The challenge

 I'm studying how the Lorca music intersects with categories of taste, like middlebrow or kitsch. But I myself occupy a position in this hierarchy. I like music that has a certain integrity. It can be alienated from what Lorca was doing, different in whatever way, but it cannot be cheap in its effects.  

It's actually an objective judgment to call something middle-brow or kitsch. That simply is that sort of taste. The cursi is cursi and is perfectly recognizable as such. Those are sociological facts. 

So middle-brow elevates in cheap ways (adding strings to a song that doesn't need them, to make it sound more refined). Kitsch just goes all out, and has the strings + a canned rock-beat on the drums. Kitsch doesn't care whether it's elevated, but will add a little bit of strings just to be sure. It is hybrid in all the wrong ways. 

Obviously I am just arguing with myself here.  Instead of saying "this is kitsch," I could say, "this is the sort of thing people call kitsch." Or middle-brow. Instead of trying to find a non-pejorative way of talking about it, I could just own it. 

Carlos Cano

 I couldn't sleep, and was writing in my head. I remembered suddenly Carlos Cano's Diván del Tamarit, which I have to at least mention.  

Gacela del amor imprevisto.  Starts off with a horn section, a female voice sings "nadie," a male voice comes in. Then the male voice, Cano, sings with a guitar. Semi-flamenco style. Drum beat enters, then violins and woodwinds. Very pretentious-sounding. I'm not getting an emotional feel from the song that corresponds to my idea of of the poem. The mood changes half-way through; it's a bit lachrymose. The arrangement is too much. That string section. 

Gacela de la terrible presencia. Starts off with pulsing intro, drum beat and electric guitar. The tempo is too fast for the poem, the dramatic emphases are off. The soprano is doing vocalese in the background. He uses strings in a similar way. 

Gacela del amor desesperado.  Starts with flamenco-style singing. Then the orchestra comes in. The arrangement is almost unbearably pretentious. Castanets. The pseudo-flamenco is reminiscent of españoladas. 

Gacela del amor que no se deja ver. Starts with bells, and then the line about bells in the poem. A woman whispering. He is not a bad singer, but the melodies are not convincing to me. 

Gacela del niño muerto. A middle-eastern feel to the scale being played. A flute. The tempo is too up-beat for the text of the poem. You are doing it wrong!! 

Gacela de la raíz amarga. Just the guitar and voice at the beginning. Then the woodwinds. Flamenco cadence. 

That's about as much as I can stand. This is unspeakably bad. But that's just my opinion.  

Mediocre

 Out of curiosity I listened to some music by some of the Grupo de 8 composers on Spotify.  One of them, in particular, seemed very bad to me. The H brothers seem quite perfectly mediocre, but this other guy seemed to be writing bad scores for spaghetti Westerns. (And I say this as someone who appreciates the classic scores to those movies by Sergio de Leone.) It just seemed bizarre to me. Abrupt modulations with no reasons behind them, weak sense of momentum, writing in outmoded styles of past centuries, but without "making them new" in an interesting way, cheap romantic effects. 

We only ever get to hear the good stuff. Well, classical FM radio plays conservative composers who are not my thing, but they usually are more technically competent than this. I'm sure there are unknown gems, but minor composers are often minor for good reasons.  Compositional talent is rare. It cannot be taken for granted. 

Ohana

 Maurice Ohana is interesting. His father was a Sephardic Jew, his mother Spanish. He was born in Casablanca, but gained British citizenship through his father, whose family was from Gibraltar. He knew everyone from Alejo Carpentier and Octavio Paz to La Argentinita and André Gide. He lived mostly in France, and later became a French citizen. He was interested African music (both North African and the Subsaharan).  Like Mompou, he didn't care much for Beethoven, or, in general the Germans. He liked French music, Ravel, Debussy, and Spanish (Falla, Albéniz). You couldn't even make up someone with this background and biographical trajectory. His existence alone justifies my project. 

So there is a musical modernism that stems from everyone except Schoenberg and his school. Debussy, Stravinksy, Falla, Poulenc. It's the French, Russians, and Spanish against the German hegemony in music. Pierre Boulez then imposes that German orthodoxy on French music, with Ohana off to one side with his group, the zodiaque.  {This info comes from the work of Caroline Rae, the main expert on Ohana who is in Wales.  

My rule

 I can't just listen to a piece based on Lorca: I have to listen to several other things by the same composer that aren't related. Otherwise I miss out on who the composer is independently, and also I miss out on my own musical education. 

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I don't even like other people's work on "words and music."  In my view, most people who write on literature and music are doing it wrong. But 'you're doing it wrong" could be my motto. I have to watch myself because that's my main approach. 

How do I know I'm doing it right? I think about it and come with the best approach. I see what the material I am studying is telling me, and I change course when I realize I am doing it wrong. I discard assumptions that become obstacles to progress. 

***

Listening to "Long Night for 3 Pianos" by Kyle Gann. I discovered this composer through his blog several years ago. It sounds postminimalist and a little new-agey in flavor.  

Schlock

 I still don't like Amancio Prada. The smooth-jazz like sax, the arpeggiation on the piano, the cheesy modulations, the pop drum beats that seem to be out of a box. To me it drags down Lorca to his level, but without really elevating the music itself. It's a kind of middle-brow, conservative approach that makes my skin crawl. I don't have problems with avant-garde music, or late modernist styles.  

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I listened to some Cristóbal Halffter works yesterday. He cites part of the melody of "Anda Jaleo" in the midst of an otherwise atonal piece.  He is the nephew of Rodolfo and Ernesto, Spanish composers of the group of 8. I have a hard time getting excited about any of them. Just think if Lorca had stayed with music, he'd be a minor student of Manuel de Falla. 

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Looks like there is a book on Encarnación López, "La Argentinita," out. (published in Sept.). Looking forward to that. She was mainly a dancer, but sung on the record with Lorca playing the piano. Now if someone would just do a bio on Germaine Montero. 

Salvador Moreno Manzano

 I discovered another composer today, a Mexican one. The bar is high to get included in my book. I wish there were more women composers to approach Lorca's work, because that would make ME look better.  I don't want to do either a descriptive survey or make claims for a lot of very minor works. 

I also found some Alberti settings by Rodolfo Halffter today. I have to look up the spelling of his name every time. One l, two ffs, one t.