The Absent Dulcinea: Joaquín Rodrigo’s Song to Music Itself

Abstract

Joaquín Rodrigo wrote that music arose in response to the human need to make an image of the surrounding world. Affected by Ortegás view of life as the interaction of self and circumstance, Rodrigo would eventually attribute to music enough subtlety to paint even beings in the artist's ambience without perceptible properties, like Don Quixote's Dulcinea. The present article defines the knight´s conception of the absent Dulcinea and traces her development into Rodrigós symbol of music itself. Between the composer´s reading of Don Quixote and the composition of his symphonic poem Ausencias de Dulcinea [Dulcinea's Absences, 1948], philosopher Ortega y Gasset's vision of Dulcinea probably mediated. Ortega regarded Dulcinea as a referential reality, a reference to Don Quixote without conveying any knowledge. Rodrigo himself explained his use of four sopranos “because neither to the north, to the south, to the east, nor the west will Don Quixote find that phantom that is Dulcinea.” Phantom here means “phantasm” in Husserl's and Ortega's sense of a mere reference to the imaginer. Moreover, Rodrigo, we argue, applies that conception to music itself when making his musical setting of Don Quixote's quintillas on Dulcinea's absence (Pt. I, ch. 26). Hence, the work becomes an exercise in music making a statement on music itself, as well as an ironic example of literary criticism at the expense of the laughable “poet” Don Quixote.