Andaluza: from inspiration to interpretation.

Ever since I learned Granados' sixth Spanish Dance, Rondalla Aragonesa, as a teenager, Spanish music has been a passionate interest for me. So completely did it and other Spanish works capture my imagination, that it inspired me to travel through many regions of Spain, searching out the country's folk music in local fiestas, theaters, bars, flamenco schools, gypsy caves, cathedral squares and everywhere possible. As the works of Granados, Albeniz, de Falla and others tend to lie on the fringe of standard piano repertory for study and performance, some background information about this exotic and exciting genre may be helpful to many musicians, teachers and students on this side of the Atlantic.

While a crucial aspect of studying the canons of the piano repertoire involves the complementary study of music theory and history, the study of Spanish music, I believe, must also incorporate an ethnomusicological approach. Manuel de Falla's piano piece entitled Andaluza provides an excellent model for this type of study. With this piece as our guide, we shall consider the purpose, aesthetics and spirit of flamenco music, the rhythmic characteristics of dances such as the malaguena and bulerias, the vocal features of "Oriental" melodies, and the sound qualities and techniques of flamenco guitar. My hope is that this knowledge may not only inform our approach to this piece, but will also stimulate the imagination with regard to other works of this genre.

Of all Spanish composers, perhaps Manuel de Falla (1876-1946) had the most in-depth experiences and closest personal interactions with Gypsy flamenco music in its natural environment. Unlike Granados and Albeniz, he grew up in Andalucia (1) (Cadiz), and after some years spent in Paris and Madrid, de Falla returned to the region to live in a house next to the Alhambra (Moorish palace) in Granada--across a narrow valley from the Albaicin and the caves of the Sacromonte (Granada's famed Gypsy quarters). De Falla wrote a number of articles about flamenco and, along with poet Garcia Lorca and others, organized an acclaimed cante jondo competition in 1922, in hopes of preserving this declining art form. Even as early as 1906, when he began work on the Four Spanish Pieces, one can detect the close and meticulous assimilation of Andalusian Gypsy music into his own.

In Andaluza, number four of the above mentioned set and composed in Paris around 1907, de Falla incorporated many elements of cante jondo, the "deep song" of southern Spain. Perhaps as a reaction to the sentimentalized re-creations or impressions of the Spanish style by foreign composers, and in his determination to break away from it, de Falla made a point of marking Andaluza to be played "avec un sentiment sauvage." Without first-hand exposure to Gypsy flamenco, it may be somewhat difficult to imagine the significance of this direction. The typical, and mistaken, impression of flamenco music is of "passion" and "sexiness." However, savagery not in the sense of "barbarian," rather, in an unapologeticly harsh despair and severity of expression--is indeed a predominant characteristic of the culture and its music.

Nevertheless, within the flamenco repertory there exists a wide variety of expression embodied by many dozens of different song/dance types. While studying Spanish piano music, one frequently comes across these various songs and dances, either named in the title or subtitle of the piece and providing the framework for the entire composition or often existing less overtly as the inspiration for a piece or for certain passages or sections. Among Andalusian varieties, the seguiriya/playera, polo, malaguena, sevillanas, fandango, bulerias, farruca and others are commonly found in the scores of Granados, Albeniz and de Falla. But what are these forms? What is the difference between a malaguena and a playera?

In flamenco, there are a number of possible classification systems. Grouping by song origins and derivations, and grouping by compas (the metrical/rhythmical characteristics) are two possible types. Another common system is to divide flamenco into three song catagories: cante jondo, cante chico, and cante intermedio. Cante jondo (pronounced "hondo" with a strongly aspirated "h," and translated as "deep song," meaning profound or deeply felt) is the oldest group of Andalusian Gypsy songs. These are the most serious, sorrowful, pessimistic, even bitter and tragic, of the flamenco repertory, and are primarily gitano (of Gypsy origin). These songs express the pena andaluza (Andalusian suffering) so characteristic of this harsh land and its underprivilaged, outcast people, long subject to poverty and persecution. The cante chico ("light song") on the other hand, has its roots in Andalusian folklore, as opposed to Gypsy, as well as some assimilations of Latin American folk music. These songs are more cheerful, colorful and vivacious, and do not have as complex musical structures, nor are they as difficult to sing as cante jondo. The cante intermedio form a third group of flamenco songs, consisting of hybrids stemming from cante jondo, but also sharing much Andalusian folk influence and lacking the seriousness of cante jondo.

The malaguena, the flamenco form on which de Falla based the first part of Andaluza (through measure 48), belongs to this latter group, cante intermedio. Malaguenas have guitar accompaniment and are not danced. The sung strophes of the malaguena tend to be quite slow, solemn and serious, leaning towards cantejondo. Here however, de Falla evokes a guitarra flamenco de concierto (guitar solo) malaguena, which generally seem to be livelier in tempo and lighter in temperament than its song counterpart.

The malaguena has its origins in the ubiquitous pan-Iberian dance, the fandango. The latter has been danced as an Andalusian folk dance in all parts of Spain for many centuries, perhaps even as far back as the Arab invasion. (2) The numerous regional variants throughout Spain, even those within Andalucia, may have been influenced by the iota, a lively dance in triple time, typical throughout northern Spain. In flamenco, the fandango developed into numerous regional and local styles such as the rondena, granadina, murciana, malaguena, verdiales (3) and others. The fandangos de Malaga (a city on the southern coast of Spain) became the quintessential flamenco song of the cafes contantes era--the "Golden Age" of flamenco from around the middle of the 19th century until the 1920s--indeed, the time of de Falla and his contemporaries.

Before turning our attention to the specific rhythmic characteristics of the malaguena, we must first understand a little bit about the metric/rhythmic classifications in flamenco. Based on their compas, flamenco pieces fall into one of three broad groups, classified by rhythmic units of either 12, 4 or 3. Compas is a term that describes the rhythmic structure of a piece: in flamenco, this means the meter as well as the rhythmic pattern--the cyclical rotation of stressed and unstressed beats, along with its variations. (4) The malaguena's rhythmic characteristics are quite apparent in de Falla's Andaluza--it belongs, along with its cousins the granadinas, rondena, sevillanas, tarantas and others, to a group of flamenco songs/pieces in three beats (of 3/4 or 3/8 time) with a cortes en dos. One of the most noticeable features of the opening of Andaluza is the five accented beats followed by one "missing beat" every two measures. This "missing beat" is the cortes en dos--not actually an absence of something, but a syncopated accentuation through a stop in the music. (Cortar in Spanish means "to cut"). This is important because, hearing this in one's counting or "internal conducting" as: '1-2-3-41-2' (or '1-2-1-2-1-2'--either way--as a hemiola) is not the same feeling as: 'l-2-3-1-2-stop'. Internally, I am still "conducting" the music in three, with a syncopated "cut" or "stop" on the second beat in some measures, as opposed to feeling two-measure segments in the slower three beats of a 3/2 meter (see example 1).

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

How, then, do the four accented eighth-notes (in measure 2 and similar passages) fall into this rhythmic scheme? Why is each eighth marked with the same accent sign as the preceding five chords? How are we to interpret these markings? I think the accents of the quarters and those of the eighths are to be heard quite differently, and believe the answers to the questions above may lie in the guitar techniques and sound ideals of Gypsy flamenco music.

Flamenco guitar pieces are characterized by the alternation and interplay of the rhythmic and harmonic accentuation of rasgueado on one hand, and on the other, the melodic lines of punteado. The latter term, from the word puntear, meaning "to pluck," refers to the striking of individual tones on the guitar. Rasgueado is familiar to most of us as a stereotypical sound of flamenco music: from the verb rasguear, "to stroke," it is the rhythmic strumming of chords, sometimes repeatedly at great speed, creating percussive accents by "whirling fingernails ... unchecked by the fingertips." (5) When accompanying a singer, rasgueado is a harmonic and structural indication for the cantaor/cantaora (singer); in solo guitar music, it is a "frame" surrounding the presentation of the falsetas, the melodic (punteado) variations. The latter description aptly fits the layout of the first part of Andaluza: short sections of rasgueado, as in the first line of music and other comparable passages, interspersed with falsetas, such as measures 5-8, 13-16, 21-24 and 33-48 (see example 1).

When approaching flamenco music, we must remember that what we value in occidental musical traditions as being aesthetically beautiful and appropriate to our expressive needs is often dramatically different than that of this profoundly eastern-influenced musical culture. From the point of view of our musical ethos, many of us would be repulsed by, or in other instances unmoved by (or not even notice), certain qualities of the singing and dancing that would be supremely poignant for an Andalusian Gypsy. These differences may be found in flamenco guitar techniques as well. Techniques such as the following serve the sound ideals of flamenco guitar, whereby timbre may be affected by:

* the use of fingernails along with fingertips in punteado (as well as rasgueado)

* playing as closely as possible to the bridge, which relays the string vibrations to the soundboard, creating a harsh, rasping quality

* a technique called apoyando, wherein the string is struck, usually by the thumb, and 'pushed' downward and toward the soundboard (rather than pulled parallel to it), creating a full, prolonged and sometimes even percussive tone. (6)

In addition, the flamenco guitar is constructed differently than the modern classical guitar. For example, it is built partly of cypress wood to give it a brighter, metallic tone. Also, the bridge and bridge bone are lower, thereby transmitting sound vibrations as directly as possible and making the tone sharper and more penetrating, as well as sometimes causing the percussive twang of the strings vibrating against the frets.

I believe it is these types of palpable sound qualities, the emotional force of which can create for the listener such an incredibly visceral experience, that de Falla is alluding to with the repeated accents on each punteado eighth-note in measure two. Although identical to those on the more powerful rasgueado chords preceding them, these accents are not so much volume-related as timbre-related, calling for a somewhat sharp, biting, metallic and energetic sound. This understanding affects both the way we conceptualize the music and our decisions regarding the speed and depth of our fingertips' contact with the keys on these marcato eighth notes. Specifically, I suggest that in this instance, faster finger strikes at a shallower key depth may produce the desired sound quality.

In contrast to the above, section B (measures 49-73) captures the hypnotic and melancholic lyricism of a copla, a song or verse of a song. De Falla masterfully creates a jondo melody, muy flamenco (very Gypsy), in the mold of the bulerias pot solea, a cante jondo with a complex rhythmic structure in a compas of 12 beats (see example 2).

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

From the very first melody note, one can hear the lamenting wail "Ay!" transporting us into a dark, mysterious and profoundly personal world, one in which our sense of the word "performance" does not exist. It is "the cry of the lonely singer calling up his tragic sino" (fate). (7) The cantaor bears his pain in song--songs imbued with a nihilistic pessimism and fatalism, born of the Gypsy tribe's many generations of wandering, alienation, poverty, famine and destitution. Death is a principle theme, as is lover's grief and loneliness, the latter particularly so in the solea song type.

In addition to cries of "Ay, ay!" interjected into the text, typically jondo is the way in which the guitar disappears into the background in total subordination to the singer, whose throaty voice, forced and gutteral, bears resemblance to those in Arabian music. In fact, cante jondo betrays its Byzantine/Oriental roots in many of its vocal characteristics, and a number of these are apparent throughout de Falla's haunting copla in Andaluza. One common trait of Oriental melodies is the almost obsessive repetition of a single note, colored by appoggiaturas above and below it, creating a kind of "incantation." Additionally, cante jondo usually consists of descending melody lines ending on a falling cadence of a minor second, such as is found in the phrygian mode. Typically, they move within the range of a sixth, although this by no means limits the number of notes available to only the nine semitones contained within a major 6th in the tempered scale system of western music. Third-, quarter-tones and other subdivisions color their singing, making it sound off-key to us, through vocal portamento (sliding between melody notes) and "enharmonism." This term, not to be confused with its classical meaning, refers to a means of expressive modulation whereby "certain functional notes are divided and subdivided into intervals smaller than a semitone, obeying inflections of the voice, which in turn, are determined by the expression that the words of the song demand." (8) Of course, the vocal portamento and enharmonism described above can only be implied and imagined in this music written for piano, yet they are certainly there in spirit. It is easy to imagine this "enharmonic inflection" on long notes in de Falla's melody. Another common characteristic of Gypsy flamenco singing is the extreme stretching of individual vowels, such as on the E in measure 49 ("Ay!") or the D in measure 51.

Finally, one cannot escape noticing how melismatic the melody lines of de Falla's copla are. Indeed, this is one of the predominant characteristics of these cante, yet also one of the most difficult to adapt to instrumental art music, particularly for the piano. The character and purpose of the melismas in Gypsy cante are lost not only when

Jason Cutmore, pianist, has taught, lectured and performed in the United States, Canada, Europe and throughout the Indian subcontinent. A graduate of the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, Cutmore is completing a master of music degree at the Purchase Conservatory of Music (SUNY) in New York.

they are fit into the fixed intervals of our tempered scale, but especially when divorced from the text to which they owe their nascence. These are not mere embellishments for the sake of ornamentation (the melismas of a high baroque opera aria would be their complete antithesis), rather they are a spontaneous expansion of the melody induced by the emotive force and needs of the text.

It behooves us, therefore, when playing these passages to remember the "sliding" yet forceful nature of jondo singing, where no sound is relegated to a mere decorative function. Entirely removed from the "Art for Art's sake" ethos, at its height, cante jondo is the bewitching expression of a cantaor being overpowered by the daimonic" within, releasing an unstoppable emotional force through every sound, syllable and word.

Part of my extensive attention here on melody is due not only to its expressive domination, but also because it is crucial to understanding the harmonic structures and modes of this music, lest we make the error of superimposing Western harmony's methods and idioms upon "Oriental" music. Our usual method of searching the basslines and chordal sonorities for that all-important beacon of "functional harmony," the dominant, in the form of authentic cadences, half cadences and secondary dominants, can only mislead us here, both in trying to realize the vocabulary, and the point of the music. Musicologist Walter Starkie writes that "as a result of the extinction of modes, harmony advanced greatly, but there were disadvantages, for the ancient modes were superior to the major and minor scales as vehicles of pure expression." (10) He then notes that "Pedrell's (11) modal credo was the same as that of Bourgault Ducoudray" who wrote in the introduction to his collection Melodies Populaires de Grace: "Western harmonic music, hitherto exclusively confined to the two modes, major and minor, will cast off it shackles and eastern music, hitherto exclusively melodic, will start on a new harmonic career." (12) It is this "exclusively melodic" orientation of eastern music that must guide us here.

The origins of flamenco music lie in its vocal tradition; unaccompanied songs, such as the martinete or tonas, are the most archaic song forms--and the predecessors of many others--in the Andalusian Gypsy cante. With this melodic pattern of resisting, almost fighting the inevitable descent to the tonic in mind, and that tonic being identified by an arrival point in the vocal line, one can then properly hear measures 49-58 as being not in D minor, but in A phrygian. The right hand A in measure 57 is that tonic arrival, not the fifth degree of a D-minor scale, and the entrance of a new key area in measure 59 is not the end or tonic of what came before, arrived at through an authentic cadence. Rather, it sounds and functions like the beginning of something, and the arrival of the bass and soprano As in the preceding measures represent the culmination of the preceding strophe of song. At measure 59, it may again be tempting to assume G minor. Despite its B- and E-flats, as well as F-sharps, G is not the tonic in the measures between 59 and 70. The vocal line clearly points to D as the tonic. Most of this passage is in the D phrygian mode, sometimes containing a raised third degree, (D-E-flat-F-sharp-G-A-B-flat-C-D) which I like to call the "Gypsy flamenco mode," for lack of any other existing term in English that I am aware of, and due to its common occurrence in flamenco music. With the emergence of the C-sharps in the final few measures, this subsequently turns into the "Gypsy mode," often found in the Gypsy music of Hungary and the Balkans. The C-sharps function here as leading tones, giving greater closure to the entire B section.

During some incredible nights spent listening to cante jondo and cante chico in Andalucia many years ago, the dizzying, kaleidoscopic array of inter-woven rhythms left an indelible impression upon my mind and ear. Polyrhythms, hemiolas, syncopations, additive meters, irregular and changing meters and astonishing virtuoso displays of hocker (13) rhythms combined to create music that was rhythmically beyond my powers of transcription. This humbling experience was some-what disconcerting until I read of the encounters Glinka, Chabrier and other foreign musicians had with flamenco music in Spain. Of Glinka, Walter Starkie writes: "He tried desperately to reproduce on the piano the effects which El Murciano drew from the six strings of his guitar, but in vain, and the people would describe how he would return to his house pale, distracted and unable to speak." (14)

In measures 49 through 59 of Andaluza for example, a complex and integrated rhythmic texture is composed of these different layers:

1. Measures of 3/4 time (measures 50-51, for example) alternated with measures of 3/2 time (measures 52-53) creating broad hemiolas, which is characteristic of the 12-beat compas of the bulerias. Although some might hear this entire section in one or the other meter, the changing contours of the melodic lines--that is, how notes seem to fall into natural groupings "topographically"--suggests this alternation to me.

2. Patterns of tonic pedal 'As' in the left-hand accompaniment: Sometimes [??] ; sometimes [??] ; the latter thereby creating a polyrhythm against the 3/2 melody above it.

3. Numerous syncopations, such as:

* recurring "suppressed accents" created by the eighth rests on downbeats (R.H.)

* accented second eighth note in measure 53, preceded by a suppressed accent (lack of tenuto or accent sign) on the eighth note before it (R.H.)

* accent on the fourth eighth note in measure 56 (R.H.) as in the bass in measures 57 and 58 (L.H.)

4. And underneath all the above is a 16th-note alternation that evokes the hocket rhythm of palmas sordas, the muffled hand clapping that accompanies many songs and dances. These soon afterwards burst into palmas fuertes (loud hand clapping) in the next section of the piece.

When all of these rhythmic elements are studied consciously, in relation to the basic meter and to each other, one lays the groundwork for intuition to step in and allow the music to flow in an integrated whole that may even capture the effect of the apparent rhythmic freedom and metrical obscurity that one perceives in flamenco.

For those who may like to dig still further into Andaluza, a close motivic analysis of the piece will yield surprising and beneficial results--I highly recommend it. This piece's astonishingly tight motivic structure creates a coherent whole, and may be testimony to the great interest de Falla had in Edvard Grieg's music as he was growing up in Cadiz. "He admired Grieg for having been able to build his symphonic structure upon themes which were hardly distinguishable from folk music." (15) Not only do the various motivic elements of sections A and B synthesize in the climactic section that follows, but so do the individual flamenco components he was evoking integrate into a full-out cuadro flamenco. This typical flamenco performance ensemble that developed in the late 19th century, includes guitars, vocals, dancing (complete with rhythmic toe and heel stamping and finger snapping) and jaleadors who encourage the others with their contra-palmas and shouts of "Ole!," "That is singing!" and more. At least, this is what fills my imagination when looking at or hearing this section of Andaluza!

In summary, music of this genre will benefit greatly from the performer keeping in mind the cultural origins of flamenco songs, their messages and emotional force; the percussive, syncopated, cyclical rhythms; the particular timbres (nasal, forceful and so forth) of flamenco singing and guitar playing; and the sobbing descent of the melody line, in the phrygian or other modes, towards its tragic goal. Color and rhythmic drive are paramount--features that Manuel de Falla captures brilliantly in all his music.

De Falla seemed to be possessed of the soul of a Gypsy, the mind of an alchemist, and the perfectionism and imagination of a great artist. As we have seen in the details highlighted above, these gifts brought forth in his compositions a sublime and beautiful marriage of folk music and high art.

BONUS BYTE

For a partial list of late-intermediate/early-advanced Spanish piano music, go to www.mtna.org and click on the American Music Teacher magazine cover. Then click on "Bonus Bytes."

NOTES

(1.) The southern region of Spain inhabited by many different cultures through the centuries. Under the Romans it was called Provincia Baetica; its modern name comes from the Arab al-Andalus ("land of the Vandals"). The Sierra Morena mountains form Andalusia's northern boundary, dividing it naturally from the rest of Spain.

(2.) The Moors crossed the Strait of Gibraltar in 711 A.D.

(3.) Variants local to Ronda, Granada, Murcia and Malaga (including the verdiales) respectively.

(4.) This rotational rhythmic pattern and the meter do not in all instances coincide within each metrical division, particularly in the case of the unusual rhythmic sequences found in those songs with a compas of 12 beats. It is for this reason that the compas is not simply the equivalent to meter in Western music, as it describes something more inclusive and complex in the rhythmic framework of the piece than meter alone.

(5.) Bernhard-Friedrich Schulze, "Guitarra Flamenca," Flamenco. Claus Schreiner, ed., (Oregon: Amadeus Press, 1990), 126.

(6.) Ibid., 125-126.

(7.) Walter Starkie, "Spain: A Musician's Journey Through Time and Space," Idisli 2, (Geneva: 1958), 92.

(8.) Gilbert Chase, The Music of Spain, (New York: Dover, 1959), 224.

(9.) I use this ancient term, referring to all the powerful instinctive or natural forces within us, good and bad, in preference to our modern term "demonic" due to the latter's exclusively negative connotations. Although I mention the daimonic figuratively here, in Gypsy flamenco, there, in fact, exists a "ghost" or "spirit"--the duende--which is the inner force that, when "possessing" the singer or dancer, is credited with creating the Gypsy's most impassioned and profound artistic statements.

(10.) Starkie, 117.

(11.) Felipe Pedrell (1841-1922) was a musicologist, composer and teacher of Granados, Albeniz, de Falla and others. Through his writings, lectures and private instruction, he inspired numerous Spanish composers to look to the folk music and early sacred music of Spain as sources for the development of a nationalistic style in their music.

(12.) Starkie, 117.

(13.) By hocker rhythm I am referring to the division of a composite rhythm between two or more parts.

(14.) Starkie, 91.

(15.) Starkie, 127.

David Sariti is on the faculty at the University of Virginia, where he teaches violin, coaches chamber music and the Baroque Orchestra, and performs in the Rivanna Quartet. He has appeared widely as recitalist and chamber musician on both modern and period instruments.