In April, I wrote about the significant quantity of music that Isaac Albéniz had written before his masterpiece, Iberia. Most was intended for teaching purposes, or for the daughters of the aristocracy and upper middle classes (for whom playing the piano was as much a part of their education as needlework). Salon music might appear to be of less value than the virtuosic repertoire that defines the development of piano technique, but it is an important historical record of the music listened to and performed by our forebears.

Albéniz was more than capable of producing virtuosic repertoire too, and as a brilliant pianist in his own right he was not bound by any regard for technical difficulties. The score for Iberia is often written on three staves, with arrows signposting melodies amongst the forest of notes. Eight of the twelve pieces are in some variant of sonata form and all draw their inspiration from various types of songs and dances, but while he often uses the particular rhythmic and melodic elements of a given genre he never quotes verbatim.

Albéniz originally planned a comprehensive portrait of Spain, drawing on the characteristic musical style of each of its regions. There are at least twelve such regions, but it seems that he narrowed his scope as the work progressed: Iberia as it exists comprises four books of three pieces, and eleven of the twelve are devoted to Andalusia alone! The composer's native Catalonia does not feature at all, as the final piece is devoted to a lively, working class district of Madrid known for its dance halls and noisy street life.

Lavapiés is the only piece that does not exist in manuscript form with a specific date of composition, perhaps suggesting that it was not originally intended for Iberia? The two principal themes are based on the Cuban habanera, and it is the most complex of the pieces which make up the work. The sheer profusion of notes and dissonances is meant to characterise the sights and sounds of the district, but while Lavapiéshas its admirers it lacks the finishing touches that bring a sense of unity to the other pieces in the work.

Iberia's individual movements were first published between 1906 and Albéniz's death in 1909, and received some pretty cavalier treatment from publishers. They first appeared in the Eschig catalogue, but the original engraving seems to have been full of errors. Luckily these were easily corrected, but we can only assume that the original edition was not under the composer's control. The published order has never been questioned, though its primary concern appears to have been the creation of four sections of equal length.

While this doesn't offend any fundamental musical sensibilities, it does disregard the chronology of the pieces. Although placed fourth and first respectively in Iberia's second book, El Corpus Christi en Sevilla (above) and Rondeña are both dated December 1905. El Corpus Christi en Sevilla is one Albéniz's most programmatic pieces.  It describes the Corpus Christi Day procession in Seville, when a statue of the Virgin Mary is carried through the streets accompanied by marching bands, singers and penitential flagellants.

A New Order

The piece opens with the sound of drum rolls, followed by a march-like theme that grows louder as the procession continues. In the middle Albéniz inserts a saeta, a powerful religious lament sung in free rhythm by solo singers perched on balconies overlooking the narrow streets.  This first appears beneath a brilliant setting of the opening theme, and is replaced by a more sedate accompaniment until the (greatly elaborated) opening theme finally returns. The piece ends with a pensive, and devastatingly difficult, coda.

Rondeña is named after the Andalusian town of Ronda, and the local genre of the fandango that bears its name. There has been much disagreement about the suitability of the title as Albéniz's Rondeña is rhythmically different from its namesake, but this shouldn't surprise us as he was neither a purist nor a folk musician. The piece begins with a dance rhythm comprised of short, two bar phrases which alternate between 6/8 and 3/4. This is followed by a languid copla (folk song), built on the repetition of a single note.

Almería (dated June 1906), number five in the printed edition, picks up a sad, lilting theme from Rondeña. The alternation between 6/8 and 3/4 appears mostly in the left hand, while the right hand plays in 6/8 time. The rhythmic accents are similar to that of a siguiriyas; Albéniz asks the performer to be 'nonchalant and indolent', but never at the expense of good rhythm. The secondary theme is that of a copla in 4/4. Like Rondeña, it stresses a repeated note and shows his concern with making music out of very little.

When it came to publishing the pieces, it was clearly tempting to place this more relaxed piece between the highly-strung Rondeña and Triana (dated January 1906), named after Seville's Gypsy quarter. Its principal themes are derived from a pasodoble and a sevillanas, in which Albéniz imitates the sound of castanets and taconeo (heelwork). Ornamental variations on a beautiful secondary theme are followed by a restatement of the two principal themes, at this point brilliantly transformed and contrapuntally combined.

El Albaicín (dated November 1906) is named after Granada's Gypsy quarter. Built on a   dance-like principal theme and a sinuous copla, it captures the very essence of Andalusian music. The insistent rhythms create a truly pianistic magic that puts paid to any talk of strumming guitars as the inspiration for Albéniz's music. In fact, guitar music came to be influenced by Iberia as the distance between its piano writing and the popular guitar was as great as the gulf between the Albéniz of 1906 and his earlier platitudes.

The least programmatic piece in the collection, El Polo (dated December 1906), demonstrates just how far he had come. Albéniz's biographer, Gabriel Laplane, speaks of 'a wave of bitterness, constantly and infinitely reborn'. Its purely musical aspects, rather than its Spanish colouring, enable it to achieve the desired effect. Albéniz directs that it be played toujors dans l'espirit du sanglot ('always in the spirit of a sob'), and these 'sobs' are suggested by the broken phrases and syncopated accents that occur throughout the piece.

A Mythical and Monumental Spain

El Puerto (dated February 1907) brings some relief from these rigours. It was inspired by the little fishing town of Santa María, on the Bay of Cádiz, and its principal theme is in the style of a zapateado (a lively dance with fast and intricate footwork). The next piece in the collection, Málaga, was completed some six months later. Once again, it defies expectations: the city gave the world a voluptuous dance, the malagueñas, but Albéniz's Málaga in fact turns out to be a complex and heavily-syncopated pendant to El Polo.

More good humour is to be found in Eritaña (dated August 1907), named after a tavern on the outskirts of Seville which was famous for its flamenco music. It is a gay, festive piece, permeated (like Triana) by the rhythms of the sevillanas. Why, I wonder, did the publishers not choose to place this sparkling piece as the finale to the collection? Its virile energy would have set the seal nicely on Iberia, and it is emblematic of the way tensions are resolved: not with vague pointillist effects, but handsome and sturdy eloquence.

After Eritaña, Albéniz took some time off from Iberia. He was living near Nice, but also travelling to Paris and the Basque country. 1908-9 found him back in Paris, suffering from a creative block. He returned to Iberia, producing Jérez (named after the Andalusian town of the same name, renowned for its sherry wine) in January 1909. It is the longest of the twelve pieces and shows Albéniz back in virtuoso mode, but there is also an autobiographical aspect to this epic nocturne as it sees the composer making his farewell.

Its modal effects have an almost medieval air, and its harmonies are opulently layered. The central section contains flamenco elements, but soon enters strange and new territory. Merciless demands are made of the pianist in the process (particularly the left hand stretches), but for all its complexity Jérez is an attractive work and now acknowledged to be one of Iberia's highlights. Just two months later, and already seriously ill, Albéniz moved to Cambo-les-Bains. He died there on May 18th 1909, and is buried in Barcelona.

The richness of Albéniz's writing has at times been called wasteful. Paul Dukas accused him of "handling his colours as lavishly as his money", and (an otherwise admiring) Debussy observed that "he fairly throws music out of the window". Albéniz was equipped with the round, pudgy hands that lend themselves well to playing the piano. Yet even he despaired at times that what he had written was unplayable, and once suggested to fellow Spanish composer Manuel de Falla that Iberia should perhaps have been burned!

Fortunately, the work does survive today even if few pianists are brave enough to play it in public. It's misleading to think of it as purely 'Spanish' music, though. It is a confluence of cultures, written while Albéniz lived in Paris in bourgeois domestic quietude. Iberia is Spain once removed, its folk melodies awash with French elegance and the virtuoso hand of the great Abbé Liszt. The pieces are alive with Spanish rhythm, but Albéniz gives us a fantasy Spain for outsiders. It is so vivid though, that it perhaps becomes truer than the truth.