Delightful Listening Experiences in Quasi-Chamber Music. the D

delightful listening experiences in and 1925. He was an exacting artist quasi-chamber music. The D Major who set such high standards for Concerto for harpsichord, originally himself that instead of serving as a scored for two violins, viola, bass, challenge to him, they became an two oboes and two horns, was writ inhibitive force which prevented ten around 1784. The last move his creative impulse from being ful ment, in a gypsy style rondo, is filled. jovial Haydn at his merriest. Although most of Falla's music presents the sonic picture of Spain Concerto for Harpsichord, Flute, we have come to expect from Span Oboe, Clarinet, Violin and Cello ish music, with its typical rhythms Manuel de Falla (1876-1946) and melodic flourishes, the present During most of the eighteenth and Concerto is somewhat exceptional nineteenth centuries, when com in this respect. Here the Spanish posers of note were emerging from idiom is refined and stylized, which most of the major countries of Eu lifts the piece above the level of be rope, ilittle of musical importance ing outwardly and picturesquely was heard from Spain. Not until the Spanish. The solo harpsichord part, turn of the century did Spanish mu although totally interwoven with the sic reassert itself on the world scene, other instruments, clearly evokes primarily through the music of Man the keyboard style of Domenico uel de Falla, who became the lead Scarlatti, the Italian composer who ing figure of the modern Spanish spent the major part of his career school of composition. in Spain some two hundred years before. Born in Cadiz, Falla's early musical training took place in Spain, chiefly In the first movement, the harpsi at the Academy of Fine Arts in Ma chord subtly imitates the Spanish drid. It was there that the young guitar, providing a rhythmic back composer won first prize in a com ground for folk style melodies. Re petition with his opera La Vida garding the second movement, Breve (Brief Life), and in the same Ralph Kirkpatrick himself has writ year won yet another prize for his ten that it contains "all of Spain, piano playing. But Falla was not the harsh bitter fervor, the restraint content to remain in Spain, and of ceremony, the intellectual ecstasy longed to go to Paris, the mecca of that are the inseparable constitu musicians in the early decades of ents of the Spanish character." The this century. His wish came true, invigorating finale is filled with and once there he immediately at lively Spanish dance rhythms. tracted the attention of important musicians like Debussy, Ravel and Prelude and Liebestod from Paul Dukas. The latter was respon Tristan and Isolda sible for the first production, in Richard Wagner (1813-1883) Nice, of Falla's prize-winning opera, The list of the world's greatest which had not yet been staged in composers can be a long one, de his native Spain. This event estab pending on one's criteria for great lished Falla's reputation as a com ness, but of those names the most poser. important must surely be those who, Falla was not a man of sustained by their imagination and boldness, creativity. His fame rests on some changed the course of music history. half dozen works, composed mainly One of these was Richard Wagner in the ten-year period between 1915 whose inventive forays into the .

Load more