Albeniz, from the piano to the wind

Celia Matamoro

Albéniz was one of Celia’s favorite composers from her childhood and always felt a special connection to his work. However, in the fifteen long years that she has been studying music, she has never been able to play any of his pieces on the bassoon. Now that she has finished her master's degree -and she had to reflect on where she comes from and, ultimately, who she is-, she decided to investigate the composer in depth with the aim of arranging his Spanish Suite, originally written for piano, so that at the end of so many things, she can interpret it with her reed quintet. Thanks to its flexibility and wide palette of colors, sound, and articulation, the combination of reed instruments achieves a greater range of register and color, and provides Albéniz's music, inspired by elements of flamenco and Spanish folklore such as cante jondo, a texture and expressiveness that evokes the human voice. Caire Reed Quintet was formed in 2020, in the midst of the Covid19 pandemic crisis. The five of them are from Spain and they share the same passion for Albéniz. With this work the author wishes to offer other composers and performers the opportunity to discover, learn and experience how much the reed quintet's sonority can contribute to certain styles of music such as Spanish nationalist, reaching a greater range of register and color, and endowing this style of music from a new perspective.

Figure 1 (m. 1-11): From section A, with a cheerful tone and strumming in the right hand. The triplets of the melodic line in the left hand, in measures 3, 7, 11 are a hallmark of Albéniz and his incorporation of flamenco twists.

Figure 2 (m.41-52): From section B, part of the cante jondo with a sadder tone, with greater harmonic movement, as well as greater rhythmic freedom and an increase in ornamentation and melodic amplitude.

Granada has a thematic structure of aabb’, with the a phrase in the tonic and the b phrase in the dominant. There is a clear accompaniment in the right hand which simulates the typical flamenco guitar accompaniment, the strumming. For this reason, the piece sounds very natural on the guitar and it’s often heard transcribed for this instrument. The melodic line that in the first section (m.1-40) sings in the left hand, has a reduced scope in which there are no big jumps, thus giving an impression of analogy with the typical instrumental sections of the beginnings of the flamenco pieces. Its behavior is rather sober, where there are no great virtuoso passages but rather a special attention to the style of the accompaniment simulating the arpeggiation of a guitar. It is of a regular rhythm, where the accompaniment follows a constant rhythmic pattern. It is of a more cheerful color where it does not present great harmonic changes.

Section B (m.41-120) is the cante jondo section. It breaks with the rhythmic scheme presented in section A, and the melody passes to the right hand to a higher register and with a line of greater amplitude with an abundance of ornaments that recall the inflections of flamenco singers with their rhythmic and melodic freedom.

The strong ascending impulse of the three initial bars of theme B is counteracted by a descent in joint degrees, that recalls the melismatic character of Arabic chant, during the following five bars of the theme. This theme is immediately transposed into F major (the parallel major), and then directly into D-flat major, with its sixth and seventh degrees lowered in an apparent mixture of the mixolydian and aeolian modes. The theme of section A makes an unexpected appearance in D-flat major and gradually goes back to theme B, which is expounded again, first in F minor and then in F major. The end of section B cleverly overlaps the codetta from section A over the accompaniment of theme B for an easier transition and a literal da capo. A simple arpeggio of the tonic chord serves as the ending.

Granada (Serenade)

The piece that opens the first Spanish suite illustrates many of these characteristics very well. It is subtitled Serenade, and thus a song character predominates, compared to the dance rhythms of most of the other pieces.

Albéniz wrote these charming compositions during a stay in Granada in 1886. In a letter to his friend Enrique Moragas he describes his feelings about the city and his latest creation, revealing his fascination with Granada’s Moorish past:

“I live and write a romantic Serenade to the point of paroxysm and sad to the point of despair, among the aroma of flowers, the shadows of the cypresses and the snow of the Sierra. I am not going to compose the drunkenness of the collective revelry: now I am looking for tradition, which is a gold mine [...] the guzla (arabic stringed instrument), lazily dragging my fingers over the strings. And above all an out of tune and heartbreaking lament [...]. I want the Arab Granada, the one that is all art, the one that seems to me all beauty and emotion and the one that can say to Catalonia: Be my sister in art and my equal in beauty1.”

Despite this ecstatic description, the piece bears little relation to Arabic music. Albéniz places the initial melody in the tenor voice, and its arabesque profile and its final flourish in triplet mark it as Spanish; it resembles above all a couplet of jota.

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