Uniting Music and Poetry in Twentieth-Century Spain by Nelson R. Orringer

Abstract

Reviewed by: Uniting Music and Poetry in Twentieth-Century Spain by Nelson R. Orringer Daniel Ferreras Savoye Orringer, Nelson R. Uniting Music and Poetry in Twentieth-Century Spain. Lexington Books, 2021. Pp. 254. ISBN 978-1793630483. Nelson R. Orringer’s new book is doubtlessly a labor of love and of great erudition that inspires admiration and respect, for it displays not only a profound knowledge of poetry and poetics, but also a very solid musicological foundation, both classical and modern, which remains quite rare in the field of literary studies. The goal of Uniting Music and Poetry in Twentieth-Century Spain is indeed an ambitious one, for it aims to study the dialectical relationship between poetry and music through the works of the most significant composers of twentieth-century Spain, from Falla to Halffter. It is divided into nine chapters, each of them devoted to specific musical adaptations of poetic works, such as those by Góngora, Bécquer and Alberti among others. Chapters 1 and 2 discuss two very different aspects of Manuel de Falla’s treatment of poetry in music, the first consisting in an analysis of four earlier songs, including two of Bécquer’s Rimas (LI and LXXIII) while the second presents his adaptation of Góngora’s sonnet “A Córdoba,” a resolutely more mature work. Chapter 3 is devoted to Manuel de Falla’s contemporary and friend, Joaquín Turina, and to his musical adaptations of a saeta, (Saeta en forma de salve, by Serafín y Joaquín Álvarez) and of some of Lope de Vega’s most well-known dialogs in his Homenaje a Lope de Vega. Chapter 4 studies Frederic Mompou’s important Combat del somni, a musical adaptation of five sonnets by Catalan poet Josep Janés, which is considered as Mompou’s most significant vocal work; chapter 6 presents Joaquin Rodrigo’s paradoxical composition, Ausencias de Dulcinea, which seems to adopt a similar parodic intent to that of Cervantes’ masterwork in order to suggest an all-encompassing vision of music and literature; chapter 8 explores Xavier Montsalvatge’s musical Africanism in his Cinco canciones Negras, which include Rafael Alberti’s Cuba dentro de un piano, Néstor Luján y Fernández’s Punto de Habanera, Nicolás Guillén’s Chévere and Canto negro, and Ildefonso Pereda Valdés’s Canción de cuna para dormir un negrito; finally, chapter 9 introduces Rodolfo Halffter’s cycle of five songs based upon Rafael Alberti’s prizewinning book, Canciones sobre marinero en tierra, taking into account the considerable chronological gap which separates the first song, composed in 1925, from the other four, which were composed no less than thirty-five years later, in 1960. Orringer has confronted the very serious challenge of establishing what Umberto Eco named semiotic functions between two different artistic media—words and music—, which [End Page 463] implies the use of two very distinct methodologies working concurrently in order to serve what is by necessity a constantly dual interpretive effort. Orringer’s vast knowledge and profound understanding of the historical and structural particularities of his corpus of study allow him to elaborate a convincing analysis, not only exposing but explaining as well the subtle semiotic differences and intents that can be observed as lyrical poetry becomes vocal music; his discussion of the Africanism paradox at the beginning of chapter 8, for instance, which contrasts Caucasian musical conception with non-Caucasian inspiration in order to introduce Montsalvatge’s Cinco canciones negras (165–68) displays an acute historical sense not only of music and literature, but of contemporary Occidental art as well. Naturally, Orringer’s study prompts implicitly questions of a canonical nature, for it could be argued that music in twentieth-century Spain is not only to be found within the works of so-called classical composers, especially in the vocal music category. Although it is undeniable that Falla, Turina, Mompou and Rodrigo are consecrated figures of the Spanish official canon of classical music, Monsalvatge and Halffter remain, on the other hand, somehow less celebrated composers, whose vocal music doubtlessly deserves further attention and should not be readily perceived as classical per se: when it comes...