that America knew nothing about Spanish music, and that Bizet's
_Carmen_ was not in any sense Spanish. I hold no brief for _Carmen_
being Spanish but it is effective, and that _Goyescas_ as an opera is
not. In the first place, its muddy and blatant orchestration would
detract from its power to please (this opinion might conceivably be
altered were the opera given under Spanish conditions in Spain).
The manuscript score of _Goyescas_ now reposes in the Museum of the
Hispanic Society, in that delightful quarter of New York where the
apartment houses bear the names of Goya and Velasquez, and it is
interesting to note that it is a _piano_ score. What has become of the
orchestral partition and who was responsible for it I do not know. It
is certain, however, that the miniature charm of the _Goyescas_ becomes
more obvious in the piano version, performed by Ernest Schelling or
the composer himself, than in the opera house. The growth of the work
is interesting. Fragments of it took shape in the composer's brain
and on paper seventeen years ago, the result of the study of Goya's
paintings in the Prado. These fragments were moulded into a suite in
1909 and again into an opera in 1914 (or before then). F. Periquet,
the librettist, was asked to fit words to the score, a task which he
accomplished with difficulty. Spanish is not an easy tongue to sing.
To Mme. Barrientos this accounts for the comparatively small number of
Spanish operas. _Goyescas_, like many a zarzuela, lags when the dance
rhythms cease. I find little joy myself in listening to _La Maja y
el Ruiseñor_; in fact, the entire last scene sounds banal to my ears.
In the four volumes of Spanish dances which Granados wrote for piano
(published by the Sociedad Anónima Casa Dotesio in Barcelona) I console
myself for my lack of interest in _Goyescas_. These lovely dances
combine in their artistic form all the elements of the folk-dances as
I have described them. They bespeak a careful study and an intimate
knowledge of the originals. And any pianist, amateur or professional,
will take joy in playing them.
Enrique Granados y Campina was born July 27, 1867, at Lerida,
Catalonia. (He died March 24, 1916; a passenger on the _Sussex_,
torpedoed in the English Channel.) From 1884 to 1887 he studied
piano under Pujol and composition under Felipe Pedrell at the Madrid
Conservatory. That the latter was his master presupposed on his part
a valuable knowledge of the treasures of Spain's past and that, I
think, we may safely allow him. There is, I am told, an interesting
combination of classicism and folk-lore in his work. At any rate,
Granados was a faithful disciple of Pedrell. In 1898 his opera _María
del Carmen_ was produced in Madrid and has since been heard in
Valencia. Barcelona, and other Spanish cities. Five years later some
fragments of another opera, _Foletto_, were produced at Barcelona.
His third opera, _Liliana_, was produced at Barcelona in 1911. He
wrote numerous songs to texts by the poet, Apeles Mestres; Galician
songs, two symphonic poems, _La Nit del Mort_ and _Dante_ (performed
by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for the first time in America at the
concerts of November 5 and 6, 1915); a piano trio, string quartet, and
various books of piano music (_Danzas Españolas_, _Valses Poéticos_,
_Bocetos_, _etc._).
_New York, March 20, 1916._
The Land of Joy
"_Dancing is something more than an amusement in Spain. It is part of
that solemn ritual which enters into the whole life of the people. It
expresses their very spirit._"
Havelock Ellis.
The Land of Joy
An idle observer of theatrical conditions might derive a certain ironic
pleasure from remarking the contradiction implied in the professed
admiration of the constables of the playhouse for the unconventional
and their almost passionate adoration for the conventional. We
constantly hear it said that the public cries for novelty, and just as
constantly we see the same kind of acting, the same gestures, the same
Julian Mitchellisms and George Marionisms and Ned Wayburnisms repeated
in and out of season, summer and winter. Indeed, certain conventions
(which bore us even now) are so deeply rooted in the soil of our
theatre that I see no hope of their being eradicated before the year
1999, at which date other conventions will have supplanted them and
will likewise have become tiresome.
In this respect our theatre does not differ materially from the
theatres of other countries except in one particular. In Europe the
juxtaposition of nations makes an interchange of conventions possible,
which brings about slow change or rapid revolution. Paris, for example,
has received visits from the Russian Ballet which almost assumed
the proportions of Tartar invasions. London, too, has been invaded
by the Russians and by the Irish. The Irish playwrights, indeed,
are continually pounding away at British middle-class complacency.
Germany, in turn, has been invaded by England (we regret that this
sentence has only an artistic and figurative significance), and we
find Max Reinhardt well on his way toward giving a complete cycle
of the plays of Shakespeare; a few years ago we might have observed
Deutschland grovelling hysterically before Oscar Wilde's _Salome_, a
play which, at least without its musical dress, has not, I believe,
even yet been performed publicly in London. In Italy, of course,
there are no artistic invasions (nobody cares to pay for them) and
even the conventions of the Italian theatre themselves, such as the
_Commedia del'Arte_, are quite dead; so the country remains as dormant,
artistically speaking, as a rag rug, until an enthusiast like Marinetti
arises to take it between his teeth and shake it back into rags again.
Very often whisperings of art life in the foreign theatre (such as
accounts of Stanislavski's accomplishments in Moscow) cross the
Atlantic. Very often the husks of the realities (as was the case with
the Russian Ballet) are imported. But whispers and husks have about
as much influence as the "New York Times" in a mayoralty campaign,
and as a result we find the American theatre as little aware of world
activities in the drama as a deaf mute living on a pole in the desert
of Sahara would be. Indeed any intrepid foreign investigator who wishes
to study the American drama, American acting, and American stage
decoration will find them in almost as virgin a condition as they were
in the time of Lincoln.
A few rude assaults have been made on this smug eupepsy. I might
mention the coming of Paul Orleneff, who left Alla Nazimova with us to
be eventually swallowed up in the conventional American theatre. Four
or five years ago a company of Negro players at the Lafayette Theatre
gave a performance of a musical revue that boomed like the big bell
in the Kremlin at Moscow. Nobody could be deaf to the sounds. Florenz
Ziegfeld took over as many of the tunes and gestures as he could buy
for his _Follies_ of that season, but he neglected to import the one
essential quality of the entertainment, its style, for the exploitation
of which Negro players were indispensable. For the past two months
Mimi Aguglia, one of the greatest actresses of the world, has been
performing in a succession of classic and modern plays (a répertoire
comprising dramas by Shakespeare, d'Annunzio, and Giacosa) at the
Garibaldi Theatre, on East Fourth Street, before very large and very
enthusiastic audiences, but uptown culture and managerial acumen will
not awaken to the importance of this gesture until they read about it
in some book published in 1950....
All of which is merely by way of prelude to what I feel must be
something in the nature of lyric outburst and verbal explosion. A
few nights ago a Spanish company, unheralded, unsung, indeed almost
unwelcomed by such reviewers as had to trudge to the out-of-the-way
Park Theatre, came to New York, in a musical revue entitled _The Land
of Joy_. The score was written by Joaquín Valverde, _fils_, whose music
is not unknown to us, and the company included La Argentina, a Spanish
dancer who had given matinées here in a past season without arousing
more than mild enthusiasm. The theatrical impressarii, the song
publishers, and the Broadway rabble stayed away on the first night. It
was all very well, they might have reasoned, to read about the goings
on in Spain, but they would never do in America. Spanish dancers had
been imported in the past without awakening undue excitement. Did not
the great Carmencita herself visit America twenty or more years ago?
These impressarii had ignored the existence of a great psychological
(or more properly physiological) truth: you cannot mix Burgundy and
Beer! One Spanish dancer surrounded by Americans is just as much lost
as the great Nijinsky himself was in an English music hall, where he
made a complete and dismal failure. And so they would have been very
much astonished (had they been present) on the opening night to have
witnessed all the scenes of uncontrollable enthusiasm--just as they are
described by Havelock Ellis, Richard Ford, and Chabrier--repeated. The
audience, indeed, became hysterical, and broke into wild cries of _Olé!
Olé!_ Hats were thrown on the stage. The audience became as abandoned
as the players, became a part of the action.
You will find all this described in "The Soul of Spain," in "Gatherings
from Spain," in Chabrier's letters, and it had all been transplanted to
New York almost without a whisper of preparation, which is fortunate,
for if it had been expected, doubtless we would have found the way to
spoil it. Fancy the average New York first-night audience, stiff and
unbending, sceptical and sardonic, welcoming this exhibition! Havelock
Ellis gives an ingenious explanation for the fact that Spanish dancing
has seldom if ever successfully crossed the border of the Iberian
peninsula: "The finest Spanish dancing is at once killed or degraded
by the presence of an indifferent or unsympathetic public, and that is
probably why it cannot be transplanted, but remains local." Fortunately
the Spaniards in the first-night audience gave the cue, unlocked the
lips and loosened the hands of us cold Americans. For my part, I was
soon yelling _Olé!_ louder than anybody else.
The dancer, Doloretes, is indeed extraordinary. The gipsy fascination,
the abandoned, perverse bewitchery of this female devil of the dance is
not to be described by mouth, typewriter, or quilled pen. Heine would
have put her at the head of his dancing temptresses in his ballet of
_Méphistophéla_ (found by Lumley too indecent for representation at
Her Majesty's Theatre, for which it was written; in spite of which the
scenario was published in the respectable "Revue de Deux Mondes"). In
this ballet a series of dancing celebrities is exhibited by the female
Méphistophélès for the entertainment of her victim. After Salome had
twisted her flanks and exploited the prowess of her abdominal muscles
to perfunctory applause, Doloretes would have heated the blood, not
only of Faust, but of the ladies and gentlemen in the orchestra stalls,
with the clicking of her heels, the clacking of her castanets, now held
high over head, now held low behind her back, the flashing of her
ivory teeth, the shrill screaming, electric magenta of her smile, the
wile of her wriggle, the passion of her performance. And close beside
her the sinuous Mazantinita would flaunt a garish tambourine and wave
a shrieking fan. All inanimate objects, shawls, mantillas, combs, and
cymbals, become inflamed with life, once they are pressed into the
service of these señoritas, languorous and forbidding, indifferent and
sensuous. Against these rude gipsies the refined grace and Goyaesque
elegance of La Argentina stand forth in high relief, La Argentina,
in whose hands the castanets become as potent an instrument for our
pleasure as the violin does in the fingers of Jascha Heifetz. Bilbao,
too, with his thundering heels and his tauromachian gestures, bewilders
our highly magnetized senses. When, in the dance, he pursues, without
catching, the elusive Doloretes, it would seem that the limit of
dynamic effects in the theatre had been reached.
[Illustration: DOLORETES]
_from a photograph by White_
Here are singers! The limpid and lovely soprano of the comparatively
placid María Marco, who introduces figurations into the brilliant music
she sings at every turn. One indecent (there is no other word for it)
chromatic oriental phrase is so strange that none of us can ever recall
it or forget it! And the frantically nervous Luisita Puchol, whose
eyelids spring open like the cover of a Jack-in-the-box, and whose
hands flutter like saucy butterflies, sings suggestive popular ditties
just a shade better than any one else I know of.
But _The Land of Joy_ does not rely on one or two principals for its
effect. The organization as a whole is as full of fire and purpose as
the original Russian Ballet; the costumes themselves, in their blazing,
heated colours, constitute the ingredients of an orgy; the music, now
sentimental (the adaptability of Valverde, who has lived in Paris, is
little short of amazing; there is a vocal waltz in the style of Arditi
that Mme. Patti might have introduced into the lesson scene of _Il
Barbiere_; there is another song in the style of George M. Cohan--these
by way of contrast to the Iberian music), now pulsing with rhythmic
life, is the best Spanish music we have yet heard in this country. The
whole entertainment, music, colours, costumes, songs, dances, and all,
is as nicely arranged in its crescendos and decrescendos, its prestos
and adagios as a Mozart finale. The close of the first act, in which
the ladies sweep the stage with long ruffled trains, suggestive of all
the Manet pictures you have ever seen, would seem to be unapproachable,
but the most striking costumes and the wildest dancing are reserved
for the very last scene of all. There these bewildering señoritas
come forth in the splendorous envelope of embroidered Manila shawls,
and such shawls! Prehistoric African roses of unbelievable measure
decorate a texture of turquoise, from which depends nearly a yard of
silken fringe. In others mingle royal purple and buff, orange and
white, black and the kaleidoscope! The revue, a sublimated form of
zarzuela, is calculated, indeed, to hold you in a dangerous state
of nervous excitement during the entire evening, to keep you awake
for the rest of the night, and to entice you to the theatre the next
night and the next. It is as intoxicating as vodka, as insidious as
cocaine, and it is likely to become a habit, like these stimulants. I
have found, indeed, that it appeals to all classes of taste, from that
of a telephone operator, whose usual artistic debauch is the latest
antipyretic novel of Robert W. Chambers, to that of the frequenter of
the concert halls.
I cannot resist further cataloguing; details shake their fists at my
memory; for instance, the intricate rhythms of Valverde's elaborately
syncopated music (not at all like ragtime syncopation), the thrilling
orchestration (I remember one dance which is accompanied by drum taps
and oboe, nothing else!), the utter absence of tangos (which are
Argentine), and habaneras (which are Cuban), most of the music being
written in two-four and three-four time, and the interesting use of
folk-tunes; the casual and very suggestive indifference of the dancers,
while they are not dancing, seemingly models for a dozen Zuloaga
paintings, the apparently inexhaustible skill and variety of these
dancers in action, winding ornaments around the melodies with their
feet and bodies and arms and heads and castanets as coloratura sopranos
do with their voices. Sometimes castanets are not used; cymbals
supplant them, or tambourines, or even fingers. Once, by some esoteric
witchcraft, the dancers seemed to tap upon their arms. The effect was
so stupendous and terrifying that I could not project myself into that
aloof state of mind necessary for a calm dissection of its technique.
What we have been thinking of all these years in accepting the
imitation and ignoring the actuality I don't know; it has all been down
in black and white. What Richard Ford saw and wrote down in 1846 I am
seeing and writing down in 1917. How these devilish Spaniards have been
able to keep it up all this time I can't imagine. Here we have our
paradox. Spain has changed so little that Ford's book is still the
best to be procured on the subject (you may spend many a delightful
half-hour with the charming irony of its pages for company). Spanish
dancing is apparently what it was a hundred years ago; no wind from the
north has disturbed it. Stranger still, it depends for its effect on
the acquirement of a brilliant technique. Merely to play the castanets
requires a severe tutelage. And yet it is all as spontaneous, as
fresh, as unstudied, as vehement in its appeal, even to Spaniards, as
it was in the beginning. Let us hope that Spain will have no artistic
reawakening.
Aristotle and Havelock Ellis and Louis Sherwin have taught us that
the theatre should be an outlet for suppressed desires. So, indeed,
the ideal theatre should. As a matter of fact, in most playhouses (I
will generously refrain from naming the one I visited yesterday) I
am continually suppressing a desire to strangle somebody or other,
but after a visit to the Spaniards I walk out into Columbus Circle
completely purged of pity and fear, love, hate, and all the rest. It is
an experience.
_November 3, 1917._
From George Borrow to Mary Garden
"_Les femmes disent qu'elle est laide,
Mais tous les hommes en sont fous:
Et l'archevêque de Tolède
Chante la messe à ses genoux._"
Théophile Gautier's "Carmen."
From George Borrow to Mary Garden
(_Histoire sommaire de Carmen_)
Alice, it will be recalled, adventured into Wonderland bearing a morsel
of mushroom in each hand; now she munched one piece, which made her
grow tall, now the other, which diminished her height. In this manner
she adjusted her size to that of the various doorways and gates of the
place as well as to that of the creatures she encountered. In somewhat
the same fashion George Borrow, sent by the British Bible Society to
distribute the Holy Word in the papalized peninsula, advanced into
Spain. In one hand he held a Castilian version of the New Testament;
in the other his very considerable curiosity. Doubtless he made many
valiant attempts to hawk Bibles, but it is quite as certain that he
never restrained his natural aptitude for the companionship of thieves,
gitanos, contrabandists, and bandits. More than once his zeal in behalf
of the Scriptures landed him in jail, but I can scarcely accept this as
proof of his devotion to a holy cause when I remember that he had been
attempting in vain to persuade certain Madrid officials to permit him
to voluntarily incarcerate himself so that he might have such further
opportunities for the pursuit of his studies of the "crabbed gitano" as
intercourse with the prisoners might offer. As a matter of fact when he
was arrested the English Ambassador secured his pardon before the day
was done, but this Borrow refused to consider. He was in jail and he
proposed to remain there, and remain he did, a matter of several weeks,
during which period he had lengthy talks with all the prisoners, adding
substantially to his foreign vocabularies.... His sympathy, indeed,
was with the gitanos; he ate and drank and slept with them, sometimes
in stables, sometimes in dirty lofts. If he himself did not connive
at the "affairs of Egypt," at least he travelled with those who did;
if he did not assist at robberies or murders, he was often aware that
they were about to be committed. On one occasion he held converse,
which is delightfully recorded, with Sevilla, the picador, whom Prosper
Mérimée met and who is referred to in Richard Ford's "Gatherings from
Spain."... We must, on the whole, thank the British Bible Society for
giving Borrow the opportunity to write two strangely charming books,
one of them a masterpiece, but over what Borrow did for the Bible
Society it is perhaps just as well to draw a shade.
The production of two such books as "The Zincali" and "The Bible in
Spain" may be regarded, however, as sufficient justification for the
incorporation and continued existence of the British Bible Society. If
all the information he gives us concerning the gipsies in these books
is not authentic we may at least be certain that Borrow had a better
opportunity for making it so than that afforded any other writer.
If, therefore, he has sometimes distorted facts it is because he is
first of all an artist and "The Bible in Spain" is first of all a
work of art. These books appeared in the early forties and were read
and admired all over Europe, awakening an interest in the Iberian
Peninsula, and more especially in the Spanish gipsies, which has never
since died. In the preface to the second edition of "The Zincali"
Borrow relates his astonishment at the success of his book: "the voice
not only of England but of the greater part of Europe, informing me
that I had achieved a feat--a work in the nineteenth century with some
pretensions to originality." And when a writer in "The Spectator"
called "The Bible in Spain" "a 'Gil Blas' in water-colours" Borrow
fairly bubbled.
"The Zincali" was translated into several languages, among others into
French, and among those influenced and affected by it was Prosper
Mérimée; indeed it now seems probable that without the spur of this
suggestive book Mérimée would never have written "Carmen," assuredly
not in its present form. Here are the facts: Mérimée visited Spain in
1830 and it was during this tour that the Condessa de Teba related to
him a story of jealousy and murder, substantially that of "Carmen,"
in which, however, the gipsies played no part. This material offered
scant inspiration for the production of a masterpiece. Mérimée,
indeed, seems to have dropped the idea out of his mind entirely until
Borrow's books appeared, reviving his interest in the gipsies and
suggesting to him the possibility of transferring the Condessa's tale
into a gipsy setting. Borrow's translation of the Gospel of Luke into
Caló was issued in 1837. There is evidence that Mérimée read it. "The
Zincali" came out in London in 1841; "The Bible in Spain" in 1842.
"Carmen" first appeared, without the final chapter on the gipsies,
in the "Revue des Deux Mondes" for October 1, 1845. The proofs of
Mérimée's indebtedness to Borrow are manifold; one of the best is his
own admission in his correspondence with his _Inconnue_: "You asked
me the other day where I had obtained my acquaintance with the dialect
of the gipsies. I had so many things to tell you that I forgot to
reply. I got it from Mr. Borrow; his book is one of the most curious
I have read." But the internal evidence is even stronger: all but two
of the gipsy proverbs in "Carmen" are to be found in "The Zincali" as
is many a detail in plot and description. Professor George T. Northup
of the University of Toronto has traced a number of such resemblances
and you may find his account of them in "Modern Philology" for July,
1915. "When he (Mérimée) set out to manufacture local colour he seldom
dispensed with literary aid. He did indeed frequently dispense with
direct observation," writes Professor Northup. "In his study of the
Gipsies Borrow was Mérimée's important, although not his sole, literary
guide; and of that a careful comparison of the two works leaves not the
slightest doubt."
On one point, however, Mérimée is at variance with Borrow, and this is
a most important point, so important, indeed, that the French author,
in spite of (perhaps because of!) his obligation to the Englishman,
points the finger of scorn at him in the added chapter (largely made
up of facts to be found in "The Zincali"!) of "Carmen." Here is the
passage: "M. Borrow, missionaire anglais, auteur de deux ouvrages
fort intéressants sur les bohémiens d'Espagne, qu'il avait entrepris
de convertir, aux frais de la Societé biblique, assure qu'il est
sans exemple qu'une Gitana ait jamais eu quelque faiblesse pour un
homme étranger à sa race." Borrow does not say _sans exemple_: "The
Gitanas have in general a decided aversion to the white men; some few
instances, however, to the contrary are said to have occurred." Let us
continue with Mérimée: "Il me semble qu'il y a beaucoup d'exagération
dans les éloges qu'il accorde à leur chasteté. D'abord, le plus grand
nombre est dans le cas de la laide d'Ovide: _Casta quam nemo rogavit_.
Quant aux jolies, elles sont comme toutes les Espagnoles, difficiles
dans le choix de leurs amants. Il faut leur plaire, il faut les
mériter."