Spanish Nationalism

Spanish musical nationalism describes a generation of Spanish composers active from the 1880s through the 1920s who built concert music from explicitly Spanish materials: flamenco rhythms and modal coloring from Andalusia, the habanera and other Cuban-Spanish dance forms, regional folk songs from Castile, Galicia and the Basque country, and idiomatic guitar gestures translated to piano and orchestra. Rather than quoting folk material directly, composers absorbed its rhythmic and modal features into a sophisticated harmonic language often influenced by French Impressionism (with which several were in direct contact).

The movement's intellectual founder was the musicologist Felipe Pedrell, who argued for a national style rooted in folk and Renaissance Spanish sources. Isaac Albeniz (1860-1909) produced 'Iberia' (1905-1909), a piano cycle evoking Spanish regions through complex impressionist piano writing. Enrique Granados (1867-1916) wrote 'Goyescas' (1911), inspired by Goya's paintings. Manuel de Falla (1876-1946), the most cosmopolitan, lived in Paris between 1907 and 1914 in direct contact with Debussy and Ravel; his 'El amor brujo' (1915) and 'The Three-Cornered Hat' (1919) integrated flamenco coloring into ballet and orchestral form. Granados drowned in 1916 when his ship was torpedoed by a German U-boat returning from the U.S. premiere of 'Goyescas.'

Listen for the rhythmic and harmonic coding of Spanish-ness: the augmented seconds and Phrygian flavor of Andalusian modes, the off-beat handclap and zapateado heel patterns, the imitation of guitar rasgueado strumming in piano figuration. Falla's orchestration uses sharp percussion and distinctive woodwind doublings to evoke the dance floor.

Falla's 'El amor brujo' (1915) — especially the famous 'Ritual Fire Dance' — is the most direct entry. Follow with Albeniz's 'Iberia' (piano version) and Falla's 'The Three-Cornered Hat' (1919, a Diaghilev commission with sets by Picasso).

Falla's 'The Three-Cornered Hat' premiered in London in 1919 with the Ballets Russes, sets and costumes by Pablo Picasso, choreography by Leonide Massine. The collaboration with Picasso illustrates how Spanish nationalism was simultaneously rooted in regional tradition and part of the Parisian modernist conversation.