Joaquín Rodrigo Vidre

Joaquín Rodrigo was born in Sagunto, in the province of Valencia on the Mediterranean coast of Spain, on St Cecilia's Day, 22 November 1901. He was the youngest of ten children born to Vicente Rodrigo Peirats, a landowner from Almenara (Castellón). His mother, Vicente Rodrigo's second wife, was Juana Vidre Ribelles. In 1905 an epidemic of diphtheria occurred in Sagunto, as a result of which many children died and Joaquín became virtually blind. The composer would say later, without bitterness, that this personal tragedy probably led him towards a career in music.

The Rodrigo family moved to Valencia when Joaquín was four years old, where he entered a college for blind children to begin his education. He quickly showed particular interest in literature and music. In Valencia the Rodrigo family often went to the Apollo Theatre, and young Joaquín was particularly attracted by the music which accompanied the performances. He began to receive instruction in music from teachers at the Valencia Conservatoire, although he did not formally enrol there. His teacher of harmony and composition was Francisco Antich, and the musicians Enrique Gomá and Eduardo López Chávarri, whose classes he attended, also exercised an important influence on his musical education. As far as the literary culture was concerned, which Rodrigo prided himself in all his life, this was due in great part to the work of Rafael Ibáñez, who was employed by the family to look after Joaquín, but who was also his companion, secretary and copyist in subsequent years. "Rafael lent me the eyes I did not have", the composer used to say about the friend who read him the masterpieces of Spanish literature, together with works of philosophy, essays and monographs on the most varied subjects.

At the beginning of the 1920s Joaquín Rodrigo was already an excellent pianist and composition student familiar with the most important contemporary trends in the arts. His first compositions were written in small musical forms, although his first large orchestral work dates from1924. His opus 1, Two Sketches for violin and piano ('La enamorada junto al surtidor' and 'Pequeña ronda'), was written in 1923. The same year also saw the composition of the Suite para piano, the Cançoneta for violin and string orchestra, and an austere Ave Maria for voice and organ which he arranged years later for unaccompanied choir. The Berceuse de otoño, also from 1923, was composed originally for piano, but Rodrigo orchestrated it in the 1930s and also incorporated it later into the beautiful Música para un jardín of 1957. His first work for large orchestra, Juglares, was successfully premiered by the Valencia Symphony Orchestra conducted by Enrique Izquierdo in 1924. Encouraged by this triumph, Joaquín entered a national competition the following year with a much more ambitious work, Cinco piezas infantiles, which received an honourable mention from the jury and was premiered with great success in Valencia and Paris in 1927 and 1929 respectively.

By the latter date Joaquín was studying with his French master Paul Dukas in the École Normale de Musique in Paris. Rodrigo had decided to move to France in 1927, since the French capital had been from the beginning of the century an important cultural centre for Spanish writers, painters and musicians. It was to be expected, therefore, that the young Joaquín Rodrigo would want to follow in the footsteps of Albéniz, Falla and Turina.

The youthful works of Joaquín Rodrigo are characterized by a delicate lyrical style, orchestral colours which are at times quite daring, and a harmonic vocabulary reminiscent of Ravel and Granados, among others. These characteristics, and others, would be confirmed and developed through the years of study with Paul Dukas.

On his arrival in Paris, Rodrigo and Rafael Ibáñez, his friend and secretary, took lodgings in the house of the Valencian painter, Francisco Povo, who introduced them to numerous artists, musicians and editors. In the class of Paul Dukas, where Joaquín Rodrigo studied for five years, there were also the Mexican composer, Manuel Ponce, and the Basque conductor, Jesús Arámbarri, who would later become a great interpreter of the works of Rodrigo. Paul Dukas described Joaquín Rodrigo as perhaps the most gifted of all the Spanish composers he had seen arrive in Paris.

An event of great significance in Rodrigo's life occurred at that time, a meeting with Manuel de Falla, which was the start of a lasting friendship between the two. Falla, who was to be admitted as a member of the French Légion d'Honneur, insisted that in the concert which was to follow the ceremony not only his own music but also the music of young Spanish colleagues such as Hálffter, Rodrigo and Turina should be heard. Rodrigo was always grateful to Falla for that opportunity to perform his own music before a distinguished and discerning audience.

On a personal level it was also during these years that the most important event of all occurred for Joaquín Rodrigo, his meeting with the Turkish pianist Victoria Kamhi, whom he married in 1933. Victoria Kamhi was one of the most important influences in Joaquín Rodrigo's career. An excellent pianist, she decided to give up her professional career when she married, in order to dedicate herself exclusively to her husband. Her ability to speak several European languages together with an extensive knowledge of different European cultures made Victoria the ideal companion for Joaquín. Many years later Victoria published an extensive autobiography recounting her childhood, her marriage to Joaquín, and the story of their lives. Its title was De la mano de Joaquín Rodrigo: Historia de nuestra vida.

The following year, 1934, after settling in Valencia with his wife, Joaquín Rodrigo composed various songs, among them the famous Cántico de la esposa, to words by St John of the Cross, and his largest work so far, the symphonic poem, Per la flor del lliri blau. With this work he obtained the Círculo de Bellas Artes Prize in Valencia.

In Madrid, and again thanks to the support of Manuel de Falla, Rodrigo was awarded the Conde de Cartagena Scholarship, which allowed him to return to Paris with Victoria. Joaquín began to compose assiduously, and works from this period include some of his most important songs and piano pieces. At the same time the composer was attending the classes given by Maurice-Emmanuel at the Sorbonne, and also those of André Pirro. He also attended the last classes of his teacher, Paul Dukas. These courses, which covered music from Lassus to the history of opera, were an important source of inspiration for Rodrigo, who was now beginning to have a very solid musical education. In the summer of this same year, the Rodrigos went to Austria to cover the Salzburg Festival as official reviewers for Le monde musical in Paris, and the Valencian paper, Las provincias. It was in Salzburg that Rodrigo composed his moving tribute to the memory of Dukas, the Sonada de adiós, at the instigation of the Revue musicale.

After obtaining the renewal of the Conde de Cartagena Scholarship, Joaquín Rodrigo and his wife decided at the beginning of June 1936 to spend some time in Germany, at Baden-Baden. But on the 18th July news came that the Spanish Civil War had broken out. The three years which followed were perhaps the most difficult in the lives of Joaquín and Victoria, since the Scholarship was not renewed again. They decided to give Spanish and music lessons in their room at the institute for the blind in Freiburg, in the Black Forest, where they were received as 'Spanish refugees'. The composer made a study of bird-song there, as well as composing a number of songs, among them the Canción del cuclillo to a text by Victoria, inspired by the beauty of their surroundings.

In the spring of 1938 Joaquín Rodrigo was invited to teach on the summer courses at the University of Santander, which had just opened. The Rodrigos were thus able to renew their contacts with Spanish cultural life, in spite of the difficulties caused by the Civil War. Among the composer's new colleagues were the writers Gerardo Diego and Dámaso Alonso, and the critic Eugenio d'Ors. A very significant encounter took place on the return journey to Paris, when during a lunch with the guitarist Regino Sainz de la Maza and the Marqués de Bolarque Joaquín enthusiastically agreed to the idea of writing a concerto for guitar. This work would be the Concierto de Aranjuez. During their last year of residence in the French capital Rodrigo gave piano recitals, undertook various orchestrations which were commissioned from him, and composed a number of songs in light-music style. But when winter arrived the Rodrigos began to consider a permanent return to Spain, once the country was finally at peace. In 1939 Joaquín received a letter from Manuel de Falla in which the latter suggested a post as Professor of Music at either Granada or Seville University. Antonio Tovar also offered him a position in the Music Department of Radio Nacional. Since the Rodrigos were particularly anxious to reside in the Spanish capital, they opted for the second possibility. Joaquín and Victoria finally returned to Spain on the 1st September 1939, two days before the outbreak of the Second World War, carrying with them in a suitcase the manuscript of the Concierto de Aranjuez.

The decade of the 1940s was especially important to Joaquín Rodrigo on both professional and personal levels. From 1939 he held the post of Head of the Artistic Section of ONCE, the Spanish national organization for the blind. He was also from 1940 music assessor for Radio Nacional. Cecilia, his only child, was born in 1941, and the following year the composer received the National Music Prize for his Concierto Heroico for piano and orchestra. In 1942 he began work as music critic for the newspapers Pueblo, Marca and Madrid. In 1944 and 45 he was the Director of Music for Radio Nacional, and from 1947 onwards, for the next thirty years, he occupied the position of Manuel de Falla Professor of Music at the Complutense University of Madrid. In 1945 he was awarded the Encomienda de Alfonso X el Sabio. The national celebrations of the four-hundredth anniversary of the birth of Cervantes in 1948 inspired one of his most important works, Ausencias de Dulcinea, which was awarded the Cervantes Prize in April of that year.

On the 18 November 1951 Rodrigo was admitted to a place as a permanent member of the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando. After his formal address, which took as its subject 'Taught technique and unlearned inspiration', he performed the Cinco Sonatas de Castilla con Toccata a modo de Pregón, which had been specially written for the occasion. In 1953 the composer was awarded the Gran Cruz de Alfonso X el Sabio and was elected Vice-President of the Spanish Section of the International Society for Contemporary Music. In 1954, at the request of the guitarist Andrés Segovia, Rodrigo composed the Fantasía para un gentilhombre for guitar and orchestra, the first performance of which took place the following year in San Francisco, in the presence of the composer.

During all these years the composer received many honours both in Spain and from abroad in recognition of his work. He was named Officier des Arts et des Lettres in 1960 and member of the Légion d'honneur in 1963 by the French government, Doctor of Music honoris causa by the University of Salamanca in 1964, and in 1966 he received the Gran Cruz del Mérito Civil and the Medalla de Oro al Mérito en el Trabajo. In 1963 he travelled to Puerto Rico to teach a course in the History of Music at the University of Río Piedras, where he remained until February 1964. These were also years of great personal happiness for Joaquín and Victoria, with the marriage of their daughter Cecilia to the violinist Agustín León Ara and the subsequent birth of their two granddaughters, Cecilita and Patricia.

Numerous concerts, recitals and festivals were beginning to take place throughout the world dedicated to Joaquín Rodrigo, now one of the most popular figures in contemporary classical music. A new premiere would take the Rodrigos to the United States again in 1970, that of the Concierto Madrigal for two guitars, which took place in Hollywood. In the following years Joaquín Rodrigo was named Doctor of Music honoris causa by the University of Southern California (1982), the Universidad Politécnica de Valencia (1988), the Universidad de Alicante and the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (1989), and the University of Exeter, Great Britain (1990). He was commissioned by two well-known British soloists, James Galway and Julian Lloyd Webber, to write concertos, respectively, the Concierto pastoral for flute, and the Concierto como un divertimento for cello. And in March 1986 Joaquín and Victoria attended a two-week Festival in London dedicated to his music, in which the world premiere took place of one of his last great works, the Cántico de San Francisco de Asís, for choir and orchestra.

In 1991 Joaquín Rodrigo received the Guerrero Foundation Prize and the same year was raised to the nobility by King Juan Carlos I with the title 'Marqués de los jardines de Aranjuez'. In 1996 he received another great honour, being awarded the Prince of Asturias Prize "for his extraordinary contribution to Spanish music, to which he has given a new and universal dimension." The same year he was awarded the Medalla de Oro de Sagunto, the Gran Cruz de la Orden Civil de Soldaridad Social, and the Estrella de Oro de la Comunidad de Madrid. In 1998 the French government honoured him with the title of Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres and in the same year he received a prize from the Sociedad General de Autores de España as the most distinguished composer of classical music. In 1998 he was awarded the Medal of Honour of the Universidad Internacional, Santander, and, the following year, the Gold Medal of the Festival of Granada.

His wife and inseparable companion Victoria died on the 21st July 1997, and Joaquín Rodrigo himself died two years later, on the 6th July 1999, at his Madrid home, surrounded by his family. The mortal remains of Joaquín and Victoria rest together in the family pantheon in the cemetery at Aranjuez.

© Raymond Calcraft
 

Throughout his life as a composer, from 1922 to 1987, Joaquín Rodrigo composed some one hundred and seventy works in almost all musical forms.

CONCERTOS

The most famous of all Joaquín Rodrigo's compositions, one of the best-loved pieces of music of the twentieth century amongst all kinds of people, is the first of his eleven concertos, the Concierto de Aranjuez of 1939. The success of this work has been extraordinary, and its fame has outdistanced that of two other popular guitar concertos written at about the same time as the Concierto de Aranjuez, that of the Italian Castelnuovo-Tedesco, and the Concierto del sur by the Mexican Manuel Ponce, who was a fellow pupil of Rodrigo in Paul Dukas's class at the École Normale ten years earlier.

The success achieved by his first concerto, for the then unusual combination of guitar and classical orchestra, inspired Rodrigo to write two further concertos during the following four years for the most popular instruments of all, the Concierto heroico for piano (1942) and the Concierto de estío for violin (1943). Each of these is very different from the other and also from the spirit and mood of the Aranjuez concerto. The first, the largest of all the Maestro's orchestral works, pays homage to the great European tradition of the romantic concerto, in spite of its particularly Spanish inspiration. The second, more classical and even Mediterranean in inspiration, is a supremely original and attractive work, with a first movement which the critic Federico Sopeña declared in 1946 to be the finest work composed by Rodrigo up until that time.

The cello is the protagonist of another important work written in 1949 for Gaspar Cassadó, the Concerto in modo galante, which is full of memorable themes, many of them of popular inspiration. A second concerto for the same instrument was written n 1982, at the request of the English virtuoso Julian Lloyd Webber, the Concierto como un divertimento, a work notable above all for a second movement of exceptional beauty.

Another work which possesses all the best qualities of Rodrigo is the Concierto Serenata for harp and orchestra, written in 1952for the famous Nicanor Zabaleta, and which captures the essence of the instrument with a profusion of memorable themes and a joyfulness reminiscent of Haydn.

In 1977 the virtuoso Irish flautist, James Galway, commissioned a work for his instrument, the Concierto pastoral. Galway himself gave the first performance in London to great public acclaim. It is a fascinating work, distantly related to the violin concerto of 1943 in the extraordinarily difficult figuration of the first movement and the melodic charm of the second.

As far as the four concertos for one or more guitars are concerned, which followed the Concierto de Aranjuez, they form a vitally important and indispensable part of the guitarist's repertoire. It seems that Rodrigo did not wish to attempt a repeat of his first concerto, in spite of the success it had had, until the famous guitarist Andrés Segovia asked him to undertake it, in 1954. The work composed for the famous artist, the Fantasía para un gentilhombre, was immediately greeted with the same enthusiasm by the public as they had shown for the Concierto de Aranjuez. It thus became the second most popular work by Rodrigo, an almost inseparable companion of the Aranjuez concerto on recordings and at times even in concerts. It is nevertheless a very different work from its predecessor, a suite of short movements based on melodies and dances collected by Gaspar Sanz, a musician of the court of Philip IV, which Rodrigo arranged, developed and orchestrated in an outstandingly attractive way.

The two following concertos, Madrigal and Andaluz, were composed at about the same time, between 1966 and 67, but they are completely different one from another. The first of the two, for two guitars, is based on the famous Renaissance madrigal O felici occhi miei by Jacques Arcadelt.It is once again a suite, but the ten movements of this concerto represent one of the composer's finest achievements, in its remarkable evocation of the spirit of Golden Age Spain. The Concierto andaluz, for four guitars, is a work in which the character of Andalucía, or rather the essential spirit of its popular culture, is captured by the Valencian composer with the same devotion with which he paid homage to every region and culture of Spain.

The impressive cycle of Joaquín Rodrigo's eleven concertos is completed by the Concierto para una fiesta, written in 1982, with perfect symbolism, in a return to a concerto for guitar and orchestra. This concerto was written, like the majority of the others, for a great virtuoso of the instrument, in this case, Pepe Romero. In this last concerto Rodrigo also made exceptional technical demands on the soloist, encouraging him to seek new levels of technical and expressive excellence. The composer, now more than eighty years of age, was also seeking new horizons in this work.

---

WORKS FOR ORCHESTRA

Apart from his concertos, Joaquín Rodrigo composed important works for orchestra throughout his career. There are small pieces for string orchestra, compositions for particular instrumental groups, works for voices and orchestra, and large-scale symphonic poems. Rodrigo attracted the attention of French critics in 1929 with one of his first orchestral works, Cinco piezas infantiles, and the symphonic poem, Ausencias de Dulcinea gained the first prize of the Círculo de Bellas Artes in Valencia in 1934, together with the admiration of his teachers and fellow-countrymen. The two works reveal the lyric gift which distinguishes Rodrigo's music, as well as his skill as an orchestrator. There are works of an extraordinary delicacy of feeling, such as the Cançoneta of 1923 for violin solo and string orchestra, and the Zarabanda lejana y villancico of 1934, also for string orchestra. The first part of this work was written first for guitar and there is also a version for piano, but one does not find any echo of these first versions in the orchestral work, such is the mastery of the adaptation. The variety of the music of Joaquín Rodrigo is made clear if one compares these works with the light-hearted eighteenth-century spirit of Soleriana (1953), the solemn Adagio for wind instruments (1966), or the refined world of the Música para un jardín (1957), where each piece resembles a Japanese haiku in its delicate perfection. One should also draw attention to A la busca del más allá (1976), a large-scale work written to celebrate the bicentenary of the United States, and inspired by the journeys of the astronauts on the one hand and the marvels of the universe on the other. One should not forget that when Joaquín Rodrigo wrote his first concerto, the Concierto de Aranjuez, whose brilliant orchestration is much admired, he had already had fifteen years experience composing for orchestra.

---

VOCAL WORKS

Joaquín Rodrigo always insisted that his songs formed the most important part of his music, apart from the concertos. The fascination which his country's literature had for him led him frequently to this form of composition, sometimes with piano or guitar, sometimes with orchestra. Like Richard Strauss, Rodrigo felt a particular affection throughout his life for the soprano voice, for which he wrote almost all his songs. Even at the outset of his career he was attracted by the verses of the greatest poets of Spain, such as Gil Vicente's Muy graciosa es la doncella, those of the Marqués de Santillana, or, somewhat later, San Juan de la Cruz and Lope de Vega. Everything attracted the composer - traditional ballads, anonymous fifteen-century lyrics, songs from plays, Baroque literature, Romantic poetry, works by Rosalía de Castro, Antonio Machado, or Juan Ramón Jiménez. In his great works for voices and orchestra, Ausencias de Dulcinea, Música para un códice salmantino, the Cántico de San Francisco de Asís, Rodrigo was not afraid to set to music words by the most illustrious figures of the novel, philosophy or religion. In these three works, as also in the majority of his songs, one notes above all the composer's ability to match musical ideas to poetry of the highest quality. Song-cycles such as the Cuatro madrigales amatorios, Rosaliana, o Con Antonio Machado can be found alongside individual works or small collections of songs. There are also compositions of popular inspiration, like the Doce canciones españolas, or - from another era - the Four Sephardic Songs, but Joaquín Rodrigo also composed the strange but touching music - archaic and modern at the same time - of the Líricas castellanas of 1980. With this impressive repertoire of choral works and more than sixty songs there is no doubt that Joaquín Rodrigo can be ranked amongst the foremost Spanish composers of vocal music.

---

INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC

It is a great surprise to many music-lovers that the Spanish composer most associated with the guitar in fact did not know how to play it. Rodrigo not only wrote five concertos for this instrument; he also added more than twenty works for solo guitar to the repertoire, amongst them two sonatas and three groups each containing three separate pieces. In the majority of these works Rodrigo shows himself to be the last of the Spanish composers who worked within a recognisable national tradition, and works such as En los trigales, Bajando de la meseta, or Junto al Generalife have entered the repertoire to the great delight of both performers and public. But there are also some works written in a more original and more difficult musical idiom - a feature, it must be said, which can be observed in all areas of Rodrigo's music - amongst them one of the cornerstones of the guitar repertoire and an acknowledged masterpiece, the Invocación y danza of 1962, a profound homage to Manuel de Falla and his music.

Rodrigo's works for piano (the composer was himself a pianist) include a series of musical homages inspired by great figures of the past (Cinco piezas del siglo XVI), Scarlatti (Cinco Sonatas de Castilla con Toccata a modo de Pregón), the death of his teacher, Paul Dukas (Sonada de adiós), or of his friend, the great pianist Ricardo Viñes (A l'ombre de Torre Bermeja). There is a great variety of style in the more than fifty piano pieces composed by Rodrigo, from the simplicity of Pastoral or the bitonal originality of Preludio al gallo mañanero, with its hair-raising technical difficulties, to the Plegaria de la Infanta de Castilla (one of the composer's favourite works) which recreates the atmosphere of the mediaeval world without the slightest hint of pastiche. The two works, Cuatro piezas para piano of 1938, and Cuatro estampas andaluzas, written between 1946 and 54, belong to the great Spanish pianistic tradition which goes back to Granados and Albéniz, but one can always recognise the individual musical voice in every one of these pieces, as well as the mastery of their formal composition. The important study by Antonio Iglesias of the piano works of Joaquín Rodrigo (see Bibliography) gives ample testimony of the significance, quality and range of the works Rodrigo added to the repertoire of the piano, from the Suite para piano of 1923 to the Preludio de añoranza of 1987.

Joaquín Rodrigo's 'Opus 1' (apparently the composer did not wish to continue with this traditional way of listing his works) is the Dos esbozos for violin and piano, 'La enamorada junto al surtidor' and 'Pequeña ronda'. These two delightful pieces are the first of a small group of works written for the two instruments, violin and piano, which Rodrigo learnt to play in his youth, compositions written between 1923 and 1982. Amongst them one can single out the Capriccio, written in homage to Sarasate in 1944, the Sonata pimpante of 1966, and the last of these works, the Set cançons valencianes of 1982. Both the Sonata and the Set cançons were written for, Agustín León Ara, his son-in-law and also an outstanding interpreter of the Concierto de estío. Traditional in its musical form, with its classical three movements, the Sonata is a delightful work, full of striking ideas and textures, and with a particularly moving second movement. The world of the Set cançons is very different, with echoes of other compositions on which Rodrigo was working at the beginning of the 1980s, but the work is at times remarkably original, in spite of its anticipated popular idiom. There are also a number of other pieces for different instruments, amongst them perhaps the most important being the Sonata a la breve of 1977, for cello and piano, which Rodrigo dedicated 'A Pablo Casals in memoriam'.

---

 JOAQUIN RODRIGO AND HIS MUSIC

From the perspective of the year 2000 it can be said that during the second half of the twentieth century the figure of Joaquín Rodrigo dominated the world of classical Spanish music in the same way that Manuel de Falla did during the first. The celebrations and concerts which honoured Joaquín Rodrigo on his 90th birthday in 1991 not only gave rise to deep expressions of affection for the composer and his music throughout the world, on the part of performers and public alike, but also brought forth a deserved recognition on the part of the critics of the historical importance of his music. Proof of this is to be found in the numerous publications which appeared at the time: a brilliant analysis of the Zarabanda lejana, an interesting article on the Concierto de estío, commentaries praising the Música para un códice salmantino, and highly favourable reviews of the first performances of the Líricas castellanas or the Cántico de San Francisco de Asís.

The music of Rodrigo, which for many had remained almost unknown until that time, was not limited any more to the Concierto de Aranjuez and the Fantasía para un gentilhombre.

The music of Rodrigo is fundamentally conservative. If at the beginning of his career some of his works resembled in their musical language that of his most distinguished European contemporaries, such as Ravel or Stravinsky, he soon set out on his own particular path, based on the richest traditions of his country's culture. His task - he himself declared many times - was not to break with the past, establish new musical forms, or create new horizons in sound. Others were already doing that and would continue to do so. He sought something different: to pay homage to master musicians with brilliant concertos, sonatas and individual pieces; to set the greatest poetry to music of comparable eloquence; and to give new life to words and music of the past. Joaquín Rodrigo's musical language offers little difficulty, except on rare occasions. Other equally significant composers have represented a continuation or culmination of their traditions, and Rodrigo is perhaps the last important representative of many of the cultural traditions of his country, to which he always endeavoured to remain faithful.

To look through the Catalogue of his works is to contemplate a brief guide to the culture of Spain, and many will always thank him for having given new life to that culture, and to so many classical musical forms, with beautiful and original works. There is no doubt that Joaquín Rodrigo's importance in his country's music throughout his long life will be seen to be a permanent feature in the history of Spanish music.

© Raymond Calcraft