Granados and Schuman, 2017

Granados and Schuman, 2017

July 31, 2017.  Granados and Schuman.  We got so involved with the masters of Renaissance music, especially the great Spaniard Tomás Luis de Victoria, that we missed a very special anniversary: July 27th marked the 150th anniversary of the birth of another Spanish composer, Enrique Granados.  More than three centuries separate Victoria and Granados, and during that period the music in Spain Enrique Granadosdidn’t develop in a straight line.  To be fair, arts never develop in a constant progression, even Italy and Germany at some point or other experienced periods of decline.  (Flemish music dissolved completely, but that was more a matter of political rearrangements than cultural trends).  In the 15th and especially16th century Spain was one of the musical centers of Europe, close to the Franco-Flemish school since Charles I was not just the King of Spain but the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire.  His possessions included Burgundy, the Netherlands and parts of Italy, and Spanish musicians traveled across the realm, learning from the locals while the Flemish and the Italians gravitated toward the courts of Spain.  The following Baroque period was still quite productive (Domenico Scarlatti spent much of his life in Spain) but by the end of the 17th century musical culture was in a decline.  This decline continued longer than in any other country of major cultural significance.  And it stopped only with the arrival of a brilliant group of composers in the second half of the 19th century, Isaac Albéniz, Manuel de Falla, Joaquin Turina, and of course Enrique Granados.  We’ve written about Granados many times (for example, here), so we’ll address some of his works (his output was not very large as he tragically died at the age of 50).  While his piano pieces, such as Twelve danzas españolas, Goyescas Eight Valses Poéticos are among his most popular pieces, Granados also wrote many wonderful songs.  One cycle is called Tonadillas al estilo antiguo (Little tunes in ancient style).  We’ll hear three of them, El tra la la y el punteado, El majo tímido and La maja dolorosa.  They are performed by one of the greatest mezzo-sopranos of the 20th century, Teresa Berganza, with Félix Lavilla at the piano (at the time of the recording, 1961, Berganza and Lavilla were married).

American composer William Schuman was born on August 4th of 1910 in Manhattan.  Schumann is one of the most significant tonal composers of the mid-20th century.  He started seriously composing late, after hearing in 1930 a concert conducted by Toscanini (eventually he removed from publication all works written before 1938).  Schuman studied with the composer Roy Harris; Serge Koussevitzky, conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, became a friend and a major supporter.  In addition to composing, which he did for the rest of his life, Schuman also had a big administrative career: he was the president of the Juilliard School, where he was instrumental in creating the Juilliard String Quartet.  For several years he was also the president of the Lincoln Center.  Hear is the second section of Schuman’s New England Triptych, “When Jesus Wept.”  The Eastman-Rochester Orchestra is conducted by Howard Hanson.