Strings of Spain E-Book

Maher Asaad Baker

• Herausgeber: tredition
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 104

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

“Strings of Spain” is a story of the development of the unique musical culture of Spain through the centuries. It ranges from the ethnic ways of the percussive beat in tribes to nowadays cross-genre beats that compete with Spain’s cultural rhythms. Through tracking reforms under different rulers and influences, the book reveals how history defined different regional genres. From it, we learn not only instruments, genres and techniques which appeared at certain periods, but also how the music interlinked into each facet of culture and religion. The book is a tribute to so-called eternal folk idioms, however, also an analysis of how globalization and modernity have affected the production of music in Spain. Nevertheless, the essential spirit of the nation sings from page one to the end of the book. If absolutely anyone interested in Spanish culture or the history of music has the chance to read this massive work, she or he is sure to be enthralled.

Leseprobe

Maher Asaad Baker

Strings of Spain

© 2025 Maher Asaad Baker

ISBN Softcover: 978-3-384-49364-4

ISBN Hardback: 978-3-384-49365-1

ISBN E-Book: 978-3-384-49366-8

This work, including its parts, is protected by copyright. The author is responsible for the contents. Any exploitation is prohibited.

Cover image designed by Freepik

Contents

Introduction

Historical Foundations

Regional Folklore

Musical Forms

Modern Transformations

Instruments

Thematic Explorations

Disclaimer

About the Author

Introduction

Spain is a country that simply breathes history and culture, from its pores. Spain is in the heart of Europe’s Iberian Peninsula, it is a patchwork of regions, with many influences, from a musical heritage and folkloric tradition that resulted from a rich and convoluted history of historical markers and external forces. And if the country’s music and folklore were ever as intricate, they reflect the country’s complex past, with the voices of its people, and echoes of their shared experiences. In order to completely grasp and enjoy Spanish music and folklore, one has to go through the historical background where these artistic expressions were born, and raised.

The Celts and Iberians were the early known inhabitants of the Iberian Peninsula, from whom we have recovered remnants of their musical instruments and practices. Yet it was the Roman conquest in 218 BC which brought with it a good deal of Western musical theory and instruments that were to prove so important later on in the development of Spanish music. The Romans introduced not only their great civilization but also their gods, myths, and festivals which would later overlap with the local tradition creating new images of the folkloric.

The Visigoth kingdom was created as the Roman Empire was falling apart and the Iberian Peninsula was under the fingers of a variety of Germanic tribes, including Germans themselves. In this period Christian liturgical music was being introduced, which developed into the now distinctive forms of Spanish sacred music. Early medieval instruments included the lute and the harp, two instruments which were fundamental to the music of Spain’s folk tradition, developed by the Visigoths as well.

In 711 CE, the Umayyad rule began in the area; when the Umayyads conquered the Iberian Peninsula into their empire. For the next eight hundred years of the political rule of Umayyad dynasty in the region, the imprint of Islamic impacted Spanish music and folkloric traditions deeply. There also good interpenetration of cultures, for example, the musical interjections like poly rhythmic patterns, modes and instruments including the oud and rebab were integrated into the sub-Saharan culture. So there was this amazing cultural crossover of artistic and ethnic groups transforming Spain.

This was followed by the centuries-long Reconquista healing a country bent back to Christian kingdoms from Muslim rule altering both Spanish music and folklore. When the Christian kingdoms moved, they absorbed and adapted the musical pieces of the territories they took over, layering together to form a crocheted tapestry of regional styles and genres. Illuminating this network, the troubadours and minstrels of medieval Spain helped spread these musical influences across what was then a wide swath of Spain as troubadours roamed between court and court sharing songs that mixed Arabic, Jewish and Christian culture.

Before that was the unification of Spain by Catholic Monarchs, Ferdinand II of Aragon, and Isabella I of Castile, in the 15th century. It was also a period when Jews and Muslims were expelled from Spain and it exercised great influence on Spain's musical terrain. As a result of this forced conversion and expulsion these communities lost many musical traditions, but at the same time, their musical traditions were preserved and adapted. For example, like the Sephardic Jews, they (Sephardic Jews) carried their lush musical heritage with them as they dispersed throughout the Mediterranean and into the rest of the world, retaining the Ladino language and its musical accompaniments.

Spanish music and folklore flourished during the Age of Exploration and during the Spanish Renaissance which coincided with that period. Consequently, Spanish music became part of the amalgam of Western native and African traditions in the New World and resulted in the discovery of New World music in Spain.

Spain’s Baroque period was a time dominated by the Catholic Church, and music and its use were employed to inculcate religious doctrine and to disseminate propaganda. In response to the Protestant Reformation, particularly in the wake of the Council of Trent, means of singing the liturgy were developed, and the importance of music in the liturgy was emphasized at the Council of Trent. During this period Spanish composers such as Tomás Luis de Victoria and Francisco Guerrero contributed very much to the growth of choral music.

During the 18th century, the Enlightenment reached Spain at the same time secular music public concerts and opera houses became part of it. Italian opera had a particular strong influence, composers like Domenico Scarlatti and Luigi Boccherini were very important also in the history of Spanish music. But it was really the nationalism of the 19th century that really nourished the desire for the protection and spread of Spanish folklore and musical traditions.

The Romantic movement in Spain included a reawakened sense of its past, or history, literature and folklore. For example, modern composers like Igor Stravinsky, Isaac Albéniz, Enrique Granados, Manuel de Falla, and Joaquin Rodrigo each used these strains, both regionally (by adding the folk elements of his own country’s regional folk music) and also through incorporation of flamenco (by drawing on this Spanish musical tradition) and zarbuela (including elements of these Spanish musical traditions). In this same period, musicology also began to assume a more general character with the main task of guarding, documenting and studying Spanish folklore, by men like Francisco Asenjo Barbieri and Felipe Pedrell.

In the 20th century further developments in Spanish music and folklore arose with the development of avant-garde movements whilst the influence of international musical trends also spread. During the Second Spanish Republic (1931-1939) new interest in regional cultures and the encouragement of folkloric traditions as part of an effort to foster national unity. But the shadow of the Spanish Civil War (1936–39) and the dictatorship of Francisco Franco which followed it was dark over the country's cultural landscape and artists and intellectuals were forced into exile.

The removal of the oppression (political) climate did not stop the evolution and adaptation of Spanish music and folklore. Between the 1960s and the 1970s the Nova Cançó movement began being developed, the aim being to promote Catalan language and culture through music. This is part of a general trend of the rediscovery and revalorization of regional identities and traditions, which developed through the death of Franco in 1975 and the concomitant transition to democracy.

Today, music and folklore give way to the shaping of Spain’s cultural identity as it is in Spain today. Singing as a tradition and the preservation and promotion of traditional musical practises are seen to be important in terms of maintaining a sense of regional identity and community for a growing world in a globalized age. While Madrid and Barcelona have their own air of sophisticated cool, Spain's beautiful regions from Galicia and the sun-soaked coasts of Andalusia all have rich musical traditions that speak to a history and cultural heritage worth celebrating.

Spain is a country that held onto its musical and folklore history to illustrate how complicated the country’s history is, and the power of artistic expression. Inventive Spanish music has been influenced for centuries by the exchange of culture and political upheaval, and the subsequent emergence of new artistic currents. To fully get to understand the richness and diversity of Spanish music and folklore, a person has to look to the past that gave way to it because the echoes of the past help you tune in to the harmonies of the current and music of the future.

Historical Foundations

It is within the vast expanse of time that precedes recorded history that those people of the Iberian Peninsula woven their thick tapestry of sounds into their cultures and landscapes. Investigation of ancient instruments and oral traditions is extremely helpful in understanding the musical expressions of ancient Spanish cultures and demonstrating just how important it was in the life of our own prehistoric ancestors. This journey to a time before recorded music begins with the instruments we made with our hands and the oral traditions that preserved the knowledge of musical things for centuries.

Spain's earliest known musical instruments come from the palaeolithic era of hunter gatherer small bands roaming the Iberia Peninsula. Within the collection of bone flutes are some of the most ancient instruments yet found, which consist of the hollow bones of birds and even other small animals. Our early ancestors were deeply imaginative and they made these flutes — some dating back over 40,000 years — a testament to that. If these instruments could be found in the same archaeological sites — the Cueva de Nerja, the Cueva de la Victoria, for example — this means music was at the center of the social and cultural life of Paleolithic people.

These flutes are important not only because of their antiquity, but also in that they give us some clues at what human mental and cultural development looked like in early times. Both the creation and the use of musical instruments involve using our head for abstraction, our hands for manipulation and social involvement. In addition, playing such an instrument on a regular basis might indicate that the people of the Palaeolithic age believed in music that was actively connected to their spiritual beliefs and practises. Over the millennia as the climate of the Iberian Peninsula changed, so too continued to change the cultures and musical traditions of its inhabitants. The changes that accompanied the Neolithic revolution — the move from nomadic hunter-gatherer societies to rootbound agricultural ones — affected the musical landscape of ancient Spain. By the time of the advent of farming, of the domestication of animals, new materials and new technologies are introduced to the creation of musical instruments. In a word, one of the most important variations introduced by the people of the Neolithic era was certainly that of the pottery, which brought into existence endless musical instruments. Findings of clay drums, rattles and whistles at many archaeological sites in Spain demonstrates the importance of music in the lives of early farming communities.

Other evidence of the importance of music in ancient Spanish society is supplied by the megalithic cultures of the Iberian Peninsula that flourished during the late Neolithic and early Bronze Age. It was necessary to have such quantity of social organisation and cooperation in order to build massive stone monuments, as the case of dolmens, menhir, etc. According to those old traditions, rituals, holidays, etc., played in those megalithic structures, honing social bonds which could assure we have the same beliefs and values.

Preserving early musical expressions is clearly assisted by the role of oral traditions. There is no written records of musical transmission, and the surrounding musicians relied entirely on their memories and skills of individual musicians. Such resources of oral tradition, with the melodies, rhythms and techniques to define the musical cultures of ancient Spain, were a living archive. Musical knowledge was passed on being by oral transmission, from generation to generation keeping musical traditions in continuity over centuries, even millennia.

The oral tradition is powerful because it was, and remains, able to change and evolve in response to changing cultural and environmental circumstances. With the introduction of new instruments and styles of music, those were all incorporated into a growing body and never still musical landscape. The rich variety of musical traditions which have flourished in Spain in its history is testimony to the workings of this process of cultural exchange and adaption.

Furthermore, what the folklorists wrote down is only a fraction of what was played all over Spain until at least the beginning of the twentieth century, and this was not a case of the 'popular expression of their own people,' as what happened in the United States: many of the instruments and melodies that appeared in prehistoric times are played and performed today in modern folklore. For instance, the txistu, the traditional Basque flute, is traced back through the Paleolithic age when such flute was made from bone. Also like the cantigas, a type of mediaeval Spanish song, the origin of which goes back to the oral traditions of the Celtic and Iberian tribes inhabiting the Iberian Peninsula in pre-Roman days.