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The moment when a flamenco guitar player
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kitarist
Posts: 1715
Joined: Dec. 4 2012
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 RE: The moment when a flamenco guita... (in reply to Richard Jernigan)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Richard Jernigan
Back to "Asturias." I have always wondered which came first, the piano piece or the flamenco falseta? I have seen "1890s" given as the date of composition for "Asturias," nothing more specific. Flamenco guitar existed in the 1890s, but I don't have any recordings from that far back.
The falseta is characteristically played while accompanying granaínas. History books I have read put the origin of granaínas in the 20th century.
RNJ
Some tidbits of info in this 127-page dissertation called "The Spanish guitar influence on the piano music of Isaac Albéniz and Enrique Granados : a detailed study of Granada and Asturias of Suite española by Albéniz and Andaluza and Danza triste of Doce danzas españolas by Granados" - https://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/handle/2152/12975
Direct link to the free pdf : https://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/bitstream/handle/2152/12975/chod16975.pdf
Seems that the best guess for year of composition is 1892.
From page 82 of the pdf (page number 73) on there is an analysis of the piece itself. No mention of borrowing a flamenco theme but it was written right in the period when Albeniz was heavily influenced by Pedrell who encouraged him and other composers to lean on Spanish folkloric musical idioms in their compositions. In the case of Asturias mimicking the flamenco guitar mannerisms. Somewhere in there it claims that Asturias is composed in a solea musical form.
Way before that in the intro chapters there are some musings about flamenco's influence and some historical notes. I'd be curious what more knowledgeable members think of these. I randomly checked one claim which seemed fantastical to me - on page 22 of the pdf (page number 13) it says:
"But obviously gypsies were not the creators of flamenco, since the Roman writers mentioned flamenco long before the gypsies reached Spain"
(underlining mine)
and this is referenced to Crow, page 21.
Really?! Roman writers mention flamenco?!
This took me to Crow, John Armstrong. Spain: The Root and the Flower. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1985,
wherein on its page 21 we read:
Well.
Roman mention of the existence of religious songs is not at all the same thing as mentioning flamenco.
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Konstantin
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Date Mar. 25 2021 6:08:22
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BarkellWH
Posts: 3458
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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RE: The moment when a flamenco guita... (in reply to kitarist)
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Konstantin,
perusing this dissertation, it appears that the author submitted it at the University of Texas, Austin, in pursuit of a Doctorate in Musical Arts. Good thing for him that you were not a member of his dissertation committee, as he could not have defended his conflation of "flamenco" and "saetas" with a citation from Crow.
It obviously went over the heads of his committee members. Great piece of research on your part.
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white,
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East."
--Rudyard Kipling
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Date Mar. 25 2021 13:02:10
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Ricardo
Posts: 14801
Joined: Dec. 14 2004
From: Washington DC
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RE: The moment when a flamenco guita... (in reply to kitarist)
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Clearly the confusion is conflation of “flamenco” as in the artists that perform or create flamenco song, and the “Saeta” which is one specific song form related to flamenco and often thought of as a precursor to proper flamenco forms Toná, Martinete, and thusly Siguiriyas. All of those have superficial similarities with the “Arabic call to prayer” and hence ties to Ancient Rome or Greece (all that Middle East sounding modal singing in general). I think the superficial similarities have been enough for flamencologists to assume the adaptation of Christian (Catholic specifically thanks to inquisition and expulsion of non catholic people) lyrics to singing styles that were arabic and Jewish in origin.
This was thought to have happened in order to let these people “hide out” in a country that was being forced (violently) to assimilate a religious belief that was not originally their own. Leave or die or stay and adapt (convert). The only issue I have had with this theory is that Gypsies are decidedly NOT moors, Jews, nor Arabs. There is no reason to believe they mixed and therefore adapted (strongly) these other peoples cultural things. My experience with Gypsies is they tend to be Christians, evangelical or cult style most often. They are very closed and they don’t exhibit these “flamenco” styling in other parts of Europe, only in Andalucia. They do like to pick up other music styles, but quickly adapt them in their own way. (Porrina doing Fado por bulerias, Django jazz, Gipsy Kings, and personal Romani I know spread songs at weddings and every kid learns them and pass them on... Frank Sinatra songs end up sounding nothing like the original version in other words).
If there are writings about ancient songs called “Saeta” I am not aware of it, but just because such songs might be known from Ancient Rome does not necessarily mean they bare resemblance to Saeta done today. I could imagine, again, superficial similarity to Arabic singing. Seeing some sort of written score of course would help clear any confusion. As we saw investigating the makkams there was only superficial correlations to flamenco cante, nothing specifically borrowed or practiced (that I have yet seen on paper anyway). Singing a scale up and down exists in ALL music styles pretty much. I for one remain open to any and all concrete evidence if it gets presented.
EDIT: About albeniz. One clue that the piece might not have been borrowed from guitar is the key is actually F minor. The repeating C note is not practical on guitar. Of course it could have been transposed, or the guitarist he stole from had a capo, but for sure the piano version is “Not guitaristic” in it’s original form.
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CD's and transcriptions available here:
www.ricardomarlow.com
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Date Mar. 25 2021 18:51:33
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tf10music
Posts: 112
Joined: Jan. 3 2017
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RE: The moment when a flamenco guita... (in reply to Ricardo)
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quote:
This was thought to have happened in order to let these people “hide out” in a country that was being forced (violently) to assimilate a religious belief that was not originally their own. Leave or die or stay and adapt (convert). The only issue I have had with this theory is that Gypsies are decidedly NOT moors, Jews, nor Arabs. There is no reason to believe they mixed and therefore adapted (strongly) these other peoples cultural things. My experience with Gypsies is they tend to be Christians, evangelical or cult style most often.
Yeah, this has been my experience as well -- and there was very little overlap between Jews and Gitanos in Spain, so even if some of the sephardic liturgical melodies found their way into flamenco, the influence would be very indirect, by way of the larger amorphous grab-bag of música andalusí. I do think that there is a sensitivity to or sense of solidarity with the fate of the Jews and Muslims in Spain in the Gitano perspective on flamenco (and in the letras, of course). That sensibility has definitely enriched my personal relationships.
The idea that Conversos would have been able to mask their liturgical melodies is ridiculous on a number of levels. First of all, the consequences for judaizing in any way were rather steep -- Jewish conversion and cultural assimilation to Christianity was far more complete than it was in the case of the Muslims, due to the smaller and less powerful Jewish population. Nobody was worried about any Jewish rebellions, whereas that was a real concern for the forcibly baptised Morisco population. Second of all, anyone who knows about Jewish religious practice is aware that the words and the texts hold far more cultural importance than the melodies, so the idea that Jews went to such lengths to protect liturgical melodies rather than, say, central cultural rituals like lighting candles on the sabbath (which did persist in certain Converso households) doesn't make a great deal of sense.
In general, as a Jew living in Spain, I've found Spaniards in most contexts to be almost impressively ignorant about Judaism, while simultaneously confident that they are rather knowledgeable about the matter -- not shocking behaviour, when you consider that their society has built itself for five centuries on a couple of foundational instances of ethnic cleansing. I don't really hold it against anyone in particular so long as they're not voting Vox, but it's certainly noticeable.
I suppose that there is an argument to be made that there was a certain amount of assimilation between Moriscos and Gitanos after the 1609 expulsion, but there's no real evidence for that beyond some blips in the census data during those years. There's some indication that mozarabic jarchas influenced the verse forms of flamenco's letras, but again, that's the kind of thing that probably happened indirectly, since there was all kinds of cross-fertilization between Arabic, Hebrew, Latin and Spanish poetic form in Spain across the middle ages.
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Date Mar. 25 2021 19:55:16
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tf10music
Posts: 112
Joined: Jan. 3 2017
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RE: The moment when a flamenco guita... (in reply to Ricardo)
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quote:
Anything we could look at?
Well, there's an argument forwarded by Robert Felkel about thematic similarities between the jarchas and flamenco letras that strikes me as somewhat weak. He claims that that they both make an association between love, pain, inability to communicate and death, but the same can be said of troubadour lyric (which, to be fair, also draws influence from arabic music and verse).
Cristina Cruces Roldán's case is more interesting and nuanced. Basically, she notes that the metre in the jarchas is the first instance of a metrical pattern that becomes fundamental. She says: "Algunas estructuras métricas que hoy consideramos auténticamente “flamencas” -- la cuarteta asonantada entre ellas, pero también el pareado o la tercerilla hexasílaba u octosilábica -- aparecen ya en las jarchas."
However, she also notes that the jarchas were hybrid forms -- mozarabic rather than arabic. She points out that even as we find certain assonant rhymes in the jarchas that later became popular in the 16th century, we also discover the possibility that the jarchas took verses from villancicos. So I guess I would say that the real take-away is that there's no direct link-up between the jarchas and flamenco letras so much as an ancestral relation: the jarchas had a metrical influence on many popular songs and verse forms in early modern Spain, and those verse forms were then taken up in flamenco.
I really do wish that Cruces Roldán had provided some concrete examples. As I move forward in my dissertation research, I might have to do that myself, if I decide that it's a relevant element of my argument.
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Date Mar. 26 2021 16:42:42
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kitarist
Posts: 1715
Joined: Dec. 4 2012
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RE: The moment when a flamenco guita... (in reply to kitarist)
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quote:
I am curious, though, what these Roman writers wrote exactly, and when. If before the 4th century it would have been pre-Christianity.
To follow up on my own query, I did some more digging on this. When I showed the referenced Crow 1985 text earlier, I interpreted it this way:
So my interpretation was that the mention in Crow was about the existence of 'religious songs' in ancient time, not of 'saetas' specifically as a particular type of those. (Others took it to refer to saetas)
The two sentences can be interpreted either way but it seemed to me that Crow's 'these songs' refers to 'songs of religious nature'; whereas in the previous sentence he was noting that cante jondo songs of religious nature are called saetas.
Another clue in favour of this interpretation for me was the breezy unsourced 'Roman writers' of Crow - it suggested a multiply-established fact which was not novel or controversial. But Roman writers mostly wrote in pre-Christianity (pre-5th century AD) - what are the chances that there would be copious instances of them writing about 'saetas' during or post 4th century? (I do connect 'saetas' to Christianity; someone please let me know if/why this is wrong; however, I did not find 'saetas' mentions in pre-Christianity either)
https://www.latinitium.com/blog/list-of-roman-authors
Anyway, my digging produced a number of mentions of religious - as in Roman religion/Gods - songs in the pre-Christian period attested-to by multiple Roman writers, and there are even surviving fragments of text (though not melody as far as I could tell; however, the rhythm of the syllables of the words could be examined for clues in terms of comparing to flamenco verses - number of syllables and inherent rhythm?).
There are some famous ones, like Carmen Saliare (literally meaning Salian song), where the 'Salii' are the priest of Mars who would perform a ritual at the beginning of the Roman New Year (March). From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salii :
"Each year in March, the Salii made a procession round the city, dancing and singing the Carmen Saliare. "
And from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmen_Saliare :
"The Carmen Saliare is a fragment of archaic Latin, which played a part in the rituals performed by the Salii (Salian priests, a.k.a. "leaping priests") of Ancient Rome.[1] There are 35 extant fragments of the Carmen Saliare, which can be read in Morel's FPL.[2]"
( FPL = Fragmenta poetarum latinorum epicorum et lyricorum which can be found at archive.rg, for example at https://archive.org/details/fragmentapoetaru0000unse_x7l9/page/n7/mode/2up )
There is a potentially very interesting book from 2005 by Habinek, called "The World of Roman Song":
https://books.google.ca/books?hl=en&lr=&id=Em_XpAvaT9oC
From a review (https://www.jstor.org/stable/4497583?seq=1) :
In contrast, I haven't found anything about Roman writers writing about saeta.
I might be wrong, but so far it still seems the Crow reference was to religious songs in general, not saetas specifically.
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Konstantin
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Date Mar. 26 2021 16:57:45
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Ricardo
Posts: 14801
Joined: Dec. 14 2004
From: Washington DC
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RE: The moment when a flamenco guita... (in reply to kitarist)
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quote:
I might be wrong, but so far it still seems the Crow reference was to religious songs in general, not saetas specifically.
Sorry but the sentence clearly states “these songs” in reference to “cante jondo” and in particular the religious grouping of songs, he claims are to be called “Saetas”, or arrows of song. The flowery language used is specifically about the “piercing arrow” quality of the songs, especially when done as “pleas for forgiveness” in a religious context. The “song” referred to is constant in the passage above and below the quote...the “gypsy song” or “cante jondo”. The claim is that the gypsy did not create the “cante jondo song saeta”, as they are supposedly mentioned in Roman writing.
No matter how your interpret that, the idea is the song was not a gypsy creation, it was older than their arrival in the region, and it is called the saeta. If the claim were meant to be “religious songs in general”, the concept is so broad as to cover every civilization and continent on earth from prehistory to this week. Why would it need to be stated that Gypsies did not actually INVENT RELIGIOUS SONGS IN GENERAL????? Hope that is clear.
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CD's and transcriptions available here:
www.ricardomarlow.com
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Date Mar. 26 2021 18:18:16
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