The Spanish folklore in the context of the piano creativity of the Renacimiento’s period composers
The Spanish theme in music is one of the brightest and most beloved by composers of different countries. But the paradoxical fact is that before the period of musical revival (Renacimiento), due to the historical events, folklore represented Spain all over the world more than the works of the Spanish composers. This is evidenced by the repeated appeal to the folk sources of this country of such masters as A. Vivaldi, F. Handel, A. Corelli, F. List, S. Rachmaninoff, M. Glinka, F. List, J. Bizet, C. Debussy, M. Ravel, N. Rimsky- Korsakov, R. Schumann and others, who created vivid pages of world musical Spanish studies. Spain gained its true artistic leaders during the Renacimiento period – the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries – in the person of Felipe Pedrell, Isaac Albeniz, Enrique Granados and Manuel de Falla, whose aesthetic views came down to the revival of the artistic and distinctive national music culture and the creation of another European composer school. The Spanish music “began to sound” in the world space from “the mouth” of its national representatives exactly at this vital stage of its development. Nowadays, the extremely rich Spanish folklore tradition, which has played an important role in the history of the musical art of not only Europe but the whole world itself remains “in the shadow” and the fact witnesses the lack of any new research in the field of Spanish piano music in all of Ukrainian musicology. Historical and biographical sketches can be found in the Russian-language works of the 60s-70s of the 20th century. This determines the relevance of the proposed topic and has allowed the author to formulate the next goal of this investigation – to make an excursion into the Spanish folklore of this period, systematizing the principles of its incarnation into professional piano music. To achieve this goal, the author has chosen a retrospective “view” on the development of the folklore tradition in the context of Spanish musical art. The music texts for piano and orchestra serving as the material of the given article are Spanish rhapsody by Isaac Albeniz and “Symphonic impressions for piano and orchestra” “The nights in the gardens of Spain” by Manuel de Falla. The article carries out the historical and informative excursion into the Spanish folklore of the Renacimiento period in a retrospective way by means of the abovementioned works analysis and also on the basis of rethinking of the main provisions of the works of such musicologists and folklorists as I. Zemtsovsky and G. Golovinsky. The research considers and outlines the methods of processing folklore in the professional piano music of the Spanish composers of this period, the differentiation of which is conditioned by using specific national figures of the musical language – patterns. The analysis of the works spotlights some of the characteristics of the performing manner of ancient Spanish music – cante jondo, which originates from the ancient musical systems of India, clarifies the characteristic features of petenera and malaguena styles, which are part of the hereditary group of cante jondo – cante flamenco, and also other Spanish national genres, such as jota and sorongo. The results of the research claim that the Spanish composers of the Renacimiento period systematically turned to the folklore sphere, that is evidenced by many national figures and elements of the musical language used in their works – patterns. It is possible to state the constant appeal to the national sources and the different ways of folk material processing in individual author’s creativity, that makes it possible to distinguish two types of professional methods of Spanish folklore elaboration: citing (the use of original, that is, authentic themes) and associative (the use of various means of musical expressiveness, causing specific associations, for example, with a particular dance or song, etc.). The citing method can be conditionally divided into three types: 1) recreating the Spanish color and character: mode and tonal variability, increased intervals, bimodality, chromatic, ornamentation, contrasts; 2) imitation of folk instruments (castanets, viuela – today’s modern guitar): articulation, orchestration; 3) an allusion to a dance or a song: characteristic metrorhythmic formulas, melodic structure, etc. The basis of the Spanish rhapsody by I. Albeniz is, to a greater extent, the authentic folklore material, which points to the application of the citing method (original themes of petenera, jota and malaguena, with their subsequent variation and reminiscence). “Spanish” manifests itself in “The nights in the gardens of Spain” by M. de Falla in a different way: the composer “draws” the image of his native Andalusia relying not on the original themes (there are only two of them: the subject of “a blind beggar’s play” and the theme of the sorongo), but on the complex of patterns, with the help of which the Spanish color is very clearly reflected and the effect of constant variation of folk material is created. A further perspective of development in this direction can lie in projecting the presented methods to the oeuvre of other composers. This methodology can also be implemented into creating a composition of a Spanish character by a nonnational composer, to become a “key” to comprehend the nature of Spanish music and, accordingly, to realize the ways of its embodiment in the frameworks of a musician’s own performing creativity and to be an interesting phenomenon for doing research in the context of national representatives’ creativity for the listener, that will provide expansion of knowledge in the Spanish musical field.