Uniting Music and Poetry in Twentieth-Century Spain

Nelson R. Orringer is professor emeritus of Spanish and comparative literature at the University of Connecticut, Storrs.

Music and poetry are two different arts, one acoustic, one linguistic, but in this book Nelson R. Orringer has brought out beautifully the synergy between the two, how they can interact with each other, and especially how composers capture, re-interpret, even enrich the work of poetic predecessors and contemporaries. Through considering Falla alongside Bécquer and Góngora, Turina alongside Lope, Mompou alongside Janés, Toldrá alongside Golden-Age poets, Halffter alongside Alberti, Rodrigo alongside Unamuno, and Montsalvatge alongside the Cuban poets, we are shown how the hybrid art of the song-poem acquires its own poetic and musical status. The poem remains a poem but its form has changed from pure verse-form to song-form. It is this process of change, the emergence of the song-poem, that Orringer studies so fascinatingly in this marvelously suggestive book. For those of us who love both literature and music this new work is a feast to be savored.

• Introduction: An Imperfectly Known Artistic LegacyChapter 1: Falla´s Four Youthful Experiments in SongChapter 2: Glorifying Cordoba: Góngora and FallaChapter 3: Joaquín Turina´s Musical Sevillanismo in Four SongsChapter 4: Frederic Mompou´s Art of Dreaming Music in Combat del somni [Dream Combat]Chapter 5: The Virginal Voice in Eduard Toldrà´s Six Songs of Castilian PoetryChapter 6: The Absent Dulcinea: Joaquín Rodrigo's Song to Music ItselfChapter 7: Creative Landscapes of Salamanca in Unamuno and Joaquín RodrigoChapter 8: Montsalvatge´s Cinco canciones negras [Five Black Songs]: The Search for Freedom through MusicChapter 9: Rodolfo Halffter´s Canciones sobre Marinero en tierra [Songs on Sailor on Shore] or Nostalgia for a Spain Left BehindConclusions: Silver Age Song-Poems in the Era of Recapitulation