Mention the name Albéniz and what springs to mind? The Tango in D. Iberia. A purseful of Spanish musical gems. A jovial, portly figure, dark-haired with handlebar moustache, improvising at the rosewood grand, watch and chain glinting on his waistcoat. A life of ‘Adventure, Romanticism, and a Good Cigar’.¹

Isaac Albéniz (1860-1909) was born in Camprodón in the Catalan Pyrenees and grew up in Barcelona and Madrid. A child prodigy, he attended the Escuela Nacional de Música y Declamación (Madrid Royal Conservatory) as and when his concert schedule would allow. Accompanied by his father, he ventured as far as the Caribbean in 1875, appearing in Puerto Rico and Cuba. Returning to Europe, he enrolled briefly at the Leipzig Conservatory where he was taught by Carl Reinecke. Then, funded by a stipend from King Alfonso XII, he entered the Brussels Conservatory, where he studied piano under the guidance of Franz Rummel and Louis Brassin. Composition lessons followed with Felipe Pedrell, the inspirer of Granados and later Falla. In June 1883 he married one of his students, Rosina (Rosa) Jordana.

London beckoned and by the end of 1890 Albéniz and his family had moved into a recently built casa magnífica in prestigious South Kensington (16 Michael’s Grove, Egerton Terrace, off the Brompton Road). Soon he came to the attention of George Bernard Shaw, who described him as ‘One of the pleasantest, most musical, and most original of pianists … a man of superior character’.² The London days put two life-changing notables Albéniz’s way: Polish-born entrepreneur and speculator Henry Lowenfeld, owner of the non-alcoholic Kops Brewery in Fulham, and Francis Burdett Money-Coutts, later 5th Baron Latymer, heir to the Coutts fortune (Queen Victoria’s bankers). Albéniz signed a contract with Lowenfeld, placing at his disposal his ‘entire work and services as a composer and musician’.³ In 1893 this arrangement was renegotiated to include Money- Coutts, the agreement transferring solely to him the following year.

Eton and Cambridge bred and going by the pen name ‘Mountjoy’, Money-Coutts was known as a poet and librettist. The deal bound Albéniz to write a series of operas to libretti exclusively by Money-Coutts, three of which reached completion: Henry Clifford (1895), Pepita Jiménez (1896), and Merlin (1898–1902, the first of an unfinished Arthurian trilogy). The relationship between Albéniz and Money-Coutts was complex, fraternal and generous. Albéniz’s American biographer, Walter Aaron Clark, described it as a ‘collaboration [which should] add to the annals of music history one of the most intriguing and unusual examples of patronage in an era when that venerable institution and the society that made it possible were about to breathe their last in the cataclysm of world war’.4

In the summer of 1894, Albéniz departed London for Paris. His growing ties with the French musical community brought friendships with Vincent d’Indy (with whom he studied counterpoint), Charles Bordes, Paul Dukas, Fauré and Debussy. In 1898 he paid Breitkopf & Härtel to publish Chausson’s Poéme. That same year he began teaching piano at the Schola Cantorum in Montparnasse, assisted by Déodat de Séverac, but in 1900 poor health brought on by Bright’s disease (chronic nephritis) forced him to exchange Paris for the more conducive climate of Spain. It proved to be a short-lived sojourn. Albéniz was admired in the press but obstructed by a prejudiced musical establishment: ‘his international reputation was a liability. He was viewed as a Spaniard “in foreign attire” and thus not only lacked commitment from the public and the impresarios but also suffered from their intrigues and jealousies.’5 At the end of 1902, after failing to secure support for his dramatic works, he went back to France, the old arena where ‘he could more effectively advance the cause of Spanish music’.6 Paris became his base – from 1906, 55 rue de Bouilainvilliers in the 16th arrondissement: newly built, elegantly spacious, iron balustraded – although he spent much time too taking in the temperate Mediterranean sun and clear air at Nice, home to wintering colonies of ‘pale and listless English women and listless sons of nobility near death’ (Paul Gonnet). Aged 48, obesity incapacitating him further, he died in Cambo-les-Bains in the Basque country – but not before learning that on the recommendation of Debussy, Dukas and Granados, he’d been awarded the Croix de la Légion d’honneur.

Albéniz was admired for the lightness and touch of his Scarlatti; he also played Beethoven, and at his London debut at Prince’s Hall, Piccadilly, on 12 June 1889 he programmed Chopin’s Funeral March Sonata. Devotion to the theatre notwithstanding, his piano output was to be his legacy, culminating in the twelve transcendental nouvelles impressions that make up Iberia, published in Paris between 1906 and 1908. He wrote several (mostly incomplete) early piano sonatas but while they have their moments (the diaphanous Rêverie et Allegro third movement from Sonata No. 5 is filled with beautiful, highart nostalgia) the rigour of the genre didn’t sit comfortably with him nor with the Spanish socio-cultural psyche generally. Other forms, though, yielded fabulous fruit, their distinctive vocabulary evoking his homeland less through the use of folk material than through the application of particular compositional elements – sensual harmonies, simple melodic lines doubled two octaves apart, triplet rhythmic figures and techniques that recall the rasgueado (strumming) and punteo (plucking) of a guitar.

***

Suite española Op 47

Suite española, Op. 47, arranged by Albéniz, initially comprised four pieces: Granada, Cataluña, Sevilla and Cuba (Nos. 1–3 and 8, published Madrid 1886). To these were added Cádiz, Asturias, Aragón and Castilla (Nos. 4– 7, issued in 1901). Albéniz began writing the Suite in 1882 – 83, drawing on Spain’s regional music traditions and styles. Aragón (Fantasía), reflects the Jota aragonesa (a traditional Spanish folk-dance depicting courtship) and is the first of the Deux morceaux caractéristiques: Spanish national songs, Op. 164 (published London 1889). Cádiz (Saeta) refers to Andalusian religious canción (song) and comes from the Sérénade espagnole, Op. 181 (London 1890). The third number, Sevilla (Sevillanas), is an Andalusian folk dance; the fourth, Castilla (Seguidillas), a dance song, fifth of the Chant d’Espagne, Op. 232 (Barcelona, 1897). Accustomed to recycling and adapting his work, Albéniz never threw away a good tune if it could be shown off in new finery.

Pavana-capricho Op 12

Pavana-capricho, Op. 12, arranged by Albéniz (solo edition Barcelona, 1884), was dedicated to the Infanta Doña Isabel de Borbón, Countess of Girgenti. A graceful, lighthearted caprice that flits between major and minor keys and combines elements of salon polka.

Catalonia

Catalonia for orchestra, arranged by René de Castéra (1873–1955), was intended as a ‘suite populaire’ in three parts, but only the opening E flat movement was completed, premiered in Paris by the orchestra of the Société Nationale de Musique on 28 May 1899. Albéniz dedicated it the Catalan modernista painter, portraitist and graphic designer Ramon Casas, who painted Satie ‘The Bohemian’ in 1891. René de Castéra studied with d’Indy and Albéniz at the Schola Cantorum.

Rapsodia española Op 70

Originally for piano and orchestra (the two-piano reduction is the composer’s, Madrid 1887), subsequently rescored by George Enescu and Cristóbal Halffter, Rapsodia española, Op. 70 interestingly foreshadows aspects of Falla’s Nights in the Gardens of Spain. It was premiered by Albéniz in Madrid on 21 March 1887, under the conductor and (rare for the Spanish school) symphonist Tomás Bretón, future director of the Madrid Conservatory. Playing continuously, the work divides into five movements, expansively, hypnotically dreamlike for stretches but with sudden demarcations of atmosphere and energy. Following the Introducción (Allegretto, D minor), the music pictures various Spanish dances: Petenera de Mariani (Allegretto non troppo, D minor), Jota original (Allegro, A major), Malagueña de Juan Breva (Andantino ma non troppo, E flat major) and Estudiantina (Allegro, D major).

Iberia ~ excerpts

Paris in the first decade of the 20th century produced six pillars of modern solo pianism: Ravel’s Miroirs (1904–05) and Gaspard de la nuit (1908); Debussy’s Images (1901– 07), Estampes (1903) and first volume of Préludes (1909– 10); Albéniz’s Iberia (four books, 1905–08). ‘Iberia’, Messiaen was to declare, ‘is the wonder for the piano; it is perhaps on the highest place among the more brilliant pieces for the king of instruments.’ Triana, arranged by Enrique Granados (1867–1916, published Barcelona 2001), is the third tableau from Book 2 and relates to what in the composer’s time was the Roma quarter of Seville. Lavapiés, Iberia, Book 3, arranged by Alicia de Larrocha (1923–2009, published Barcelona 2012). This cameos the narrow-laned, hillside district of south-side Madrid associated in Albéniz’s ungentrified days with low-lifers and workers down on their luck, with dogs, organ grinders and gangs out on the habanera prowl.

Navarra

Navarra, arranged by Frank Marshall (1883–1959, published Barcelona 2000). Conjuring the Basque greenery of northern Spain, Navarra was intended for inclusion in Iberia but, unfinished, was discarded by Albéniz as ‘shamelessly cheap’. Déodat de Séverac (1872–1921) completed the work in 1912. Marshall, de Larrocha’s teacher, was a Catalan of English background who had studied with Granados, taking over his piano academy in 1916.

© 2021

¹ Yale Fineman, Alhambrismo! The Life and Music of Isaac Albéniz, essay, University of Maryland, 2004.

² The World, 4 March 1891.

³ Document dated 26 June 1890.

4 ‘Isaac Albéniz’s Faustian Pact: A Study in Patronage’, The Musical Quarterly, 1992.

5 Frances Barulich, Grove Music Online (2001).

6 ibid.