1860–1909 · Late Romantic
Isaac Albéniz
3 works
Albéniz was born in Camprodon in Catalonia and worked as a pianist and composer in Madrid, London and Paris. His early piano pieces follow Chopin and Liszt. In 1883 he met Felip Pedrell, who drew him toward Spanish music, and Iberia was written in France in the last years of his life.
His piano writing imitates the guitar and flamenco. Listen for a repeated note held like an open string, strummed chords, hard accents that suggest a dancer's footwork, and sudden changes of volume. The Phrygian mode, a scale whose second note sits a semitone above the first, gives many melodies their southern sound. Dance types supply the pulse: bulería, fandango, jota, zapateado.
Asturias (Leyenda) began in 1892 as a Prelude, and its title came later from a publisher. Despite the name, its guitar-like writing is Andalusian, not Asturian. Iberia (1905 to 1908, with the last book first played in 1909) is a set of twelve piano "impressions" in four books of three pieces. Book 1 holds Evocación, El puerto and Fête-dieu à Séville; Book 2 holds Rondeña, Almería and Triana. Blanche Selva gave the first performances, one book at a time, from 1906. Iberia is usually placed in Impressionism, and both Debussy and Messiaen praised it.
What to listen for
- In Asturias, the right hand keeps returning to one repeated note while the melody moves around it, like a guitarist's thumb and fingers.
- Phrygian colour: melodies that lean on the semitone just above their home note.
- In Iberia, find the dance pulse first: the stamping zapateado of El puerto, and the alternation of 6/8 and 3/4 bars in Rondeña.
- Fête-dieu à Séville moves from a march to a mournful saeta (a sung prayer) and ends in a tarantella.
- Abrupt dynamic contrasts: loud strummed chords beside delicate, intricate figuration.
Sources: Isaac Albéniz (Wikipedia), Iberia (Albéniz) (Wikipedia), Asturias (Leyenda) (Wikipedia)
