El sombrero de tres picos (The Three-cornered Hat): Suite No.2
Danza de los vecinos (Neighbours’ Dance)
Danza del molinero (Miller’s Dance)
Danza final
It’s one of the strangest quirks of musical history that almost all the best-known "Spanish" music is by composers from other countries. Rimsky-Korsakov’s Capriccio Espagnol, Debussy’s Iberia, and Bizet’s "Carmen", to name only three works, have all but cornered the market. Spain has historically been unlucky with her great composers, the most brilliant talents, Arriaga, Albeniz and Granados all dying at tragically early ages, before producing any music with more than a peripheral hold on the international repertoire. Only two Spanish composers of the first rank have really had full and productive careers, the late Joaquin Rodrigo and Manuel de Falla. Even Falla completed very little music during the final twenty years of his life, much of which he spent in exile. But, as Harold Schonberg has put it "..everything he completed is jewel-like in its workmanship…with a subtle ear for colour and absolute precision in technique. Falla was not only far above any Spanish composer of his day; he was the only Spanish composer of the day who rose above mediocrity".
Falla was born in Cadiz and was something of a prodigy, studying the piano with his mother and going on to study composition in Madrid with the composer and musicologist Felipe Pedrell. After winning a national prize for his opera "La vida breve" (1905) he moved to Paris, where until the outbreak of the First World War he mixed with Debussy, Dukas and Ravel. Returning to Madrid, he worked on a remarkable folk-based stage-work "El amor brujo" and a pantomime based on Pedro Antonio de Alarcon’s story "El corregidor y la molinera". At this point he was approached by Serge Diaghilev. Highly-coloured musical exoticism was the stock-in-trade of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russee and the revolutionary scores he had commissioned before the war from Debussy, Stravinsky and Ravel were already world-famous. He proposed to rework Falla’s quasi-piano concerto "Noches en los jardines de Espana" as a ballet but Falla persuaded him that the Alarcon pantomime would work better, and this was the work finally premiered in London in July 1919 as "El sombrero de tres picos". The choreography was by Massine, the conductor was Ernest Ansermet and the designs were by Picasso. With Falla’s music, these ingredients added up to an instant and lasting international success.
"The Three-cornered Hat" is the uniform of a village Corregidor (Magistrate) and the ballet tells a classic pantomime story of a pompous old man, the corregidor, trying to seduce a young miller’s wife. In best commedia dell’arte tradition the shrewd young couple outwit his schemes, amidst ample opportunities for folk-dance and orchestral colour of all shades. Falla’s score is, at first hearing, less overtly "Spanish" than many of the well-known "Spanish" works by foreign composers. His orchestration, in particular, avoids the trumpet-and-castanet mannerisms so typical of these musical picture-postcards; the vibrant dance-rhythms which give his music its irresistible energy are just part of his gorgeously colourful, impressionistic orchestral sound. There are intentionally rough edges in his harmony and scoring, as well as passages of sensuous warmth reminiscent of a rather more red-blooded Debussy. Falla had an intimate knowledge of authentic Spanish folk-song, particularly the Cante hondo of his native south, and certainly felt no need to prove himself "Spanish" by resorting to cliché. The three movements which he compiled into the second concert suite from "El sombrero de tres picos" make up most of the second half of the ballet. The Danza de los vecinos evokes the rhythm of seguidillas on a warm, starlit St. John’s Night; theDanza del molinero carries the action vigorously forward in farruca rhythm. Falla whimsically quotes Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony ("Fate knocking at the door") as the constables sent by the corregidor to arrest the miller make their entrance. Toward the end of the dance a cuckoo sings a warning to the young couple. The Danza final recapitulates much of the material used earlier in the ballet as it builds towards a riotous final general dance in the style of a jota;. The ballet ends with the corregidor, outwitted, being tossed in a blanket by the jubilant villagers.
R.G.Bratby 2001
Copyright Classical Notes.co.uk 2000
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