Blogging The Art of the Illinois Philharmonic Orchestra: II. Concierto de Aranjuez

The next piece to talk about is probably one of the most famous of the 20th century.  If that makes many of you crouch into a defensive position, you can relax.  This piece is as comfortable as a siesta in a hammock—though maybe the descriptions of its story, as I have learned it, will displace some of the easy comfort. 

For those of you that haven’t read last week’s post, I will reiterate my goal here: to go through all the pieces on the Illinois Philharmonic Orchestra’s 2012-2013 season with one blog post per piece.  This is the second blog and this week’s subject is the Concierto de Aranjuez of Joaquin Rodrigo (1901-1999).  (Disclaimer: the contents here are not previewed or sanctioned officially by the Illinois Philharmonic Orchestra.  I’m speaking for myself; the ungainly sentence structure and flights of fancy should confirm that this is personal and unedited.)

Most likely, you already know some of the music of the Concierto de Aranjuez even if you don’t “do” classical music.  This is the concerto for guitar and orchestra that has one of the most famous melodies in all of music—even used by jazz trumpeter Miles Davis in his “Sketches of Spain.” 

Rodrigo is a very interesting man.  He was born in 1901 which, to my mind, is a relatively crappy year to be born a composer.  The world that he entered into would be dominated by the “schools” of either Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) or Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971). 

Schoenberg was an Austrian who pioneered a type of music where the pieces were very highly organized such that all the 12 notes in an octave would have to sound before a note could be repeated.  (An example of an octave would be the distance from one “C” to the next “C” 8 white notes above—but if you count the “black” notes, too, that would make 12.) This means that the piece wouldn’t be in a key (like C major) and none of the melodies would be sing-able unless the singer had an advanced degree in music.  Stravinsky’s style is easier to describe as what it is not.  It is **not** like the music of his fellow Russian Rachmaninov which characteristically has gushing, rich, Romantic, sometimes brooding, melodies played in a big manner.  Stravinsky doesn’t gush, and he doesn’t brood.  And even when he is “big,” he is clean and economical.  Both Stravinsky and Schoenberg were great geniuses, but their music was difficult for the average Joe or Josephine.

A personal note which I’ll mention here because because it is unlikely that the Illinois Philharmonic is going to program anything by Arnold Schoenberg in the near future, so I’m not sure when I’ll next get the chance.  When I was in my residency at the University of Chicago in “ENT,” there was a urology chief resident named Janice Arnold who worked under the guidance of Professor Harry W. Schoenberg.  And every time they had a case on the OR schedule, it would read in the surgeon slot, to my delight, “Schoenberg, Arnold.”  (We also had an anesthesiology professor named Livingston, and it took all my will power not to address him as “Dr. Livingston, I presume.”  I witnessed others with less self control…)

Getting back to Rodrigo, the first thing to know was that he was Spanish and the second thing is that he was blind.  Regarding the latter, Rodrigo contracted diphtheria when about 4 years old.  And while he was one of only two children in the town who survived their infection, he could only see shadows after that.  During his adulthood, he even lost that vision.  So it was a difficult thing when he traveled to Paris as a young adult with little support from his family to study to become a composer.  His composition professor was Paul Dukas (famous for The Sorcerer’s Apprentice which he wrote for Mickey Mouse—just kidding).  Rodrigo’s compositions were transcribed from a Braille typewriter that he employed.

Writing is an act of discovery, and much of what I am relating here is from a documentary (that I unknowingly already had in my library) about Rodrigo called, “Shadows and Light” which deals with his 90th year.  It’s astonishingly intimate with family members asking the relatively reclusive Rodrigo probing things like, “Do you feel that you have accomplished everything that you wanted in life?”  Much of the documentary involves the famous Concierto.  One of Rodrigo’s intimates is the famous guitar virtuoso Pepe Romero who not only tells us of the inner story of the famous Adagio movement of the Concierto but also the encounters that Romero had with Rodrigo’s episodes of depression that were only relieved by music.  Romero even speculated that the subsequent treatment of the elderly Rodrigo’s depression may have suppressed some of his compositional efforts.  That said, the documentary shows a fascinating excerpt of Rodrigo’s Canticle of St. Francis of Assisi composed at age 80.  Other than Verdi, who wrote Falstaff at age 80, and Eliot Carter, who is still composing thorny pieces beyond the age of 100, I don’t know of too many composers who accomplished much at such an advanced age.

The standard story of the Concierto was that it was composed in Paris in 1939 for the guitarist Regino Sainz de la Maza and inspired by the castle at the Spanish city of Aranjuez where Rodrigo spent his honeymoon with his wife, the former Victoria Kamhi.  She has an interesting background as a Spanish, Sephardic Jew who was born in Turkey and whom Rodrigo, a Catholic, had met in Paris when she played his music for him.  So I’ve always imagined the Concierto as a sort of Moorish-Spanish travelogue or scenic description--not knowing of Rodrigo’s blindness.  (The documentary doesn’t say whether Rodrigo could remember what colors looked like, etc.)  And all the scenic references may be true to some extent.  But the elderly couple states that the famous music of the slow movement (“Adagio”) was inspired by Rodrigo’s trying to come to grips with the stillbirth of his son and the grave illness that Victoria was subsequently experiencing.  So it is a prayer for understanding of a tragedy and to spare his wife, reminding me of the prayers in Beethoven’s in his String Quartet No. 15 or Bartok’s in his Piano Concerto No. 3.  The final floating ethereal harmonics played by the solo guitar represent the child’s soul ascending to heaven according to Romero.

Seeing the blind, 90-year-old Rodrigo play the piano masterfully (factoid: he didn’t play the guitar well) as well as interact with his family, including walking hand-in-hand with his wife through the grounds of the magnificent castle at Aranjuez and having her describe scenery and events as his “eyes,” is all extraordinarily touching in the documentary. (It is available on DVD with a performance of the Concierto by Romero.)  And it’s wonderful to realize the affection that the Spanish people have for Rodrigo who never succumbed to the influence of Schoenberg or Stravinsky in carving out an accessible, melodic style that is Spanish through and through.  Paradoxically, perhaps his blindness made him even more independent as a composer. 

In Aranjuez, the carillon in the town square plays the famous “Adagio” melody and even the school children can belt it out impromptu when confronted by the documentary crew on the street.  Here are some links to the Concierto on Youtube.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqkAYZi50x4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8LL1x6J2rU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oopyLI1vgNQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBHfPh5Ibsk

The Illinois Philharmonic Orchestra performance of the Concierto de Aranjuez is the 10th of November lead by new music director, David Danzmayr, with guitarist Ana Vidovic.  See www.ipomusic.org for details. 

Next week, Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 5.