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