wrote “Spanish” music, I am not aware of any Spanish composer who ever wrote Russian music. Spaniards generally found their “Orient,” not in the land of the Cossacks, but rather in their former colonies. The origins of genres such as the habanera, tango, and guajira, for example, are complex, but they were cultivated on both sides of the Atlantic becoming genres of “ida y vuelta” (go and return). These Latin American musical postcards included a SASE, so to speak, since they always returned to their alleged origins, albeit transformed and “creolized.”

 It is also remarkable that this tradition is well and alive on both sides of the Atlantic. Anna Cazurra writes music unabashedly evocative and reminiscent of their musical forebears (Granados, Albéniz, Falla…). In this context, this music reminds us of how vividly music can evoke images.