Spain and Portugal for Visitors

Early Music. Early mediaeval Spanish church music, that of the Mozarabic rite, was significantly different from the Roman rite and can still be heard in Toledo and other parts of Spain. The cantigas of Santa Marí­a is a large 13th-century collection of both religious and secular mediaeval monophonic songs, said to be influenced by Islamic music. Another religious musical relic, considered by UNESCO to be a world heritage "site" as a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity, is the Misteri d'Elx, the Elche Mystery Play, performed in two acts on the 14th and 15th of August every year continuously since the middle of the 15th century (the mediaeval special effects are particularly spectacular on the second night).

Arabic Influences. It is impossible to be precise about the extent of Arabic influence on Spanish music because of lack of historical evidence. One obvious legacy of Arabic music in Spain is its most famous instrument, the guitar, derived, with intermediate forms such as the vihuela, from Arabic instruments in turn developed from the Persian qitara.

Spanish Baroque and Classical Music. The accession of Charles V of Germany to the Spanish throne as Carlos I in 1516 put Spain firmly in the centre of European affairs. Its composed music reflected this, becoming more standard and less idiosyncratic and, after the sixteenth century (Spain's cultural Siglo de Oro, golden century), Spanish music went into decline. However, a native form of opera, the zarzuela (pronounced thar-thweigh-la), so called after the royal palace of that name, was invented in the middle of the seventeenth century, though the most commonly performed zarzuelas today are late nineteenth or early twentieth-century Romantic works. In other forms though, Spanish composers did not really find their feet again until the great guitarrist Fernando Sor (1778 - 1839).

Spanish Romantic Music. Fernando Sor was followed by another giant of the guitar, Francisco Tárrega (1852-1909) (whose very lovely Gran Vals is the basis for what is generally considered the most heard tune in the world, the Nokia ringtone). Tárrega was a contemporary and friend of Spain's most important composer since the Renaissance, Isaac Manuel Francisco Albéniz (1860 - 1909), a Romantic who based many of his works on Spanish folk music. Albéniz heralded fertile times for Spanish composed music: Enrique Granados (1867 - 1916), Manuel De Falla (1876 - 1946) and Joaquin Rodrigo (1901 - 1999) all successively developed the same tradition, and Rodrigo's 1939 work the Concierto de Aranjuez is especially notable as one of the few twentieth-century works to achieve widespread popular acceptance.

The Spanish Guitar. Meanwhile, Andrés Segovia (1893 - 1987), though not himself a composer, rejuvenated the Spanish guitar in three ways: by perfecting a technique matching that of other instrumentalists; by improving the actual design of the guitar, adopting nylon strings, for example; and by transcribing for the guitar works originally composed for other instruments, so greatly enlarging its repertoire and placing it at the same artistic level as other concert-hall instruments.

Today. In spite of decades of institutional neglect of Spanish music, Spanish performers can be considered in the same terms as those from other countries (or higher - think of the cellist Pablo Casals). Catalonia has been particularly blessed with musical talent, especially opera singers, names like José (or Josep) Carreras, Victoria de los Ángeles, Montserrat Caballé or Jaume Aragall springing to mind (admittedly none of these are exactly up and coming newcomers). And Spanish orchestras, though still not quite up to the mark of a Berlin or London Philharmonic, have long progressed past the times when it used to be thought that they had a slightly different concept of pitch than musicians of other nationalities.
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