SHARED ELEMENTS OF STYLE:
Like the Fandanguito, the chosen examples of the aristocratic fandango consisted of chordal ostinatos upon A-Dm, but the aristocratic fandangos lakes the sung copla. By comparing the transcriptions with the examples by Boccherini, Scarlatti (attr.), and Soler, I identified I identified some common elements in the melodic lines. This included:
1: Chordal sixteenth-notes figuration: arpeggiated chords of tonic and dominant in every melodic position (upwards, downwards). This is the most distinctive element and recalls the instrumental figuration of XVIII century European music, as found for example in Italian violin music.
2: Bariolagge: All of the examples featured episodes of Bariolagge, which is, in the violin, the quick alternation between a broken melodic line and an open string, producing a virtuosic effect with low effort. This element is very common in baroque instrumental music and is found in the traditional violin lines of huapango music.
3: Stepwise and chordal eight-note motion: or Chains of eight-notes occasionally building small melodic lines. The written sources showed a particular similarity with the episodes in which the violin imitates the melodic interventions or "Pezpunteo" of the Quinta Huapanguera in the recording of "El Fandanguito" by Monroy.
4: Most notably, I found in Soler the very same melodic formula Monroy uses to start "El Fandanguito" in the written example by Antonio Soler. In Soler´s example, which is particularly reminiscent of extempore improvisation, this melody is placed after a general pause, suggesting it was also used as a "starting cue" for the instrumental ritornellos, in the very same manner it is still used in the execution of "El Fandanguito"
The similarities between the melodic lines are evident. The big difference between the selected examples of the XVIII century fandango and "El Fandanguito" lies primarily in the metric. The European Fandango is written in simple triple meter (3/4), with both the top line and the bass line clearly distributed in groups of 3 quarters per bar. In "El Fandanguito", however, the accompaniment strums in the compound meter of 6/8 while the chordal sixteenth notes of the melodic line are grouped in quarters. This creates the polyrhythmic feeling of 3 against 2 known as "sesquialtera". In the following image, the blue shows ternary and the red binary groupings:
Just out of curiosity, I exchanged the bass lines the other way around, by adding the huapango bass line to a melodic line composed of XVIII-century Fandango fragments. I tried to render it in a "huasteco-way", by using a short bow made after XVII-century German/french models, which is to be held, like in Huapango playing, with the thumb under the nut.
This version of "El Fandanguito" shows the most obvious resemblances with the XVIII century fandango in terms of style. Additionally, the performance of the violinist Joel Monroy (the second violinist of "Los Camperos de Valles") shows an interesting feature: he plays using the so-called "French grip", or "thumb-under" which was associated with French Dance-music of the XVII and XVIII centuries.
COMPOSITION OF A BAROQUE FANDANGO "MASH-UP"
Since the Baroque Fandango is composed of strings of ritornellos upon two chords, it is relatively easy to put different segments together. As the baroque fandango is an instrumental composition, there is no contrasting sung copla like in the folklore fandangos, so it is up to one´s taste to create a sense of development throughout the piece.
The piece starts with some bars of Santiago de Murcia´s guitar-fandango played on the violin, in the manner of a solo-violin piece. The rest of the instruments come in gradually, creating a build-up until the introduction of the emblematic chords of Domenico Scarlatti´s Fandango (Gm- Am in bar 44). Typical chordal sixteenth figuration is used to connect sections.
A section taken from Antonio Soler´s Fandango for Keyboard follows. I extended the part in the mayor relative creating a contrasting middle section upon the ostinato F-Bb allowing some question-answer dialogue between the instruments. After that there is a new build-up modeled after Soler, climaxing into some quick bariolagge figuration.
This simple exercise of arrangement allowed a big amount of freedom. There was an element of spontaneity, and the final result could be considered a written-out improvisation. I discovered for myself the potential of the preludes and the bridges, which can really turn into creative playgrounds. Every time I would make up a prelude, new ideas would build upon older ones, turning into interesting little pieces of music.
CROSS-ANALYSIS BETWEEN THE BAROQUE FANDANGO AND "EL FANDANGUITO"
In the following section, I engage with concrete aspects of style through analysis, describing what I identified as shared elements and differences between my transcription of "El Fandanguito" and the upper-lines of three sources of the XVIII century Fandango: Soler (R.146), Boccherini (G.448), and Scarlatti (attr.)
Since the melodic lines were so similar to each other, I wondered if they were, in fact, interchangeable. I took the ritornellos of "El Fandanguito" and stuck them together creating a string of variations similar to that of the XVIII century Salon-Fandangos. I put this string on top of the Bassline found in Soler (R.148), creating a sort of hybrid, pretty much resembling the XVIII century examples. I rendered this arrangement in a cultured "baroque manner", using an XVIII-century Italian bow (a model made after Tartini´s famous bow preserved in Boloña) in order to accentuate the similarity
By doing this I might have emulated the process through which XVIII-century composers came to their instrumental interpretations of the vernacular Spanish fandango. About the absence of sung coplas in such instrumental versions, Peter Manuel comments:
"Aside from choreographic similarities, both the fandango del sur and its eighteenth-century predecessors—as documented in stylized versions like that of Santiago de Murcia—prominently feature the ritornello based on a chordal ostinato (in the Dm-A or Am-E configuration). It is certainly easy to imagine sung verses being added to such ritornellos, as in genres such as the joropo or son jarocho." (Manuel 2016, 7)
and:
"Despite common origins in an early-eighteenth-century vernacular Afro-Latin namesake, the fandango de salón and the Andalusian fandangos might be seen as representing a subsequent bifurcation into two quite distinct musical families, distinguished not only by their respective social milieus, but also by the presence of the sung copla in the latter set of genres. However, although the notated fandangos de salón were instrumental rather than vocal, those of both keyboardist Félix Máximo López (1742-1621) and guitarist Dionisio Aguado (composed in 1836) contain copla sections, in harmonies nearly identical to that of the conventional Andalusian fandango, and even Antonio Soler’s contains a brief but conspicuous copla-like excursus into the relative major key. All of these would seem to constitute stylized evocations of verse sections in the “folk” fandangos of southern Spain." (Manuel 2016, 7)
With this example, we can see that the melodic line of the XVIII century Fandango behaves pretty much like the original violin line of "El Fandanguito" when accompanied by the folk strumming pattern. The only difference is that, since the upper line is grouped thoroughly in quarters, the sesquialtera becomes constant.
These small experiments allowed me to get a better understanding of the bigger rhythmic complexity of El Fandanguito. This corresponds with Berlanga´s observation about American Fandangos in comparison with European ones:
"Many American fandangos are based on rhythmic-harmonic structures similar to some dance variations of Spanish Baroque dance. Over a ternary rhythmic base made up of cycles of 6 or 12, soloists sing melodies from the modal base and a flexible melodic line, governed by the underlying harmonic rhythm. The 12-beat hemiolas are very common in American fandango, which demonstrates a greater rhythmic complexity." (Berlanga 2016, 25)
This sesquialtera, hemiola, or polyrhythmic ambivalence between 3 and 2 is a distinctive feature not only of American fandangos but of a big part of the Andean folklore. This rhythmical cellule took an important place in my research after these exercises.
For the first crossover exercise, I "composed" an XVIII century Fandango "Mash-up" by using several sources of the Baroque Fandango (they are properly marked in the score shown in the video). The crossover has the structure of a collage, with the two main parts (the Baroque-Fandango and "El Fandanguito") being preceded and connected by preludes or cadences. The Baroque Fandango was performed using an Italian Bow with a normal Italian grip, "El Fandanguito" was performed with a short bow modeled after German / French sources from 1680 (more about this in chapter 2.4.)
2.2. "EL FANDANGUITO" 1 AND A BAROQUE FANDANGO STYLE COPY
In order to create that mixed race-baroque crossover-repertoire, and to illustrate the relationship between the Mexican Tradition of Huapango and that of the Baroque-Fandango we chose to explore the son "El Fandanguito". The name literally means "The Little Fandango" and could be considered a living fossil of the European XVIII century fandango.
I focused on two versions: one by Joel Monroy ("El Ave de mi Soñar" - Smithsonian Folkway Recordings, SFW40512, 2005, Track 2) and one by Heliodoro Copado ("La Pasión" - Discos Corason, CO162, 2004, Track 8)
By studying these recordings I recognized multiple astonishing parallelisms with the XVIII century fandango in terms of structure and style, but also with the elements of XVIII and XIX century performance practice as documented in historical sources.
I did several exercises involving transcription, style copy, crossover, and performance. The goal was to identify and understand the similarities in terms of style and performance practice between this version of "El Fandanguito" and the Baroque Fandango, and to illustrate them through cross-experimentation
In order to close this first exploration of Huapango I did a last exercise. The folklore music that inspired the composition of Baroque Fandango in the Spanish courts of the XVIII century must have contained a sung- copla section, therefore I decided to design my own "crossover hybrid" by inserting a copla following the harmonic structure of the Southern Fandangos. I kept the huapango strumming pattern because the resulting polyrhythmic is musically more interesting.
I composed a prelude resembling the rhythm of the XVIII century French Sarabande and using a motiv taken from a Fandango- Etude for violin by Italian composer Bartolomeo Campagnoli (1751-1827) from his 101 pieces for 2 violins op.XX. The ritornellos are mostly taken from Boccherini G.448
By substituting the accompaniment of El Fandanguito with the baroque one in 3/4, the rhythmical meaning of the grouping of the upper line gets inverted: the measures in ternary grouping which were contrasting with the binary accompaniment, get "aligned" with the new accompaniment in 3/4, while the measures in binary grouping create now the sesquialtera effect. In the following pdf, you can see a graphic explanation of this rhythmical inversion. Again the blue line shows ternary and the red binary groupings.
