i

Music Criticism and Music Critics

in Early Francoist Spain
ii

WALTER CLARK, SERIES EDITOR

Nor-​tec Rifa!
Electronic Dance Music from Tijuana to the World
Alejandro L. Madrid
From Serra to Sancho
Music and Pageantry in the California Missions
Craig H. Russell
Colonial Counterpoint
Music in Early Modern Manila
D. R. M. Irving
Embodying Mexico
Tourism, Nationalism, & Performance
Ruth Hellier-​Tinoco
Silent Music
Medieval Song and the Construction of History in Eighteenth-​Century Spain
Susan Boynton
Whose Spain?
Negotiating "Spanish Music” in Paris, 1908–​1929
Samuel Llano
Federico Moreno Torroba
A Musical Life in Three Acts
Walter Aaron Clark and William Craig Krause
Agustín Lara
A Cultural Biography
Andrew G. Wood
Danzón
Circum-​Caribbean Dialogues in Music and Dance
Alejandro L. Madrid and Robin D. Moore
Music and Youth Culture in Latin America
Identity Construction Processes from New York to Buenos Aires
Pablo Vila
Music Criticism and Music Critics in Early Francoist Spain
Eva Moreda Rodríguez
  iii

Music Criticism and

Music Critics in Early
Fr ancoist Spain

Eva Moreda Rodríguez

1
iv

1
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers
the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education
by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University
Press in the UK and certain other countries.

Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press

198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America.

© Oxford University Press 2017

This volume is published with the generous support of the AMS 75 PAYS Endowment
of the American Musicological Society, funded in part by the National Endowment
for the Humanities and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in

a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction
rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above.

You must not circulate this work in any other form

and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.

Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data

Moreda Rodríguez, Eva, author.
Music criticism and music critics in early Francoist Spain /​Eva Moreda Rodríguez.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978–​0–​19–​021586–​6
1.  Musical criticism—​Spain—​History—​20th century.  2.  Music critics—​Spain.  I.  Title.
ML3785.M67 2015
781.1′7—​dc23
2014026406

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed by Edwards Brothers Malloy, United States of America
  v

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments  vii
Abbreviations  ix

Introduction  1
1. How to Be a Music Critic in 1940s Spain: Expectations
and Restrictions   15
2. Reviewing Contemporary Music   43
3. The Sound of Hispanidad: Reviewing Early Music   75
4. Reviewing Traditional Music: Toward Unity of the Men
and the Land of Spain   103
Conclusion  131

Appendix I: Publications, 1939–​1951   135

Appendix II: Music Critics   149
References  157
Index  175
vi
  vii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

When I first started research for this book in 2006, I considered the subject
of my research to be a corpus of music criticism writings. At some point dur-
ing the following years, while still interested in the writings, I became more
interested in the men (and the few women) who penned them. I am grateful,
first and foremost, to these men and women for many moments of stimulat-
ing, if sometimes challenging, reading, thinking, and writing over the past
eight years. Other people and institutions crucially contributed to this pro-
cess too. A work of this nature requires extensive archival work; I am grate-
ful to the staff of the Archivo Histórico del Seminario de Loyola, Biblioteca
Nacional de Catalunya, Biblioteca Nacional de España, British Library,
Institut d’Estudis Vallencs, National Library of Scotland, Senate House
Library, and Westminster Music Library for making me always look forward
to my stints of archival research. Travel to archives was financially supported
by Royal Holloway’s Dame Margaret Duke Travel Bursary, two Carnegie Trust
small research grants, and an award from the Open University’s Associate
Lecturers’ Development Fund. I am also grateful to the School of Culture and
Creative Arts at the University of Glasgow for hosting me and my research
and providing logistical support as this manuscript was completed.
My thanks go as well to colleagues who have encouraged, inspired, and
challenged my thinking, especially Erik Levi and Rachel Beckles-​Willson
during the first life of this book as a Ph.D. thesis, and, more recently, my
colleagues at the University of Glasgow. Over the years, sections of this
book were presented at various conferences and seminars. I  am grate-
ful for all the feedback I received on those occasions, and I would like to
give special thanks to Teresa Cascudo and María Palacios for organizing
the first meeting of the research group Música e Ideología in Logroño in
2008, which crucially shaped my thinking on music criticism and ideology
in Spain. Thanks also to Suzanne Ryan, Adam Cohen, and Lisbeth Redfield
at Oxford University Press, and to the anonymous reviewers for their valu-
able feedback. Through the last eight years, my family has been a source of
constant support and encouragement; to them I would like to express my
most heartfelt thanks.
viii
  ix

A B B R E V I AT I O N S

AHSL Archivo Histórico del Seminario de Loyola

BNC Biblioteca Nacional de Catalunya
BNE Biblioteca Nacional de España
FJM Fundación Juan March
x
  1

Introduction

S panish music of the 1940s has often been defined by opposition to

either the period preceding or the period following that decade—​and
the verdict has often been that the 1940s were not as significant, interest-
ing, or prosperous as the two other periods.1 Preceding the 1940s, there
stands the Edad de Plata (Silver Age) of Spanish culture, an era that many
have described as one of almost unprecedented development in the arts
and sciences, starting in the early twentieth century and reaching its peak
under the Second Republic, fostered by the Republic’s democratic and pro-
gressive ideals.2 Musically, the Edad de Plata ideals are typically thought to
be embodied by the Grupo de los Ocho (Group of Eight), an association of
composers modeled on the French Les Six.3 Under the influence of music
critic Adolfo Salazar, the Grupo de los Ocho attempted to renovate Spanish
music by absorbing some of the innovations of European modernism,
namely, Stravinsky’s neoclassicism, Debussy’s impressionism, and Falla’s
cosmopolitan approach to Spanish nationalism.
The dissemination, from the 1980s onward, of the term Generación del
27 (Generation of ’27) to refer to the Grupo de los Ocho and other compos-
ers and musicians in their periphery has further emphasized the perceived
prestige and innovativeness of such generation. The term was indeed mod-
eled on the literary Generación del 27, which included celebrated authors
such as Rafael Alberti, Luis Cernuda, and most prominently Federico García
Lorca.4 In the last few years, however, Spanish musicology has started to
point out some of the issues with this picture of music and musical life in
the Edad de Plata: the Grupo de los Ocho itself was a loose association of
composers who had come together mainly as a strategy to promote their
music and not so much on the basis of shared aesthetic and artistic ideals5;
2

the Grupo can hardly be regarded as a product of the progressive influences

of the Second Republic, since most of their innovative work was composed
under the dictatorship of Miguel Primo de Rivera, during the 1920s6; and
Salazar did not really support the Grupo in its entirety, but he dedicated
most of his attention and efforts to Ernesto Halffter instead.7
The period following the 1940s, by contrast, still remains a milestone
in the historiography of Spanish music. It was in the 1950s, it has often
been claimed, that the Generación del 51 (Generation of ’51)8 put an end
to the alleged isolation of Spanish music during the 1940s and definitely
integrated Spain into the post-​Webernian international avant-​garde.9 The
assumptions about the history of music as progress and historical inevita-
bility that underpin narratives about the Generación del 51 have received
less critical attention than the Edad de Plata, and are still to be examined
in depth.10
With the 1940s invariably paling by comparison, it was only from the
mid-​1990s, and even more so in the 2000s, that Spanish scholars started
to turn their attention to the music of this decade. Such studies have
tended to focus on political control of music and musical life rather than
on the music per se.11 More specifically, in doing so, some studies have
adopted a somewhat narrow perspective, focusing on very visible factions
of early Francoism, such as the Falange (short for Falange Española y de
las J.O.N.S., a fascist party founded in 1933 and the single party through-
out the dictatorship) or, more generally, those aspects more closely related
to Italian and German fascism. 12 With the precedent of studies of music
under the Nazi regime13 and, more generally, the scholarly interest or even
fascination that authoritarian control of the arts tends to stimulate, this
should hardly come as a surprise. Nevertheless, the starting point of this
book is not the belief that we should focus more on the elusive category of
the music per se14 and less on the political, but rather that the categories of
the political should be expanded. They should be expanded, for example, to
include factions of the regime that may not have been as visible and obvi-
ously influential as the Falange but nevertheless had an impact on music
and musical life. They should also be expanded to account for the fact that
many of the debates that preoccupied Spanish musicians in the 1940s—​
perhaps most conspicuously, concerning Spanish nationalism—​were of a
political nature and had their roots well before the Francisco Franco regime
started; therefore, many of the opinions and ideas expressed in the context
of such debates, although not necessarily promoted by the government,
reflect the multifarious political dimensions of the musical landscape of
the 1940s. In order to expand and problematize the categories of the politi-
cal in this way, this book proposes an examination of the musical press.

[ 2 ]  Music Criticism and Music Critics in Early Francoist Spain

  3

It cannot be denied that the Franco regime gave music political uses
(although not to the same extent that Nazi Germany did). It cannot be
denied either that music criticism, which, like any other journalistic prac-
tice, was subject to a considerable degree of control and direction, pro-
vided a space for disseminating government-​sponsored musical events and
policies, and for crafting the accompanying discourse. Several music crit-
ics, moreover, had administrative positions in government institutions,
among them Joaquín Turina, Antonio de las Heras, Federico Sopeña, and
Joaquín Rodrigo. It may be tempting to overrely on music criticism to tell
us exactly what the regime’s official line was on any issue related to music,15
even though it has been repeatedly pointed out that it is dubious such a
line existed.16 Nor did an official line exist in the musical press: certainly,
different approaches to the central issues, contradictions, and even dissent
abound, and it is imperative that they be explained in order to gain a view
of how political music criticism really was. Music critics did have political
views; most of them felt ideologically at home under Francoism inasmuch
as they identified with conservative and nationalist ideas, both politically
and musically. But the terms conservative and nationalist tend not to be of
much help when trying to make sense of the landscape of 1940s music crit-
icism. Between the early twentieth century and 1939, musical and political
conservatism and nationalism adopted diverse forms in Spain, and indi-
vidual music critics in the 1940s typically drank from one or more such
traditions. Similarly, many of the main topics they engaged with—​new
music, Spanish early music, traditional music—​had, by 1939, been for dec-
ades at the center of debates that were political in nature, debates having
to do with what Spanish music should be like, where it should be going,
and what its role should be in the organization of the state. Of course, in
the 1940s critics could not simply forget the decadelong history and how
it had shaped their own opinions about music and its political role; such
opinions sometimes happened to fit well with the regime’s outlook, or the
outlook of specific factions under the regime, but sometimes they needed
to be adapted or at least expressed with caution.
In a way, the present study aims at complicating rather than simplify-
ing or streamlining current understandings of the musical press and of the
political uses of music under the early Franco regime, and it does so through
adopting different foci. The first of them is examination of several music
magazines that have received little scholarly attention so far. Ritmo, as the
most widely circulated Spanish music magazine of the 1940s (and currently
the longest-​running), has been regularly used as a source in studies of the
period, and Vértice, being a Falange publication, has been the object of a
separate article for its unique position along the ideological spectrum17; but

Introduction  [ 3 ]
4

smaller, niche publications have received far less attention. Although the
main concerns for musicians and music critics were often the same regard-
less of the focus or scope of the publication, less-​well-​known magazines
illustrate the efforts, and sometimes the vicissitudes, of music journalists
to adapt such concerns to particular readerships (for example, Harmonía
and Boletín del Colegio de Directores de Bandas de Música Civiles addressing
an audience of wind band conductors), or to particular niche genres (Ritmo
y melodía focusing on jazz, Tesoro sacro-​musical focusing on religious and
liturgical music). Similarly, although it would be a herculean task to track
down and research every nonmusic magazine that at any point published
something on music during the 1940s, this book studies several of the
most widely circulated nonmusic periodicals having regular sections on
music, including academic periodicals published by the Consejo Superior de
Investigaciones Científicas (Arbor, Revista de ideas estéticas) and a variety of
Falange publications (Radio Nacional, Escorial, El Español, La estafeta liter-
aria). Although it was commonplace for critics to complain that other arts
and humanities had historically paid little attention to music, such publica-
tions illustrate the importance that various factions within the regime and
the critics themselves gave to music in connection with other disciplines.
Second, this book relies on a close analysis of selected examples of music
criticism. In some sections, of course, more breadth than depth has been
necessary to reflect the multiplicity of views on a particular issue, but
often, rather than offering a general overview of a particular publication
or author, the choice has been to select a few significant and representa-
tive writings pertaining to such publication or author and analyze them in
detail. This allows nuances and shades surrounding the main issues that
preoccupied music critics in the 1940s to emerge. For the missing gaps,
existing studies on specific music critics may provide a more overarching
perspective on the writings of such individuals,18 and hopefully more such
studies will be published in the future, expanding at the margins or fur-
ther complicating, rather than simplifying, the problems this study brings
to light.
This preference for in-​depth analysis of texts leads to the third focus
of this book:  its protagonists. Of course, it would be impossible to ana-
lyze to some level of detail, in a monograph of reasonable length, the writ-
ings of every music critic of 1940s Spain, or even of the twenty or thirty
most widely published names in music magazines and music columns
in newspapers. Instead, seven music critics were selected, as were four
themes with which they and others engaged most prominently. The critics
selected are, by order of appearance, Joaquín Turina, Regino Sáinz de la
Maza, Federico Sopeña, Nemesio Otaño, Higinio Anglès, Julio Gómez, and

[ 4 ]  Music Criticism and Music Critics in Early Francoist Spain

  5

Joaquín Rodrigo; the themes are music performance, new music, Spanish
early music, and Spanish traditional music. With regard to the selection of
critics, I do not claim that these seven critics were the most widely read,
the most influential, or the most prolific (although Sopeña is a likely con-
testant for the last one), but they were all reasonably visible as music crit-
ics and most of them had other prominent roles in the musical life of the
early Franco regime as composers, performers, researchers, or administra-
tors. Most importantly for the purposes of selection, they represent a rela-
tively wide range of political ideologies (in some cases quite closely aligned
with specific ideological factions within the early Franco regime, but also
including decidedly anti-​Franco ideological traits in the case of Gómez and
Anglès) and also of approaches to music and to the four chosen themes.
The book discusses such ideologies and approaches not only in connec-
tion with these critics’ writings in the press, but also, on one hand, through
an examination of their correspondence and other personal writings, and
on the other, through contextualization of the four themes in the intellec-
tual history of Spain from the late nineteenth century onward, including the
writings of their contemporaries. Indeed, although the above-​mentioned
selection may seem unsatisfactory to some, other critics also have a con-
tinuous, if secondary, presence in this book, among them (in alphabeti-
cal order) Luis Araque, Conrado del Campo, Antonio Fernández-​Cid, José
María Franco, Antonio de las Heras, Antonio Iglesias, Xavier Montsalvatge,
Víctor Ruiz Albéniz, Rodrigo A. de Santiago, and still others who did not
have a prominent career in music criticism or music more generally and
about whom few records remain, but who nevertheless contributed to dis-
cussions and debate around the four themes.
Through this book, the term “early Francoism” refers to the period
between 1939 and 1951. The initial date requires little explanation. On
April 1, 1939, the Spanish Civil War officially ended with the entrance of
Franco’s troops into Madrid and the annihilation of the last Republican
forces of resistance. Franco ruled, almost without limitations, all over Spain,
with the aspiration of reconstructing the country, both materially and spir-
itually, after three years of conflict. It was also at the end of the Civil War
that some of the critics discussed in this study (Rodrigo, Sopeña, Fernández-​
Cid, Montsalvatge) started their careers in music criticism, whose ranks
had been decimated by war and exile. The reader will certainly find refer-
ences to music criticism published on the nationalist side during the Civil
War, as, in many cases, it was the war that saw the emergence of some ideas
and approaches that were then developed and became prominent after the
war. Some very significant publications of the early Franco regime (such
as Radio Nacional and Vértice) were indeed launched by the national side

Introduction  [ 5 ]
6

before Franco’s final victory, and survived beyond 1939 with little change
in their editorial policy. Nevertheless, this book is not meant to be a study
of the Spanish musical press in a time of war, which would require explain-
ing a different set of contradictions and complications. To start with, there
is the fact that music criticism, which is by definition intended to be pub-
lished regularly, was actually not regular or systematic at all; disruption of
concert life, scarcity of paper supplies, and the priorities of wartime publi-
cations resulted in opportunities to listen to music and to review it being
few and far between.
The decision to end at the year 1951 is less self-​explanatory. The early
1950s certainly were a turning point for the Franco regime:  after friendly
relations with the Axis during the Second World War and international isola-
tion after 1945, the period saw integration of Spain into the Western Bloc.
Indeed, after intense negotiations between the Franco regime and the United
States, the two countries signed three bilateral agreements regarding trade
and defense in 1953 (convenios hispano-​norteamericanos or Pacto de Madrid),
which in practice confirmed Spain and the United States as allies in the fight
against communism.19 Culturally and musically, things started to change as
well: although the Generación del 51 did not actually became widely visible
in 1951, but rather in the mid-​to-​late 1950s,20 there had been hints of change
since at least 1947 with the Círculo Manuel de Falla in Barcelona—​the first
time since the Grupo de los Ocho that a group of young composers came
together with the specific aim of renovating Spanish music.21
The landscape of music criticism was changing as well, not necessarily
out of a desire of renovation, but often simply because of the life circum-
stances of its protagonists. Turina died in 1949 and del Campo in 1953.
Others simply left the profession or at least moved from writing daily to
doing so only occasionally: Sáinz de la Maza left his position of staff music
critic at ABC and Rodrigo ended his three-​year stint at the sports news-
paper Marca in 1949. As had happened in 1939, younger critics were step-
ping in to fill some of these vacancies: Enrique Franco started to write for
Arriba in 1952, and he promptly became a supporter of the Spanish avant-​
garde. Some of the members of the Generación del 51 also started to write
music criticism themselves, among them Luis de Pablo and Ramón Barce.
Although setting 1950 or 1952 as the endpoint of this study would not
make such a big difference to its main arguments, there is a particular rea-
son 1951 has been chosen. Sopeña, whose meteoric career in the 1940s can
be considered to embody the desire of reconstruction and regeneration on
the part of the early regime, moved to Rome in 1949 and was called back to
Spain in 1951 to head up the Conservatorio de Madrid. The appointment

[ 6 ]  Music Criticism and Music Critics in Early Francoist Spain

  7

was, in a way, a reward to Sopeña’s commitment to reconstruction of the

country through music criticism, bestowing on him the ultimate honor of
shaping the aesthetic ideals of future musicians through the directorship
of the Conservatorio in a time of political change for the country.22
Although the period 1939–​1951 is relatively short, it was also an era of
almost constant change and adjustment for the regime, both internally and
in response to events in the outside world. Internally, Francoism was sup-
ported by disparate factions, some of them with a significant pre–​Civil War
history. Such factions—​or familias (families), as Armando de Miguel influ-
entially named them23—​came together mainly because they shared a desire
to replace the Second Republic with a return to ultraconservatism, and as
well the belief that ultraconservatism should be implemented by a dicta-
torial or authoritarian regime.24 Familias under the early Franco regime
included the Falange; the Asociación Católica de Propagandistas (or simply
propagandistas), founded in 1900, which aimed at creating a Catholic elite
to lead the masses politically and socially; the Opus Dei (a theologically
conservative prelature of the Catholic Church founded by Spanish priest
José María Escrivá de Balaguer in 1928; its members aimed at seeking sanc-
tity in their everyday occupations, including, during the Franco regime,
involvement in politics), also known as tecnócratas from the 1960s onward;
the army; the monarchists, who supported Juan de Borbón, the designated
heir to the Spanish throne, then in exile; the Carlistas, a strongly tradi-
tionalist political movement that sought to establish a separate line of the
Bourbon family on the Spanish throne; and the Catholic church. The bal-
ance of power between the factions was often a complicated one, and the
regime has often been periodicized according to the dominating faction at
various times; for example, the desarrollismo period is considered to start in
1957 when a number of Opus Dei tecnócratas were appointed as ministers.
Delineation of such factions and their rivalries, however, does not neces-
sarily translate well to music or music criticism. It is true that a few critics
belonged, more or less clearly, to any particular faction, most notably the
Falange (of which Sopeña and Sáinz de la Maza were members). However,
most of them cannot be so clearly ascribed to a single faction. Critics did not
always chose their loyalties according to factions anyway; Sáinz de la Maza
did not write for Falange but for a monarchist newspaper, and Rodrigo,
who did not particularly agree with Falange ideals, wrote regularly for two
Falange-​controlled publications (Pueblo and Radio Nacional). Nevertheless,
on a general level, the chronology of the rivalries and the balance of power
between the factions in the years 1939–​1951 had a significant impact on
the press as a crucial—​and attractive—​part of the state apparatus.

Introduction  [ 7 ]
8

During the Civil War, the Falange quickly established itself as the ruling
faction on the nationalist side, and during the initial years of the regime
it was hegemonic over other groups. Music criticism did not escape the
Falange’s hegemony; several Falange publications (most notably Vértice
and Radio Nacional) gave music a significant role in their efforts to con-
struct the Nuevo Estado (new state), and the falangist writer Ernesto
Giménez Caballero was influential with several critics, as will be discussed
in Chapter  2. Nevertheless, it should not be assumed that everything
resembling music and cultural policies under German and Italian fascism
was, by definition, fascist. Increased interest in early and traditional music
provides an illustrative example; it is true that Nazi Germany and to a
lesser extent fascist Italy are well known for their promotion of early and
traditional music for nation-​building purposes,25 and more generally fas-
cism is thought of as a reactionary ideology, so it should be no surprise that
the music of the past was celebrated. Nevertheless, interest in and research
into early and traditional music had a history of their own in Spain inde-
pendent of fascist developments, with some well-​known scholars (Jesús
Bal y Gay, Eduardo Martínez Torner) being decidedly antifascist. Difidence
toward or rejection of new music should not be written off as a fascist leg-
acy either, although here the reasoning is slightly different: since at least
the 1960s, scholars have questioned the interpretation of Nazi Germany
as reactionary and emphasized its modernizing aspects instead,26 and the
similarly modernizing aspects of Italian fascism, such as futurism itself or
more generally the appeal of Mussolini’s regime for intellectuals committed
to modernity, have also been the object of scholarly attention.27 It must not
be forgotten that most fascisms ultimately sought to articulate a solution
to a perceived crisis of modern times, and as such the past was not simply
regarded with nostalgia, but also seen as a tool to shape times to come28;
similarly, with fascisms being by nature proteic movements drawing on a
number of preexisting ideas, they could draw on modernism as well inso-
far as it could satisfactorily advance their aims.29 Modernity, therefore, did
have a place in fascism—​and certainly it did in Spanish fascism, although
again, not every critic who defended or engaged with new music was doing
so on the basis of fascist ideas.
Falange influence on the Francoist government started to decline as
early as 1942, with the regime detaching itself from Germany and Italy.
The propagandistas finally became the major force in the government in
194530; the Falange nevertheless remained the single party in Spain until
the end of the regime and kept a substantial influence in a few areas, spe-
cially those connected with youth education and leisure.31 Nevertheless,
it was not straightforward for the Franco regime to integrate itself into

[ 8 ]  Music Criticism and Music Critics in Early Francoist Spain

  9

the Western Bloc, partially abandoning its initial commitment to autarky

(autarquía) in an attempt to guarantee its own survival.32 In 1946, France
closed its border with Spain and the United Nations issued a declaration,
UN General Assembly Resolution 39(I) on the Spanish question, in which
it recognized the Franco regime as a past ally of Germany and Italy and,
on such basis, banned Spain from UN membership. However, as the Cold
War started to take shape with the Greek Civil War and the uprising of
communism in Czechoslovakia, the Western Bloc started to slowly change
their attitude toward the Franco regime33; in particular, the United States
partially abandoned its initial postwar commitment to internationalism
and instead set out to look for allies against communism.34 Franco him-
self seized the opportunity and spent most of 1947 trying to approach
the United States.35 In 1948, France reopened the border with Spain, and
Franco received visits from American representatives trying to convince
him to align with the Western Bloc.36 At the same time, discussions about
Spain in the UN were moving forward, albeit at a rather slow pace, and it
was not until November 1950 that the 1946 resolution was revoked.37 By
then, the United States was well aware of the benefits of an alliance with
Franco in its rivalry with communism, which made it adopt a compromise
with the dictatorship. Spanish-​American bilateral negotiations continued
through 1952 and 1953 and concluded with the signing of the aforemen-
tioned agreements.
Since the political developments in Spain and the outside world had an
impact on music and music criticism as well, the chronology of events is cer-
tainly reflected to some extent in every chapter of this book. Nevertheless,
since I have chosen to put the focus on individual music critics, the reader
will not find a strictly chronological narrative here; instead, each chapter
has been conceived of as a window opening onto the life and writings of
one, or two, or three critics, without losing sight of the broader landscape
they worked and wrote in. The dramatis personae of this book should not
be understood rigidly either; all seven critics I discuss in depth will make
appearances outside their allocated chapter, since all of them wrote, to one
extent or another, about the four themes discussed in this book and were
active in Spanish musical life of the 1940s in other ways. Chapter 1 begins
by focusing on Joaquín Turina, who in 1939 was a well-​established, vet-
eran composer and the newly appointed comisario de música (commissar
for music), in order to discuss the expectations and restrictions the regime
placed on music criticism through press laws and doctrinaire handbooks.
Turina’s use of humor as a strategy to respond to such expectations and
restrictions is perhaps unique in the 1940s milieu, and is contextualized
through discussion of other critics’ reflections on their own work. The

Introduction  [ 9 ]
10

second half of the chapter looks more closely at one of these expectations,
namely, the assumption that critics should frequently and positively review
music performances in Spain to communicate to their readership the idea
that musical life and the country itself were on their way to fully recovering
after the war. The critic I have chosen here to focus on is Regino Sáinz de la
Maza, who as a well-​known performer himself was hailed by other critics
as a crucial actor in the reconstruction of the country, and who, as a critic,
repeatedly wrote on the action of performing as a reenactment of values of
Spain’s historical past and therefore a contribution to regeneration of the
country, following Falange conceptions of Hispanidad.
Chapter  2 focuses on Federico Sopeña, one of the few critics active
primarily in music criticism (as opposed to composition, performance,
or administration) during the 1940s and also one of the few to system-
atically engage with contemporary music and discuss what path should
Spanish contemporary music follow. Sopeña’s writings on new music will
be discussed with a particular focus on his two main influences: the music
critic Adolfo Salazar, who had been similarly interested in new music in
the period 1918–​1936 and exiled at the beginning of the Civil War; and
Giménez Caballero, who discussed the role art should have in a fascist state
in the book Arte y estado. Giménez Caballero’s influence on other critics will
be discussed as well, with a view to articulating Sopeña’s role as one of the
few music critics who envisioned a new way of writing Spanish music with
roots in the past, but at the same time conspicuously new—​in line with the
Falange’s initial aims of renovation through looking back at Spain’s past.
Chapter 3 focuses on defense and promotion of early music in the writ-
ings of three musicologists who also wrote music criticism. Nemesio Otaño
and Higinio Anglès were both priests and held prominent administrative
positions with the Franco regime, the former as comisario de música and
then head of the Conservatorio de Madrid, and the latter as founding direc-
tor of the Instituto Español de Musicología. Whereas Anglès and Otaño
celebrated in their writings music from the Middle Ages to the seventeenth
century as an incarnation of the true Spanish values that Francoism was
now allegedly reviving, I will examine both their academic background and
their personal relationships during the 1940s in order to bring to light the
differences between them:  Otaño heavily relied on Hispanidad, whereas
Anglès’s intellectual origins must be sought in Felipe Pedrell (1841–​1922,
composer and a founding figure of Spanish musicology) and his dislike
of Italian opera. Julio Gómez, on the other hand, was not as visible as
Otaño and Anglès, and he wrote mostly for a niche magazine, Harmonía;
the last section of the chapter will examine how Gómez expressed his dis-
sent with how research into early music was conducted and disseminated

[ 10 ]  Music Criticism and Music Critics in Early Francoist Spain

  11

under the regime as dictated by Anglès and Otaño, contextualizing such

dissent within Gómez’s personal politics and unique approach to music
nationalism.
Chapter 4 deals with Spanish traditional music; its first half does not
focus on a particular critic, but rather on the multiplicity of writers and
publications—​many of them nonspecialized—​that amplified and dis-
seminated the work of the Sección Femenina’s Coros y Danzas, through
which the regime turned traditional music into a tool for national
regeneration, national unity, and international prestige. The second
half of the chapter considers discussions about how traditional music
should inform Spanish art music; it will focus on Joaquín Rodrigo, a
star composer in early Francoism in his own right who, while keeping
within Francoist expectations of regeneration and national identity,
also drew from a tradition that had its roots in Falla and the Grupo de
los Ocho.

NOTES

1. See, for example, the first general accounts of Spanish music in the 1940s: Antonio
Fernández-​Cid, La década musical de los cuarenta (Madrid: Real Academia de Bellas
Artes de San Fernando, 1980); Tomás Marco, “Los años cuarenta,” in España en la
música de Occidente, ed. Emilio Casares Rodicio, Ismael Fernández de la Cuesta,
and José López Calo, vol. 2 (Madrid: Instituto Nacional de las Artes Escénicas y de
la Música, 1987), 399–​412.
2. Although already in use in literary and cultural historiography from the 1940s
onward, the term Edad de Plata became widespread with José Carlos Mainer, La
Edad de Plata (1902–​1931): ensayo de interpretación de un proceso cultural (Barcelona:
Asenet, 1975).
3. The composer members of the Grupo de los Ocho were Salvador Bacarisse,
Julián Bautista, Rosa García Ascot, Ernesto Halffter, Rodolfo Halffter, Juan José
Mantecón, Gustavo Pittaluga, and Fernando Remacha.
4. The term Generación del 27 in reference to musicians was first used in the 1970s,
still under Francoism; see Cristóbal L. García Gallardo, “La imposible inocencia
del musicólogo: el proceso de construcción histórica de la Generación musical del
27 o de la República,” in Música y cultura en la Edad de Plata 1915–​1939, ed. María
Nagore, Leticia Sánchez de Andrés and Elena Torres (Madrid: ICCMU, 2009), 40.
It became more widespread after Emilio Casares Rodicio curated in 1986 an exhi-
bition under the name La música en la Generación del 27; see also Emilio Casares
Rodicio, “Música y músicos de la Generación del 27,” in La música en la Generación
del 27. Homenaje a Lorca 1915–​1939, ed. Emilio Casares Rodicio (Madrid: Ministerio
de Cultura/​INAEM, 1986), 20.
5. María Palacios, La renovación musical en Madrid durante la dictadura de Primo de
Rivera. El Grupo de los Ocho (1923–​1931) (Madrid: Sociedad Española de Musicología,
2008), 7; García Gallardo, “La imposible inocencia del musicólogo,” 43.
6. Palacios, La renovación musical, 11.

Introduction  [ 11 ]
12

7. Ibid., 14; Javier Suárez-​Pajares, “Adolfo Salazar:  luz y sombras,” in Música

y cultura en la Edad de Plata 1915–​1939, ed. María Nagore, Leticia Sánchez de
Andrés and Elena Torres (Madrid:  ICCMU, 2009), 211. For the testimony of a
member of the Grupo de los Ocho, see Rodolfo Halffter, “Julián Bautista,” Música,
no. 1 (1938), 9.
8. The term Generación del 51 was coined by composer Cristóbal Halffter, himself a
member of the generation. Unlike the Grupo de los Ocho, the Generation of ’51
was never an association of composers, but rather a historiographic label; other
composers normally regarded as members of the Generation of ’51 are Carmelo
Bernaola, Ramón Barce, Luis de Pablo, Antón García Abril, Ángel González Acilu,
and Juan Hidalgo.
9. Manuel Valls, La música española después de Manuel de Falla (Madrid:  Revista
de Occidente, 1962), 22–​ 24; Tomás Marco, Música española de vanguardia
(Madrid: Guadarrama, 1970), 17–​23; Marco, La música de la España contemporánea
(Madrid:  Publicaciones Españolas, 1970), 14–​21; Marco, Spanish Music in the
Twentieth Century (Cambridge and London:  Harvard University Press, 1993),
155–​156.
10. Understandings of history of music (and particularly of the avant-​garde) as pro-
gress are hardly limited to the historiography of Spanish music; see, for example,
Leo Treitler, “What Kind of Story Is History?” 19th-​Century Music, vol. 7, no. 3
(1984), 363–​373; Susan McClary, “Terminal Prestige:  The Case of Avant-​Garde
Music Composition,” Cultural Critique, no. 12 (1989), 57–​81; Richard Taruskin,
“Revising Revision,” Journal of the American Musicological Society, no. 46 (1993),
114–​138; Taruskin, “A Myth of the Twentieth Century:  The Rite of Spring, the
Tradition of the New, and ‘The Music Itself’,” Modernism/​Modernity, vol. 2, no. 1
(1995), 1–​26. The most recent history of Spanish music, although it flags lesser
studied aspects of the Spanish avant-​garde for further research and emphasizes
some continuities with the previous period, does not engage in a full-​fledged
critique examining long-​held historiographical assumptions; see Germán Gan
Quesada, “A la altura de las circunstancias … Continuidad y pautas de renovación
en la música española,” in Historia de la música en España e Hispanoamérica, vol. 7,
La música en España en el siglo XX, ed. Alberto González Lapuente (Ciudad de
México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2012), 169–​231.
11. A pioneering study in this regard was Gemma Pérez Zalduondo’s 1995 Ph.D. thesis,
published as Gemma Pérez Zalduondo, La música en España durante el franquismo
a través de la legislación (1936–​1951) (Granada: Universidad de Granada, 2002).
12. See, for example, Gemma Pérez Zalduondo, “El imperio de la propaganda: la música
en los fastos conmemorativos del primer Franquismo,” in Discursos y prácticas
musicales nacionalistas (1900–​1970), ed. Pilar Ramos López (Logroño: Universidad
de La Rioja, 2012), 339.
13. Such as Pamela Potter, Most German of the Arts (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1998); Erik Levi, Music in the Third Reich (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1994).
14. Taruskin, “A Myth of the Twentieth Century,” 4–​5.
15. See, for example, Iván Iglesias, “(Re)construyendo la identidad musical española: el
jazz y el discurso cultural del Franquismo durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial,”
Historia Actual Online, no. 23 (2010), 124–​127; Gemma Pérez Zalduondo, “De la
tradición a la vanguardia: música, discursos e instituciones desde la Guerra Civil
hasta 1956,” in Historia de la música en España e Hispanoamérica, vol. 7: La música
en España en el siglo XX, ed. Alberto González Lapuente (Ciudad de México: Fondo
de Cultura Económica, 2012), 106–​107.

[ 12 ]  Music Criticism and Music Critics in Early Francoist Spain

  13

16. Iglesias, “(Re)construyendo la identidad musical española,” 119–​ 120; Javier

Suárez-​Pajares, “Joaquín Rodrigo en la vida musical y la cultura española de los
años cuarenta. Ficciones, realidades, verdades y mentiras de un tiempo extraño,”
in Joaquín Rodrigo y la música española de los años cuarenta, ed. Javier Suárez-​Pajares
(Valladolid: Glares, 2003), 15–​17.
17. Gemma Pérez Zalduondo, “La música en la revista Vértice (1937–​1946),” Nassarre,
no. 11 (1995), 407–​426.
18. For example, José Antonio Gutiérrez, “La labor crítica de Joaquín Rodrigo en
el diario Pueblo (1940–​1946),” in Joaquín Rodrigo y la música española de los años
cuarenta, ed. Javier Suárez-​Pajares (Valladolid: Glares, 1995), 403–​430; Leopoldo
Neri de Caso, “Regino Sainz de la Maza:  crítico musical en ABC (1939–​1952),”
in Joaquín Rodrigo y la música española de los años cuarenta, ed. Javier Suárez-​
Pajares (Valladolid:  Glares, 2005), 371–​401; Beatriz Martínez del Fresno, Julio
Gómez. Una época de la música española (Madrid: ICCMU, 1999), 217–​234; Germán
Gan Quesada, “De musica in verbis. Notas sobre la literatura musical de Xavier
Montsalvatge en un momento de transición (1948–​1953),” in Música, Ciencia y
Pensamiento en España e Iberoamérica durante el siglo XX (Madrid:  Universidad
Autónoma de Madrid, 2013), 87–​105.
19. María del Rocío Piñeiro Álvarez, “Los convenios hispano-​norteamericanos de
1953,” Historia Actual Online, no. 11 (2006), 175–​181; Jill Edwards, Anglo-​American
Relations and the Franco Question 1945–​1955 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999), 263;
Benny Pollack and Graham Hunter, The Paradox of Spanish Foreign Policy: Spain’s
International Relations from Franco to Democracy (London: Pinter, 1987), 151–​152.
20. Ángel Medina, “Primeras oleadas vanguardistas en el área de Madrid,” in España
en la música de Occidente, ed. José López-​Calo, Ismael Fernández de la Cuesta, and
Emilio Casares Rodicio, vol. 2 (Madrid: Instituto Nacional de las Artes Escénicas y
de la Música, 1987), 375–​377.
21. Luis Gásser, “El “círculo Manuel de Falla” de Barcelona (1947–​c. 1956),” in Manuel
de Falla: Latinité et universalité, ed. Louis Jambou (Paris: Presses de l’université de
Paris-​Sorbonne, 1999), 496–​507.
22. Igor Contreras, “El ‘empeño apostólico-​literario de Federico Sopeña,” in Los señores
de la crítica. Periodismo musical e ideología del modernismo en Madrid (1900–1950),
ed. Teresa Cascudo and María Palacios (Sevilla: Doble J, 2011), 331–​334.
23. Armando de Miguel, Sociología del franquismo. Análisis ideológico de los ministros
del Régimen (Barcelona: Euros, 1975). Linz similarly spoke of “limited pluralism”
as one of the traits of Francoism as an authoritarian (as opposed to totalitar-
ian) regime; see reprinted in Juan J. Linz, “An Authoritarian Regime: The Case
of Spain,” in Mass Politics: Studies in Political Sociology, ed. Erik Allardt and Stein
Rokkan (New York: Free Press, 1970), 255.
24. Glicerio Sánchez Recio, “Familias políticas, estructuras de poder, instituciones
del régimen,” in Las culturas políticas del fascismo en la España de Franco (1936–​
1975), ed. Miguel Ángel Ruiz Carnicer (Zaragoza: Institución Fernando el Católico,
2013), 217–​218.
25. See for example Potter, Most German of the Arts; Dietrich Kamper, “Nationale und
international Aspekte in der Italienischen Musik des Frühen 20. Jahrhunderts,”
Revista de Musicología, no. 16 (1993), 637–​638; Fiamma Nicolodi, “Nationalistische
Aspekte im Mythos von der ‘alten Musik’ in Italien und Frankreich,” in Nationale
Stil und Europaïsche Dimension von der Musik der Jahrhundertwende, ed. Helga de
la Motte-​Haber (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1991), 102–​121;
Michael Meyer, “The Nazi Musicologist as Myth Maker in the Third Reich,”

Introduction  [ 13 ]
14

Journal of Contemporary History, vol. 10, no. 4 (1975), 649–​665; Pamela Potter,
“Did Himmler Really Like Gregorian Chant? The SS and Musicology,” Modernism/​
Modernity, vol. 2, no. 3 (1995), 45–​68.
26. Paul Betts, “The New Fascination with Fascism:  The Case of Nazi Modernism,”
Journal of Contemporary History, vol. 37, no. 4 (2002), 541 and 549.
27. Andrew Hewitt, “Fascist Modernism, Futurism, and Post-​modernity,” in Fascism,
Aesthetics, and Culture, ed. Richard J. Golsan (Hanover and London:  University
Press of New England, 1992), 38; Ruth Ben-​Ghiat, “Italian Fascism and the
Aesthetics of the ‘Third Way’,” Journal of Contemporary History, vol. 31, no. 2
(1996), 293–​294.
28. Roger Griffin, “Fascism,” in The Blackwell Dictionary of Twentieth-​
Century
Social Thought, ed. William Outhwaite and T. B. Bottomore (Oxford:  Blackwell,
1993), 223.
29. Roger Griffin, “Staging the Nation’s Rebirth:  The Politics and Aesthetics of

Performance in the Context of Fascist Studies,” in Fascism and Theatre: Comparative
Studies on the Aesthetics and Politics of Performance in Europe, 1925–​45, ed. Gunter
Berghaus (Providence; Oxford:  Berghahn, 1996), 12; Mark Antliff, “Fascism,
Modernism, and Modernity,” Art Bulletin, vol. 84, no. 1 (2002), 148–​149.
30. Sánchez Recio, “Familias políticas,” 219.
31. Stanley G. Payne, The Franco Regime. 1936–​1975 (Madison: University of Wisconsin
Press, 1987), 286–​293.
32. José Luis Neila Hernández, “The Foreign Policy Administration in Franco’s Spain:
From Isolation to International Realignment,” in Spain in an International Context,
1936–​1959, ed. Christian Leitz and David J. Dunthorn (New  York:  Berghahn,
1999), 277.
33. Qasim Ahmad, Britain, Franco Spain, and the Cold War, 1945–​ 1950
(New York: Garland, 1992), 46–​73.
34. Edwards, Anglo-​American Relations, 90.
35. Qasim Ahmad, “Britain and the Isolation of Franco, 1945–​1950.” In Spain in
an International Context, 1936–​1959, ed. Christian Leitz and David J. Dunthorn
(New York: Berghahn Books, 1999), 239.
36. Ibid., 240.
37. Ahmad, Britain, Franco Spain, 271–​290.

[ 14 ]  Music Criticism and Music Critics in Early Francoist Spain

  15

CHAPTER 1

How to Be a Music Critic

in 1940s Spain
Expectations and Restrictions

I f a tally had been conducted at the end of the Civil War of Spanish
musicians still active in Spain, as suggested by the composer and newly
appointed comisario de música, Joaquín Turina, its results would surely
have been less than encouraging.1 Many of the younger composers born
at the turn of the century who had made a name for themselves in 1920s
and 1930s Madrid and Barcelona for their attempts at renovating Spanish
music were now in exile, notably Julián Bautista, Salvador Bacarisse,
Rodolfo Halffter, Gustavo Pittaluga, Enrique Casal Chapí, Gustavo Durán,
and Roberto Gerhard. Another young composer, Antonio José, had been
executed by a Falange firing squad in 1936, whereas a few older, more
established composers such as Óscar Esplá and Jaume Pahissa had chosen
to leave Spain as well. With many of these composers employed in teach-
ing positions at the Conservatorio de Madrid or the Escola Municipal de
Mùsica de Barcelona, it seemed as if the training of young musicians was
also at risk of being compromised under the new regime.
Other spheres of musical life seemed similarly decimated:  promi-
nent performers such as Pau Casals, Andrés Segovia, and Conxita Badia
were now living abroad, as were musicologists and critics such as Adolfo
Salazar, Jesús Bal y Gay, Eduardo Martínez Torner, and Otto Mayer-​Serra.
Although not fleeing Francoist repression, Manuel de Falla—​who was at
the time the best-​known Spanish composer internationally—​left Spain in
September 1939 to conduct a series of concerts in Argentina and remained
16

there until his death in November 1946, not showing much interest in the
attempts of the Franco regime to attract him back to Spain.2 Falla’s student
Ernesto Halffter, who had been one of the most visible young composers of
the 1920s and 1930s, detached himself from Spanish musical life and was
now spending most of his time in Lisbon, only occasionally visiting Madrid
with conducting engagements during the 1940s.3 The list of remaining
active musicians was further narrowed down by the deaths of music crit-
ics Rogelio Villar (1937) and Ángel María Castell (1938), and of conductor
Enrique Fernández Arbós (1939) for causes unrelated to the war or the sub-
sequent repression; and by the purges that temporarily affected musicians
suspected of having supported the Second Republic, such as composers
Julio Gómez and Pablo Sorozábal, conductor Bartolomé Pérez Casas, and
musicologist José Subirá.4
Although Turina lamented that his figurative tally had resulted in “an
empty space, a void” in Spanish musical life,5 he was also confident that
this was simply the product of a necessary, if painful, process. The three
years of war, according to Turina, were also three years of debunking “pos-
tulates which many took for granted,” namely, the “dehumanization” of art
that gave rise to “all those styles gathered around the vulgar denomination
of ‘avant-​garde’.”6 Turina did not blame anyone in particular for that situ-
ation, which was not at all unusual; indeed, it was only on very rare occa-
sions that specific musicians who opposed the Franco regime were openly
and explicitly criticized by music critics writing under Francoism. The critic
Antonio de las Heras congratulated himself that the Orquesta Filarmónica
of Madrid lost most of its members after the Civil War “because its hordes
were so unashamedly left-​wing,”7 and composer Antonio Torres Climent
claimed in 1945 that Spanish audiences had very few good memories left
of the works of Bacarisse, Bautista, and Pittaluga and instead remem-
bered them mostly “with revulsion.”8 These instances of open, politically
motivated criticism were, however, the exception rather than the rule.
Nevertheless, those who had known Turina as the music critic of the
Catholic newspaper El Debate before the Civil War would be sufficiently
familiar with his likes and dislikes to understand whom he was referring
to. During his term at El Debate, Turina repeatedly abhorred the dehu-
manization of art as understood by the philosopher José Ortega y Gasset,
who claimed that the main characteristic of modern music from Debussy
onward was the emotional distance it placed between the composer and
the audience9; more generally, such an emotional distance allegedly made
art suitable for the elites only and thus deprived it of the significance, tran-
scendence, and appeal to the broader public that it held in the nineteenth
century.10 Dehumanization had been embraced, at least partially, by Adolfo

[ 16 ]  Music Criticism and Music Critics in Early Francoist Spain

  17

Salazar and the Grupo de los Ocho as a reaction against Romanticism and
as a way to avoid sentimentalism and, in the words of Rodolfo Halffter,
overreliance on “primary feelings.”11 Turina, on the other hand, considered
dehumanization a “mockery,”12 and even if he acknowledged that some of
the members of the Grupo were talented musicians, he warned them that
they would ultimately amount to nothing if they let themselves be influ-
enced by the international avant-​garde.13 Turina, who had studied in Paris
under D’Indy and Moszkowski and had since strived to write music with a
clear Spanish touch but an appeal to international audiences, regarded the
“polytonal acrobatics” that he thought ubiquitous in Spanish music after
the First World War, especially in the works of Ernesto Halffter, Salazar,
Juan José Mantecón, and Durán, as an expression of selfishness that went
against the internationalization of music.14
Turina understood excision of the avant-​garde and dehumanization
from Spanish music as a process of purification and cleansing in a bluntly
physical, even medical way (“The victory of our soldiers has swept away, at
least in the realm of music, all this mess”).15 These words resonated well with
the context in which they were written; indeed, Marxism, separatism, and
everything else deemed to be contrary to Spanish identity and values were
frequently depicted during early Francoism as an impurity or illness, with
the Civil War and subsequent repression being the cleansing or the medical
treatment that would take care of it. It was not uncommon for Republican
prisoners to be subjected to punishments directly referring to purification,
such as ingesting castor oil or having one’s head completely shaven.16 Just
as Spain was being purified of non-​Spanish elements through Francoist
repression, Spanish music had been, in Turina’s eyes, purified from dehu-
manization, avant-​garde, and selfishness through military victories.
Turina’s own life, in a way, had too been purified, or at least significantly
improved, by Franco’s victory; when the Francoist troops entered Madrid
on March 28, 1939, he succinctly recorded the event in his journal as a
“new stage.”17 The following day, he visited the headquarters of El Debate—​
whose last issue was published on July 19, 1936, after which its office was
confiscated by the Republican government—​with the intention of taking
up again his post as staff music critic. Turina recorded his visit to El Debate
with an equally significant commentary:  “We start to live again.”18 His
thirty-​two months in Madrid during the Civil War had been anything but
easy; his conservative ideals, including work as a music critic for a Catholic
newspaper, made him suspicious in a city under Republican control,19 but
he finally managed to secure a steady income and protection through John
Milanés, who was at the time the British consul in Madrid and an amateur
composer; Milanés gave Turina an administrative job in the Evacuation

H o w t o B e a M u s i c C r i t i c i n 1 9 4 0 s   S pa i n   [ 17 ]
18

Office of the British Embassy.20 Turina’s health also suffered during the
war, and he temporarily abandoned composition.21 Nevertheless, as soon
as the Francoist army took control of Madrid, Turina quickly applied him-
self to collaborating with the newly established regime in the task of filling
the void he himself had identified in the landscape of Spanish music. On
June 27, 1939, he was made a member of the committee for the reorgani-
zation of the conservatoire of Madrid,22 and he spent most of the summer
working at the Ministry of National Education—​first under the general
director of fine arts, Eugenio D’Ors, and then under his successor, the
Marquis of Lozoya—​to launch the Comisaría de Música (Commission for
Music) and its flagship project, the Orquesta Nacional (Spanish National
Orchestra). Turina soon started to write music criticism again too, which
he also regarded as a crucial part of his contribution to reconstruction of
the country. He duly recorded in his diary his first published article after
the end of the war—​not in El Debate, whose publication was never resumed,
but in Ya, which, like El Debate, was owned by Editorial Católica.23 Turina
regularly wrote for Ya during summer 1939, but did not eventually become
its staff music critic; the job went to the composer and conductor José
María Franco instead. In February 1940, however, Turina took up another
music criticism post, at a newly founded magazine by the title of Dígame.
Both Dígame and Turina’s music criticism column in the magazine may
strike the reader as extravagant in a time when the consequences of a three-​
year civil war, including starvation, repression, and international isolation,
were still deeply felt in most sectors of Spanish society. Dígame did pay
some lighthearted attention to current affairs, but its main focuses were
the performing arts, humor, and caricature. Similarly, along these lines of
thought, Turina’s style was conspicuously facetious through his nine-​year
tenure at the magazine: he referred to the violinist Henryk Szeryng as “the
chap (pollo) with his hand on his chest” (after El Greco’s The Nobleman with
His Hand on His Chest) for having placed his hand to his chest when taking a
bow after a recital,24 and he labeled a Wagner and Beethoven concert of the
Orquesta Sinfónica as a “symphonic Asturian stew (fabada),” for its ambi-
tion and popularity among audiences; the concert was conducted by com-
poser Conrado del Campo, who “has grown a morning coat”25—​referring
to the increasing number of conducting engagements that del Campo had
been accepting since the end of the war.
Humor, however, was sometimes a way for Turina to covertly express
some of the contradictory feelings he experienced toward Spanish musi-
cal life after the war—​on which, as comisario de música, he had a certain
amount of responsibility. Turina’s readiness to accept an appointment at
the Comisaría and to resume his career as a music critic certainly speaks of

[ 18 ]  Music Criticism and Music Critics in Early Francoist Spain

  19

commitment to rebuilding Spanish musical life. Nevertheless, he was also

an aging composer whose newly acquired responsibilities did not leave him
much time for composition. Moreover, even though many of the compos-
ers and critics Turina abhorred during the Second Republic were no longer
active in Spain, he still had significant rivalries with some of the men who
collaborated with him in the task of reconstructing Spanish musical life. He
initially shared the directorship of the Comisaría with pianist José Cubiles
and writer (and occasional music critic) Gerardo Diego, both of whom had
actively taken part in the musical life of the National side during the Civil
War and with whom Turina got along well. Diego, however, was replaced in
March 1940 by musicologist and priest Nemesio Otaño, also a very substan-
tial contributor to music on the Francoist side during the war whom Turina
regarded with less sympathy.26 Otaño eventually left the Comisaría, with
Turina remaining as sole comisario, in April 1941,27 but some of the new
recruits proved similarly problematic; Federico Sopeña, a young administra-
tor and music critic with whom Turina soon developed a close relationship,
left the Comisaría in 1943 after three years as secretary to train as a priest
at the Vitoria Seminary.28 Sopeña’s replacement, Antonio de las Heras (also
staff music critic at the newspaper Informaciones), was initially well received
by Turina, but disagreements between the two men, together with the fact
that the Comisaría’s responsibilities were virtually limited to managing
the Orquesta and the Agrupación Nacional de Música de Cámara (National
Chamber Music Ensemble), eventually led Turina to resign from his office;
the Marquis of Lozoya, however, did not accept Turina’s resignation.29 Turina
then remained comisario de música until his death on January 14, 1949.
Turina’s reviews for Dígame are often illustrative of the fact that the
composer was split between his personal sympathies and antipathies
on one hand, and his commitment to reconstructing Spanish musical
life from a position of power on the other. This is already noticeable in
Turina’s first-​ever review for Dígame, in which he addressed the alleged
scarcity of solid orchestral conductors in post–​Civil War Spain. Turina
was not alone in addressing this issue; in the few years following the end
of the war, it became a widespread concern in both music criticism and
private correspondence among musicians, and was sometimes dealt with
in rather dramatic terms. The main pillars of orchestral music in Madrid
before 1939 were the Orquesta Filarmónica, under Pérez Casas, and the
Orquesta Sinfónica, under Fernández Arbós. Now, with Pérez Casas and
Fernández Arbós absent from Spanish musical life—​albeit the former
only temporarily—​and the imminent launch of the Orquesta Nacional
under the auspices of the Comisaría, the need for reliable, solid conduc-
tors seemed more pressing than ever. Otaño reported in a letter to Falla in

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20

1939 in a disapproving tone that several musicians (“the ambitious ones”),

including José María Franco, Cubiles, and composer Francisco Calés, were
hopelessly trying to establish themselves as leading conductors in spite
of their poor grasp of conducting technique and the orchestral repertoire,
“and all they will achieve with all of this is what always happens in a divided
kingdom: devastation.”30 Julio Gómez, in a letter to his friend José Subirá,
spoke of a veritable “struggle” to occupy Fernández Arbós’s place at the
Orquesta Sinfónica—​a struggle in which the participants were, according
to Gómez, José María Franco, Cubiles, del Campo, wind band conductor
Emilio Vega, and others.31 Turina, however, instead of presenting the issue
in dramatic terms, chose to humorously compare the Orquesta Sinfónica
concerts at the Teatro Monumental to a state examination (oposiciones)
in which a desirable, secure position as principal conductor was at stake
and which music lovers attended “to check who is winning.”32 In Turina’s
opinion, Cubiles was clearly one of the winners: “His pianophilia extends to
every aspect of life,” he wrote in his review. “Cubiles believes that human-
kind can be split up in black keys and white keys.” Turina—​unlike Otaño—​
ultimately thought that Cubiles was good at conducting because “the piano
is a synthesis of the orchestra, and pianists are usually skilled at penetrat-
ing the complex forest which is a concert orchestra.”
But Turina used humor not just to express his preferences and sympa-
thies without betraying the equanimity that was expected of him as comisa-
rio de música; sometimes, his humor disguised what otherwise could have
been read as a blunt personal attack. On the occasion of Ernesto Halffter’s
visit to Madrid to conduct Falla’s El retablo de maese Pedro in October 1941
under the auspices of the Comisaría de Música, Turina, in his review of
the event, addressed Halffter in the diminutive, as “Ernestito,” and warned
him that “you are going bald.”33 This seemingly harmless, humorous remark
becomes somewhat crude when taking into account that Halffter, born in
1905 and therefore in his midthirties at the time, had first risen to promi-
nence at only twenty years of age after he won the Premio Nacional de
Música with his Sinfonietta; his precociousness was duly noted by his pro-
tector, Adolfo Salazar, in his 1930 book La música contemporánea en España,
in which Halffter was portrayed as the heir of Falla and the most signifi-
cant composer of the Spanish younger generation.34 With Salazar now in
exile and unable to further support Halffter’s career, and Halffter himself
increasingly being replaced by Rodrigo as the leading young composer in
Francoist Spain, Turina’s remark may thus be read as an attack on an aging
child prodigy who had not quite become a leading figure in his mature
years—​an attack that, with Turina himself organizing the event, could
have been less acceptable if not presented through the guise of humor.35

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  21

Nevertheless, Turina’s reviews normally made use of humor in a more

straightforward, positive way; even his mild criticism of the music of
Mahler, Bruckner, and Reger36 seemed rather a humorous quarrel with
his protégé Sopeña—​a pioneer in Spain in his defense the music of these
three composers, especially Mahler—​than anything else. Turina was usu-
ally benevolent when reviewing new Spanish music, and in April 1940 he
was already confident that the void perceived in Spanish musical composi-
tion just a few months before had been filled thanks to three young com-
posers: Joaquín Rodrigo, José Moreno Gans, and José Moreno Bascuñana,
and especially Rodrigo, whose “personality and rhythmic force I believe will
become stronger in the future, as he becomes more and more rooted in the
homeland.”37 Turina’s tone when giving balanced reviews of performances
ranged from approving to openly enthusiastic—​the latter applying mostly
to the small group of musicians whom he called his “nephews” and “god-
daughters,” among them singers Carmen Pérez Durías and Lola Rodríguez
Aragón, conductor Eduardo Toldrà, pianist Antonio Lucas Moreno, violin-
ist Enrique Iniesta, and two junior members of the Comisaría, Sopeña and
de las Heras.38
That Turina’s reviews were mostly positive and that he did not hesi-
tate to review the events organized by the Comisaría itself may make
his writings for Dígame seem unreliable and scarcely illustrative of what
was happening in Madrid concert life at the time—​whether music actu-
ally started to recover right after the end of the war under the auspices of
the Comisaría, with the absence of the exiles and other supporters of the
Republic having little impact. To be sure, one could harbor some reason-
able doubt as to whether the overwhelming majority of the concerts taking
part in Madrid at that time were of the high standard described by Turina.
But, even if we accept that his—​and other critics’—​appraisals should not
be taken at face value, such writings are helpful in understanding the role
of music criticism in such reconstruction, what music criticism was about
after three years of war, what expectations were placed on music critics by
the regime, how the critics themselves understood their role, and who was
writing music criticism in early Francoism (and for what reasons).

MUSIC CRITICISM IN EARLY FRANCOIST SPAIN: WHO

AND HOW?

Despite Federico Sopeña’s claim in 1943 that music criticism in Spain was
mostly in the hands of professionals,39 very few critics—​Sopeña himself
being one of the few exceptions—​managed to make a living solely or mainly

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22

from writing concert reviews and newspaper articles on music. Moreover,

unlike in countries such as Germany, there was no established academic
or career path for aspiring music critics; nor was there any union or pro-
fessional association to protect their interests. Critic-​composers who also
taught, conducted, or were engaged in some form of arts administration on
the side, such as Turina, were the norm; further examples are Julio Gómez
and Eduardo López-​Chavarri, both of whom had considerable experience
in writing music criticism before the Civil War. Other composers were now
doing so for the first time after war and exile made it necessary for news-
papers and magazines to recruit new contributors; among them were del
Campo, Rodrigo, Xavier Montsalvatge, and Ángel Martín Pompey. Regino
Sáinz de la Maza was one of the few performers who also wrote music criti-
cism, whereas musicologists such as Nemesio Otaño, Higinio Anglès, and
Norberto Almandoz also regularly wrote about music for nonacademic
publications.
Coming from different generations and backgrounds, these and other
music critics brought with them a rich landscape of influences borne out
of the complex Spanish intellectual and philosophical landscape of the
1898–​1936 period. Indeed, as the older critics such as Turina, del Campo,
and Gómez were starting their careers in the early twentieth century, a
number of Spanish writers and intellectuals who then came to be grouped
under the label Generación del 98 (Generation of ’98) were simultaneously
articulating their concerns about the regeneration of Spain. Their proposed
solutions ranged from imitating industrialized, civilized Western European
nations to preserving and promoting the spiritual values germane to Spain,
which were allegedly to be found mostly in the region of Castile.40 The
so-​called Generación del 14 (Generation of ’14) further elaborated such
concerns for the regeneration of Spain, proposing European intellectual
and philosophical trends (Krausism, rationalism) as the solution to rein-
vigorate Spain. A  further intellectual contribution of the Generation of
’14 was Ortega y Gasset’s concept of the dehumanization of art, which still
caused negative reactions among some Spanish critics, including Turina,
in the 1940s. Finally, many of the concerns that had preoccupied Spanish
musicians during the 1920s and 1930s were still current among crit-
ics writing under Francoism, for example, the desire to renovate Spanish
music consonantly with the perceived identity of the country; the role of
Manuel de Falla in the process of musical renovation; collecting, editing,
and promoting Spanish traditional and early music; and the role the state
should have in all of these processes.41 It is indeed highly illustrative of
this continuity that the flagship project of the Junta Nacional de Música
y Teatros Líricos (National Junta of Music and Lyric Theatres) under the

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  23

Second Republic—​the launch of a national, state-​sponsored symphonic

orchestra—​was taken over by the Francoist side during the Civil War, and
then finally materialized in record time under the auspices of the Comisaría
de Música; the Orquesta Nacional gave its first public performance in July
1940, just over fifteen months after the end of the war.42
Francoist music critics, however, did not write under the conditions of
the 1920s and 1930s; they were, indeed, workers in an industry the new
regime had quickly identified as a key pillar in controlling public opinion
following military conquest and achieving legitimacy in the international
context by counterbalancing the propaganda efforts of the Republican
side.43 The first Gabinete de Prensa (Press Cabinet) on the Francoist side
was in fact founded a mere two weeks after the coup, on August 5, 1936. It
was replaced in January 1937 by the Delegación para Prensa y Propaganda
(Delegation for Press and Propaganda), which was in turn transformed,
in February 1938, into the Delegación Nacional de Prensa y Propaganda
(National Delegation for Press and Propaganda), a department of the
Ministerio del Interior (Ministry of Interior). The Delegación Nacional de
Prensa y Propaganda thus effectively fell under the control of the Falange—​
and so it remained after the Civil War, through the first six years of the
dictatorship.44 In 1945, General Franco restructured his government. The
new organization reflected the progressive loss of power by the Falange
within the regime; press and propaganda competencies were now passed
over to the Ministry for National Education, whose minister, José Ibáñez
Martín, was a member of the Catholic propagandista faction rather than of
the Falange.45
These shifts in control certainly exerted some impact on music criticism,
the most conspicuous example being perhaps Federico Sopeña’s career,
which will be discussed in Chapter Two. But the conditions under which
music critics did their job did in fact not change much; until 1966, the press
remained subject to the 1938 Ley de Prensa (press law). Established in a
time of war, the law was based on the belief that journalism was a pow-
erful tool that could be abused by the enemies of the state and therefore
needed to be closely controlled. During the Civil War, the new state appa-
ratus, mainly through the Falange, founded its own newspapers (Arriba,
Pueblo) and magazines (Radio Nacional, Escorial). Privately owned media
certainly existed, and they were still subject to the control of the state to a
remarkable extent. The Delegación de la Prensa (Press Directorate) decided
and dictated which information was to be published in the press and under
what form, mainly through the mechanisms of previous censorship and
detailed instructions about content and form (consignas).46 Such consignas
were concerned with all aspects of public and private life under Francoism,

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24

and sometimes they were even directed against individuals or factions

that, although theoretically supportive of the regime, were perceived as
a challenge to the interests of the state.47 Moreover, the Delegación de la
Prensa placed observers in the editorial office of every newspaper, and cen-
sors carefully read every issue before publication (censura previa), returning
it with changes to be made or announcement of financial penalties to be
paid. Newspaper editors were appointed (and dismissed) by the Ministerio
del Interior (Ministry of Home Affairs). Journalists were controlled by
means of compulsory membership in the Registro Oficial de Periodistas
(Official Registry for Journalists), and every act of noncompliance with the
norms established by the Delegación was punished. Paper supplies were
scarce during the 1940s, with the state allocating a fixed amount of paper
for printing to the various publications, which gave the state a further
opportunity to control and shape the media landscape; in the realm of the
musical press, Boletín del Colegio de Directores de Bandas de Música Civiles,
which ceased publication in 1936, could not be published again until 1945,
allegedly owing to the scarcity of paper.48 The same year, Revista Literaria
Musical changed its periodicity from monthly to quarterly, for the same
reason.49
The state’s close control over the press was understood as a necessary
solution to rectify the alleged liberalism and frivolity of the majority of
the Spanish press in the years before 1936, in which the formative qual-
ities of journalism had been put aside or misused, as described by the
journalist Manuel Prados y López in his influential doctrinaire handbook
Ética y estética del periodismo español.50 Instead, Prados y López advocated
that Spanish journalists should work in close collaboration with the
Nuevo Estado, thus fulfilling a patriotic duty: a journalist was “a Spaniard
on duty”51 with the responsibility of “recording facts for History.”52 In
a time of rapid changes being implemented by the Franco government
with the aim of reconstructing the country, the mission of journalism
was “to explain, to teach, and to persuade’,”53 so the Spanish population
could comprehend the historical importance of the events that were tak-
ing place before their eyes.
Arts criticism, according to Prados y López, also had a role to play in this
process. He believed that a critic’s duty to his country was to help the gen-
eral public cultivate “deeply Spanish” aesthetic inclinations. Prados y López
did not explain what qualified as “deeply Spanish,” but he did discuss in
some detail how arts critics should help the population develop such incli-
nations: critics, he argued, should adopt an objective perspective, moder-
ate their language, and avoid rhetorical excess. Criticism should always be
“positive and constructive” because “in this new Spain in which it is of vital

[ 24 ]  Music Criticism and Music Critics in Early Francoist Spain

  25

interest to seize all talents available, negative criticism not only expresses
bad taste, but is intolerable and dangerous for the mission of the State.”54
Prados y López’s guidelines were not just lip service to the regime’s plans
for state-​guided reconstruction; the censorship apparatus of the newly
established regime very much regarded negative criticism as a potential
obstacle to the government’s efforts. Shortly after Joaquín Rodrigo started
to work as staff music critic at Pueblo in 1940, the Dirección General de
Prensa sent a complaint to the newspaper’s editor, arguing that Rodrigo
was too harsh in his judgment of musical events, and especially of those
organized by the state under one form or another. The Dirección General
de Prensa warned Rodrigo that the critics should approach “official”
concerts—​that is, those organized by the Comisaría or any other govern-
ment institution—​in a mild and benevolent way, in order not to hinder the
State’s efforts to promote “the musical recovery of Spain.”55 Similarly, the
efforts of critics to address the lack of organization and diversity of musi-
cal life in Madrid, while at the same time sparing the Comisaría de Música
and other government institutions from any criticism and laying the blame
only on privately organized concerts, border sometimes on the comical.
For example, when pointing out the organizational problems affecting
the Orquesta Nacional in 1944, Antonio Fernández-​Cid enthusiastically
praised “the regime who freed Spain from chaos and catastrophe, [and]
in its protection of music has reached thus far unknown standards in our
homeland,” and blamed instead the musicians of the Orquesta Nacional
for accepting other jobs and not always being available for rehearsals.56
Requests to the government to further support the musical life of Spain,
sometimes with protectionist measures, were usually expressed cautiously
and accompanied by passionate praise and gratitude for what the govern-
ment had done for music thus far.57
Prados y López’s guidelines also explain why Miguel Delibes’s charac-
terization of the press landscape in early Francoism as “monotonous and
boring uniformity”58 seems to be appropriate, at least superficially, for
music criticism in early Francoism. Indeed, praise was the norm not just in
Turina’s reviews; negative remarks are also difficult to find in other critics’
writings, even in cases where they did not hesitate to express their reserves
privately. On the occasion of the first concert of the Orquesta Sinfónica
1939—​a short-​lived project put together by José María Franco aimed at
reviving symphonic music in Madrid as soon as possible after the end of
the war—​Turina described Franco’s conducting as “bland and cold.”59 His
concert review for Ya, however, was far more benevolent and apprecia-
tive of Franco’s efforts.60 Remarkably, while enthusiastically praising the
speedy recovery of Madrid’s musical life under Francoism,61 in private

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26

Turina complained to a former student, pianist Paquita Velerda, that “per-

haps we are having too much music.”62
Such attempts at combining a generally enthusiastic overview of musi-
cal life with cautiously expressed reservations, so as to avoid presenting
obstacles to the reconstruction of Spain, can be found in the critics’ own
appraisal of the state of music criticism and of whether it was indeed fulfill-
ing the task it had been assigned. No music critic wrote a doctrinaire hand-
book comparable to Ética y estética del periodismo español, which absence
illustrates how music critics perceived and responded to the expectations
placed on journalists by the regime’s apparatus; critics, however, occasion-
ally interspersed their thoughts about their professional practice in their
concert reviews and articles. Especially in the early 1940s, such thoughts
were well in line with Prados y López’s claims about arts criticism: in its
first issue after the Civil War, the music magazine Ritmo announced in its
opening manifesto the intention to “put together and arrange the various
expressions of concert life and Spanish art”—​thus doing honor to its very
title and mirroring Franco’s efforts in bringing back “the normal rhythm
of all activities.”63 Ritmo was founded in 1929 by Rogelio Villar and ceased
publication after the beginning of the Civil War; its relaunch, under the aus-
pices of the Comisaría de Música and Nemesio Otaño, his newly appointed
editor, was presented in the opening article as “a pressing need,” given that
no other music magazines for the general public were being published in
Spain at the time.64 As in Prados y López’s handbook, Ritmo claimed that
an “impartial and objective examination of the musical events” was crucial
for the future success of the magazine, as was “exemplary austerity, free
from stylistic prejudices, from fanatic partisanship and, of course, from
passionate personal preferences, which are not at all appropriate for a pub-
lic platform.”65 Again, the author of the opening article did not target any
particular critics, newspapers, or magazines from the past. But it is not
difficult to imagine that his mention would have heavily reminded readers
of Adolfo Salazar and his various interlocutors; indeed, Salazar’s passionate
defense of the Junta Nacional de Música and of new music, and his open
attacks on certain factions of Spanish musicology and criticism—​which
were then met with equally enthusiastic replies from right-​and left-​wing
writers alike, including Turina, Castell, Julio Gómez, and Subirá66—​would
be inconceivable in 1940s Spanish music criticism, subject as it was to con-
stant expectations of optimism and constructive commentary.
Nevertheless, in spite of Ritmo’s expectations and of Eugenio D’Ors’s
triumphant claim in 1945 that “how much I  wish visual arts criticism
had by now reached the same standards as music criticism,”67 music crit-
ics sometimes appeared fully aware of their material and intellectual

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  27

limitations to fulfilling the expectations placed on them. Some critics

were worried that there were not enough opportunities for training and
professionalization. In 1946, Música partially reiterated Ritmo’s ideals
about what Spanish music criticism should be: to inform the general pub-
lic and help them develop specific aesthetic ideals in them, and to support
performers in their development and improvement. Nevertheless, all of
this, according to the anonymous author, required in-​depth knowledge of
various music instruments, the repertoire, and cultural history, as well
as strong writing skills; in his opinion, there was no critic in Spain who
met all of these specifications.68 At the end of the 1940s, ten years after
Franco’s rise to power, some critics seemed perplexed and slightly disap-
pointed that music criticism was not thriving yet in Spain; the Catalan
critic Arturo Menéndez Aleyxandre expressed his disappointment that
music criticism was not still regarded as an intellectual activity, but
rather as entertainment.69 Fernández-​ Cid, while acknowledging the
efforts of the government and highlighting that his colleagues possessed
a solid music background and good writing skills, lamented that neither
Ritmo nor any other magazine had risen to the challenge of becoming the
high-​quality music magazine of Spanish criticism70; and Gerardo Diego
optimistically described the standard of music criticism in Spanish news-
papers as appropriate or even exceptional, but again complained that
“the great music magazine we have always dreamt of” failed to material-
ize in the years since Franco’s victory.71
Conflicts of interest were another area some critics perceived as a prob-
lem. Sopeña was concerned that Spanish music criticism had been unable to
attain the standards of “strict impartiality” the regime expected, given that
most critics were also active as composers, performers, teachers, or admin-
istrators, which led to conflicts of interest.72 Sáinz de la Maza admitted
that, with staff music critics in newspapers being forced to attend several
concerts a week and review them, there was little space for “serious critical
judgment” and thus for truly educating the public, although he ultimately
thought that Spanish music criticism was generally impartial and gener-
ous to performers.73 Funnily enough, both Sopeña and Sáinz de la Maza
repeatedly incurred conflicts of interest—​the former regularly reviewed
the concerts of the Orquesta Nacional and the Comisaría de Música dur-
ing his tenure as secretary, and the latter did occasionally review his own
concerts74—​as did others such as Turina and Otaño. In a context in which
music criticism was, as a result of the war, in the hands of a very small
number of individuals who had other jobs elsewhere, priority was given to
contributing to the reconstruction of Spain by means of regular, positive
reviews of musical events to the audiences, rather than to fulfilling ethical

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standards (although this is not to say that critics were completely oblivious
to such standards, with Sopeña and Sáinz de la Maza pointing them out).

MUSIC CRITICISM AND PERFORMANCE IN EARLY

FRANCOISM: REGINO SÁINZ DE LA MAZA

The strategy of prioritizing positive reviews over conflicts of interest and

avoiding open attack and controversy certainly fits well within contempo-
rary regimes of a similar nature; in Nazi Germany, Goebbels banned arts
criticism in 1936 on account of polemics being detrimental to the role of
the critic as an informer.75 Nevertheless, it was not that Francoist music
criticism was entirely dictated by and subjected to the needs of the state
apparatus, with Turina, as comisario de música, or another critic, deciding
what officially sanctioned music criticism should be like: there were some
spaces left for critics to express their dissent with the regime’s musical poli-
cies (as in the case of Gómez, which will be discussed in Chapter Three).
And even those who supported and held offices within the Franco regime
(Turina, Otaño, Anglès, Sopeña) brought different backgrounds, interests,
and approaches to the table—​all of which could, theoretically, fit within the
Franco regime, but which sometimes manifested themselves as not eas-
ily reconcilable, as will be discussed in subsequent chapters. It is with the
tension between the regime’s expectations and the music critics’ reality in
mind that Spanish music criticism of the 1940s should be read—​as was
the case with Turina and his way of using humor to encourage develop-
ments he was skeptic about in private, or to mask criticisms that would
have hardly been acceptable in the climate of optimism and enthusiasm the
press was supposed to foster.
In the case of other critics, however, such tensions are much less evident,
to the point that they seemed to accommodate themselves almost perfectly
to the requirements of the new regime. This is the case with Regino Sáinz
de la Maza, whose work as a critic and a performer seems to fully mir-
ror two key components of early Francoism: on one hand, Hispanidad, or
the idea that the Franco regime was bringing on national rebirth; on the
other, and specific to the domain of music, performance as the staging of
such national regeneration. Born in Burgos in 1896, Sáinz de la Maza had
already built a solid international career as a guitarist by 1936; he was on
tour in America when the Civil War started. Although the Francoist press
often reported that he immediately returned to Spain to offer his services to
Franco and the national cause,76 Sáinz de la Maza actually went on to finish
his American tour and did not return to his native country until September

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  29

1937, as initially planned, although he kept in touch with prominent sup-

porters of the Francoist side, such as his own brother-​in-​law, Víctor de la
Serna, the editor of the newspaper Informaciones.77 On his return, however,
Sáinz de la Maza was immediately made into an exemplary artist and musi-
cian by the Francoist press. This was an example of not only “patriotic”
but also specifically “falangist” behavior,78 someone who had given up an
international career for the sake of Spain,79 and a paragon of modesty, of
effort in the front line of propaganda who did not ask for any luxuries or
privileges in return for his support, as well as a model of Castilian aus-
terity.80 Besides his public performances, Sáinz de la Maza’s expressed his
commitment to the newly established regime as a music critic, a job he did
not have significant experience at before the war. As early as April 1939,
he was offered a position as staff music critic by the Marquis of Luca de
Tena, who had recently regained control of the conservative newspaper
ABC.81 Sáinz de la Maza was also a regular contributor to Vértice and Radio
Nacional, which, being published by the Falange, were more in touch with
Sáinz de la Maza’s political affiliation than the privately owned ABC, whose
conservatism was rather of the Catholic-​monarchist persuasion.
As was the case with other staff music critics employed by daily or
weekly newspapers, most of Sáinz de la Maza’s writings for ABC focused on
reviewing music performance. Negative remarks were, again, scarce—​and
carefully phrased to avoid openly attacking governmental policies. Sáinz de
la Maza normally chose instead to turn his criticisms into a call for collabo-
ration and joint efforts for the sake of the homeland; when Cubiles con-
ducted the Orquesta Sinfónica in February 1940 with Beethoven’s Eroica
on the program, Sáinz de la Maza claimed that performing such a “truth-
ful” work required “a constant effort to make it possible for the orches-
tra to identify with its conductor, with both of them inspired by the same
desire of perfection.” However, explained Sáinz de la Maza, the Orquesta
Sinfónica still suffered from the consequences of the Civil War and had still
not appointed a permanent conductor; this prevented making an effort
that truly guaranteed perfection. Nevertheless, Sáinz de la Maza thought
the performance ultimately turned out all right because of “Cubiles’ well-​
earned authority.”82 Sáinz de la Maza seemed thus to establish a parallel
between the Orquesta Sinfónica and its organizational problems with
Spain in its entirety, working together toward a newly established goal
under Franco’s allegedly well-​earned authority, but still suffering from the
problems caused by having to restructure the musical life of a country just
out of a civil war. In other reviews, Sáinz de la Maza was more explicit about
the crucial role performance could and should have in the new regime: he
thought that Fernández Arbós’s death was particularly untimely “now that

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30

his egregious figure could be so beneficial in the new landscape of Spain,”83

and he wrote about the importance of getting all Spanish children involved
in performance through singing traditional music to foster among them
love of both music and the fatherland.84
Sáinz de la Maza’s notion that solid, well-​conducted music performance
was inextricably linked to the health and well-​being of the country was
not an exception among music critics in early Francoism; in post-​civil war
Spain music performance was not regarded as a mere artistic pursuit, but
rather as a measure of the vigor and strength of the regime itself and its
ability to reconstruct the musical and artistic life of the country in a way
fully consonant with the newly arising understandings of national iden-
tity. This made it especially important, for national regeneration, to have
critics provide constantly positive, even enthusiastic opinions, on music
performances happening under the new regime. A further sign of the sig-
nificance awarded to performance was the fact that Comisaría de Música’s
flagship project was, from its very foundation, to launch and manage per-
forming ensembles—​the Orquesta Nacional and the Agrupación Nacional
de Música de Cámara. Composition did not seem as relevant; the Comisaría
did not, for example, commission new works or award grants to composers,
although it did organize annual composition contests with various levels
of success.85 During the Civil War, it was performers such as Sáinz de la
Maza and others who were repeatedly portrayed by the nationalist press
as examples of patriotic commitment. The Republican side, by contrast,
tended to put considerably stronger emphasis on musical composition as
part of the war effort; the Consejo Central de la Música was formed mostly
by composers (Bacarisse, Rodolfo Halffter, Bautista, Gerhard) who regu-
larly published their own and others’ works as part of the war effort under
the auspices of the Consejo itself.86
Cubiles was another conspicuous example of performed-​ turned-​
national-​hero; during the Civil War, he toured the National zone playing
Falla’s Noches en los jardines de España, and also visited Nazi Germany in
a propaganda effort for the newly established regime.87 The tenor Miguel
Fleta, who had enjoyed an international career during the 1920s, followed
the Francoist army to A Coruña, in northwestern Spain, and it was in this
city that he died in May 1938—​not as a consequence of armed conflict, but
rather of kidney failure. As was the case with Sáinz de la Maza, it was in
music criticism written during the Civil War and immediately afterward—​
sometimes by nonspecialists—​that the link between performance and the
war effort seems stronger and clearer: on the occasion of the third anniver-
sary of Fleta’s death, Rafael Salazar wrote that Fleta “fought in the ranks of
the national army,” which must be understood figuratively, given that Fleta

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  31

was thirty-​eight when the war started and never fought at the front. Tropes
about self-​sacrifice are to be found in Fleta’s portrayal as well, with Rafael
Salazar stating that Fleta, in joining the National side, canceled a tour to
America “to better serve Franco’s Spain,” with the highlight of Fleta’s con-
tribution being “having improvised a jota in the presence of Franco” in
Seville.88 The sextet of Radio Nacional were praised for their “commitment
to Spain” ever since the Francoist government invited them to Salamanca
in 1937 to support the war effort, and for always including at least one
Spanish work in their programs.89 Anonymous performers in choirs and
wind bands were celebrated as soldiers too; the Orfeón Pamplonés was
described as the second wave of soldiers who, hailing from the region of
Navarre, filled the inhabitants of Castile during the war with “faith, cour-
age and optimism.”90
Such views on performance were sometimes extended to deceased per-
formers as well. Still during the Civil War, Alberto Huerta wrote that if vio-
linist Pablo Sarasate—​who died in 1908—​were still alive, “his joy would be
impossible to describe” at Franco’s victories; Huerta claimed that Sarasate
would not only have supported Franco, but would have also become a sol-
dier and an ambassador of National Spain abroad.91 After a visit to Sarasate’s
grave in Pamplona, Federico García Sánchez noted that the grave was sur-
rounded by other tombs of “heroes of the war for God and for Spain,” refer-
ring to those who had fallen supporting Franco and national Spain.92 Other
writers also claimed that tenor Julián Gayarre would similarly be a Franco
supporter were he alive.93
The extensive press coverage of the visits of German performers to
Spain from 1940 to 1944—​notably Herbert von Karajan guest conducting
the Orquesta Filarmónica de Madrid, four Spanish tours of the Berliner
Philharmoniker, appearances by the Hitler Youth choral and folk groups,
and three Hispanic-​German art music festivals in Bad Elster, Bilbao, and
Madrid94—​similarly reveals that Spanish music critics of the time closely
associated public performance of music with expressing and reconstruct-
ing national identity. Concerts by German performers were enthusiasti-
cally celebrated and perceived as crucial in revitalizing Madrid’s concert
life: on the occasion of von Karajan’s visit in May 1940, Otaño claimed that
musical life in Spain had made an incredibly speedy recovery and was now
even livelier than was the case before 193695—​which did not stop him from
admitting, in a letter to Falla, that although von Karajan’s performance
was indeed “formidable,” musical life in Madrid more generally was simply
“mediocre.”96
It was definitely German performance rather than composition that
Spanish music critics were interested in—​meaning not just performance

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32

by German musicians, but performance according to allegedly German

standards. When tenor Alf Rauch and conductor Franz Konwitschny vis-
ited Madrid in 1941, Sáinz de la Maza himself wrote that what made such
visits interesting was not the possibility that conductors would offer a
“personal, so-​ far-​
unknown interpretation” of standard repertoire, but
rather the opportunity to observe firsthand “performance criteria which
follow from the good German tradition.”97 On the occasion of the second
Hispanic-​German festival held in Madrid and Bilbao in January 1942,
Joaquín Rodrigo stated that one of the main goals of such international
festivals was to have first-​rate performers produce “model versions” of the
standard repertoire, particularly the German one; examples of such model
versions were, according to Rodrigo, Herbert Albert’s performance of
Strauss’s Till Eulenspiegel and of Brahms’s first symphony.98 The successes
of Spanish musicians when performing German music for German audi-
ences were also enthusiastically reviewed in the Spanish press; Conrado
del Campo was reported to having been selected by the Reich’s govern-
ment itself to conduct the Berliner Philharmoniker in January 1942 for
his knowledge of and affinity with the German repertoire,99 and he was
allegedly so convincing in his rendition that “the intelligent German public
had to bow to the evidence.”100 Cubiles received similar praise after he per-
formed Schumann’s piano concerto as part of the third Hispanic-​German
Festival in Bad Elster.101 German contemporary composition, though, did
not elicit the same kind of interest from Spanish critics102: after works by
Max Trapp, Ottmar Gerster, “Berger,” and “Ingenbrandt” were performed
in the second Hispanic-​German festival, Rodrigo described Gerster and
Ingenbrandt as “of little interest,” especially the latter, whose Bolero “justi-
fies any kind of suspicions about his talent.” He described Trapp, in con-
trast, as mildly interesting, although he did not approve of Trapp’s use of
modality, “which is bound to be a passing fancy and will probably not bear
any fruit.”103 Rodrigo’s review for Radio Nacional was more benevolent, but
his praise amounted to describing Gerster’s compositions as “healthy pro-
vincial music.”104 Other critics reviewing the same festival made only brief
references to contemporary German music and focused instead on the per-
formances of the German repertoire.105
Sáinz de la Maza and other Spanish performers highly active in early
Francoism—​among them Cubiles, Rodríguez Aragón, Gaspar Cassadó,
and the young Ataúlfo Argenta, as well as the Orquesta Nacional and the
Quinteto Nacional—​in turn visited Germany in 1941 and 1942 on the occa-
sion of the Hispanic-​German music festivals in Bad Elster to present the
Spanish canon there. This ranged from the sixteenth century vihuelistas,
performed in guitar transcription by Sáinz de la Maza himself, to Rodrigo.106

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  33

But the music of the vihuelistas was not only suitable to be played abroad
to promote Spanish music; it had to be disseminated in Spain as well, and
Sáinz de la Maza—​practically the only high-​profile guitarist active in Spain
at the time, since Andrés Segovia was living in America, and Narciso Yepes
did not start his Madrid career until 1947—​seemed to be the person for
the job, through his recitals, lectures, and writings on the topic. Under
Francoism, the guitar did acquire a special significance that Sáinz de la Maza
helped develop; it was appreciated not so much for the connection to tradi-
tional music, or the music of “the people,” as was the case during the 1920s
and 1930s, but rather because of its connection to Spain’s imperial past as a
derivation of the vihuela. Sáinz de la Maza regularly included transcriptions
of the music of the Spanish vihuelistas, including Luis de Narváez and Luis
de Millán, in his recitals, and in his talks and writings he repeatedly spoke
of the guitar as the twentieth-​century incarnation of the vihuela107; several
other critics echoed this connection between the vihuela and the guitar in
their own reviews, implying that, in the same way Francoism was bringing
Spain’s imperial past back to life, Sáinz de la Maza was reviving the music
of imperial Spain.108
Sáinz de la Maza himself was well aware of the connection between
his own practice and the advent of the Franco regime, and frequently cel-
ebrated it in his writings. Unlike Turina, who welcomed the new regime
because it had swept away the avant-​garde trends brought over by the
dehumanization of art, Sáinz de la Maza went further back in time and
regarded the new regime as a comeback of imperial Spain to which he was
contributing as a performer and critic. In one of his first articles for ABC,
he wrote that “now, mysticism, epic poetry and traditional song bloom in
Spanish ardently and amorously”109; in this new climate, he argued, it was
every Spaniard’s right and duty to listen and enjoy music instead of feed-
ing the “childish fear of not understanding music”—​again, a likely refer-
ence to the perceived intellectualism and elitism of the Grupo de los Ocho
and their self-​confessed disdain for Spanish audiences.110 Sáinz de la Maza
praised the projects the Ministerio de Educación Nacional carried out
for Spanish music, not only because he thought they would be beneficial
for postwar musical life, but because they would also help Spanish music
“accomplish its universal destiny”111—​thus presenting history as destiny,
consonant with falangist notions.112 Veiled criticism of the Second Republic
can be detected in a comment he made: “Today is not like yesterday used
to be. Now, the words of those who have in their hands the future of the
Nation are not void or mere clichés to escape problems.” This, according
to Sáinz de la Maza, was further proof that Francoism was a comeback of
imperial Spain, since imperial rulers, from Isabella the Catholic onward,

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34

had given the utmost importance to music. He was also aware of the sig-
nificance music performance enjoyed in Spain’s imperial past, which he
believed would be mirrored under the new regime; he discussed Antonio
de Cabezón not just as a composer but also as an organist whose “utterly
Castilian art” had caused a deep impression in all Europe during Cabezón’s
travels accompanying Philip II.113
Sáinz de la Maza’s views on the Franco regime as the restoration of impe-
rial Spain were fully consonant with the concept of Hispanidad, so prevalent
in the rhetoric of the earlier regime, and particularly within the Falange.
The concept, however, was by no means an invention of the Franco regime;
it must be understood as one of the products of the long-​lasting debates
about Spanish national identity and regeneration that occupied Spanish
intellectuals from the late nineteenth century onward. The loss of the last
colonies in 1898 caused a national identity crisis that was still deeply felt
in the 1930s, and this is the context in which the two conceptualizations
of Hispanidad that were most influential on the Franco regime were devel-
oped: those of Ramiro de Maeztu and Giménez Caballero. Maeztu was part
of the Generation of ’98 in his youth; he subsequently evolved toward far-​
right positions and took part in the political organization Acción Española
(modeled after Action Française) during the 1930s.114 Maeztu described
Hispanidad as an objective spirit that expresses itself in the art and culture
produced by Spain; it is eternal, unchangeable, and intrinsically linked to
Roman Catholicism, but it needs the right economic and geographical cir-
cumstances to fully materialize.115 Giménez Caballero, on the other hand,
traced the origins of what he called genio de España (genius or spirit of
Spain) to Roman times; the genio allegedly crystallized for the first time
with political unification of the Peninsula under the Visigoth monarchy
and subsequently achieved its peak with the Catholic monarchs in 1492,
the year in which the genio de España achieved not only the political but also
the racial and religious unity of Spain and, additionally, the foundations
for the expansion of the genio into America were established. This provi-
dentially turned 1492 into the moment for which “Saint Isidore, El Cid,
Fernán González, Alfonso X the Wise, Don Juan Manuel, had been long-
ing for centuries.”116 The genio de España was allegedly so strong that it had
managed to produce remarkable personalities even in the adverse context
of the Muslim domination, figures such as Maimonides and Averroes, and
produced its most illustrious glories “whenever it remained faithful to its
origins”117—​by which Giménez Caballero meant Catholicism and imperial
expansion.
During the Civil War and the first years of the regime, the concept of
Hispanidad was further developed and adapted to provide justification

[ 34 ]  Music Criticism and Music Critics in Early Francoist Spain

  35

for the very existence of the Franco regime. In a speech in Barcelona on

February 21, 1939, shortly after Catalonia was occupied and the govern-
ment of the Second Republic was forced out of Spain, Franco claimed, “I do
not think I am mistaken to say that Spain will soon come to life again, in
a manner unprecedented since our Golden Century.” Moreover, it was not
by chance, he argued, that the “moral foundations of our future Empire”
were established in a physical space built during the times of the other
empire: the alcázar of Toledo, which had been under siege by the Republican
troops for several months at the beginning of the Civil War and was then
occupied by the Francoist army, quickly becoming a milestone in the imagi-
nary of the new regime.
Writing in 1938, Manuel García Morente echoed Giménez Caballero’s
and Maeztu’s belief that Hispanidad was a timeless concept existing well
before Spain materialized as a political unity; the inhabitants of Roman
Hispania allegedly showed already “some of the virtues which, through the
centuries, they developed further in a magnificent way,” and they already
exhibited their strength and commitment to Hispanidad by fiercely resist-
ing the Romans, which marked, in García Morente’s opinion, the first cru-
cial moment in the history of Spain.118 The second and third such moments
were the war against the Muslims during the Middle Ages (“a continuous
struggle against an alien, contrary, exotic and impossible religious con-
viction”119) and the building of the Spanish Empire, throughout which
Hispanidad, after having accomplished the task of unifying Spain, further
extended its potential by expanding to the exterior and ensuring Spain’s
political, religious, and moral leadership.120 García Morente added some-
thing new to Maeztu’s and Giménez Caballero’s accounts, though: he con-
sidered the advent of the Franco regime to be the fourth and last important
moment in the history of Spain. The nation was, again, fulfilling its destiny
and putting itself in the forefront of the world because Franco, in defeating
communism, had demonstrated that national values such as Hispanidad
should prevail over “ ‘transnational’ ideologies”121—​the Franco regime, in
other words, was a providential inevitability. Hispanidad was also absorbed
into the regime’s rituals and policies. During the war and the first years of
the regime, Franco was repeatedly presented as a crusader for Spain and
the successor of Charles V and Philip II,122 and Hispanidad was also used
to further ostracize those political and intellectual trends contrary to the
Franco regime (liberalism, socialism, communism, feminism) as contrary
to the Spanish soul itself and therefore unacceptable.123
With Hispanidad at the very foundation of the Franco regime, and with
music performance being an important component of such restoration, it
may be easy to regard Sáinz de la Maza as a sort of spokesperson of official

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music criticism, making the central ideas that sustained the regime’s very
existence come alive in his own practice as a performer and in his writ-
ings. Nevertheless, this figure is a little more difficult to accommodate into
narrow political categories. Even though his music criticism fully supports
the idea that Francoism had rightly replaced the avant-​garde by a return
to Spanish traditional values, he was friends with several crucial names of
said avant-​garde: Federico García Lorca himself dedicated “Seis caprichos”
from Poema del Cante Jondo to Sáinz de la Maza, and Rosa García Ascot and
her husband, Jesús Bal y Gay, now in exile, both wrote works for the guitar-
ist during the 1930s. During the first years of the Franco regime, Sáinz de
la Maza temporarily cut off his ties with his former friends—​during the
1940s, Salazar repeatedly complained that he had not heard from him any-
more after the war124—​but eventually reunited with some of them; it was
thanks to Salazar, Bal y Gay, and Rodolfo Halffter that Sáinz de la Maza was
invited by Carlos Chávez to perform Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez with
the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional of Mexico in 1952.125 Sáinz de la Maza
was also one of the first prominent performers under Francoism to include
works of the exiles in his recitals, as the regime slowly started to advance
toward a more liberal stance. As early as 1949, his programs included
Gustavo Pittaluga and Jaume Pahissa.126
It must not be forgotten, however, that there were other sides to the
regime, and even to the Falange, apart from Hispanidad. Some music crit-
ics represent some of these facets better than Sáinz de la Maza did. For
example, a section of the Falange, which later came to be known under
the name of Falange Liberal, was more interested in building a true Nuevo
Estado than in simply glossing nostalgically over the past. This conspicu-
ous desire for renovation—​even at the risk of enraging other more con-
servative, less change-​enthusiastic factions of the Franco regime—​left its
footprint in music criticism as well. And it was not Sáinz de la Maza—​who
rarely engaged with contemporary music in his articles, except for the few
occasions where a work by Stravinsky or a contemporary Spanish com-
poser was performed by one of the Madrid orchestras—​who is best suited
to exemplify this renovating, almost revolutionary streak within the early
Franco regime, but rather a young music critic by the name of Federico
Sopeña.

NOTES

1. Joaquín Turina, “La nueva España musical,” Radio Nacional, no. 50 (1939), 13.
2. For a discussion of Falla’s attitude toward the Franco regime, his decision to leave
Spain, and the attempts of the Franco regime to attract him back to Spain for

[ 36 ]  Music Criticism and Music Critics in Early Francoist Spain

  37

reasons of cultural prestige, see Carol A. Hess, Sacred Passions: The Life and Music of
Manuel de Falla (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 232–​246; Raanan Rein,
“La lucha por los restos de Manuel de Falla,” Journal of Iberian and Latin American
Studies, no. 2 (1996), 22–​39; Eva Moreda Rodríguez, “A Catholic, a Patriot, a Good
Modernist: Manuel de Falla and the Francoist Musical Press,” Hispanic Research
Journal, vol. 14, no. 3 (2013), 212–​226.
3. See Yolanda Acker, “Ernesto Halffter: A Study of the Years 1905–​1946,” Revista de
Musicología, vol. 17, no. 1–​2 (1994), 143–​154.
4. For examples of the purges affecting the staff of the Conservatorio de Madrid, see
Igor Contreras, “Un ejemplo del reajuste del ámbito musical bajo el Franquismo: la
depuración de los profesores del Conservatorio Superior de Música de Madrid,”
Revista de musicología, vol. 32, no. 1 (2009), 569–​583.
5. Turina, “La nueva España musical,” 13.
6. Ibid.
7. Antonio de las Heras, “Música,” Informaciones, June 8, 1939, 7. De las Heras did
not specifically name any musician involved with the orchestra—​not even its con-
ductor, Pérez Casas, who was at the time being investigated for having collabo-
rated with the Republican government during the war.
8. Antonio Torres Climent, “La música de esta posguerra,” Música. Revista quincenal,
no. 19 (1945), 9.
9. José Ortega y Gasset, “Musicalia,” El Espectador, no. 25 (1921).
10. José Ortega y Gasset, The Dehumanization of Art, trans. by Helene Weyl
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968).
11. Rodolfo Halffter, “Manuel de Falla y los compositores del Grupo de Madrid de la
Generación del 27,” in Rodolfo Halffter. Tema, nueve décadas y final, ed. Antonio
Iglesias (Madrid: Fundación Banco Exterior, 1991), 412. See also Emilio Casares
Rodicio, “Música y músicos de la Generación del 27,” 25.
12. Joaquín Turina, “Música,” Jan. 18, 1933, 7.
13. Turina, “El año musical,” Jan. 1, 1932, 6.
14. Turina, “Musique espagnole moderne,” Le Courier Musical, no. 4 (1926).
15. Turina, “La nueva España musical,” 13.
16. Michael Richards, A Time of Silence:  Civil War and the Culture of Repression in
Franco’s Spain, 1936–​ 1945 (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 1998),
55–​58.
17. Turina, unpublished diary, Jan. 1–​Dec. 31, 1939, Mar. 28 [FJM, LJT-​M-​Per-​9].
18. Ibid., Mar. 29.
19. Beatriz Martínez del Fresno, Julio Gómez. Una época de la música española (Madrid:
ICCMU, 1999), 381.
20. Turina, unpublished diary, Jan. 1–​Dec. 31, 1937, Nov. 19 [FJM, LJT-​M-​Per-​9].
21. Letter from Turina to Eduardo López-​Chavarri, Oct. 7, 1939, unpublished [FJM,
LJT-​Cor-​Tur-​14].
22. Turina, unpublished diary, Jan. 1–​Dec. 31, 1939, June 27.
23. Ibid., June 7.
24. Turina, “El pollo de la mano al pecho,” Dígame, May 14, 1940, 7.
25. Turina, “En el yunque,” Dígame, Apr. 30, 1940, 6.
26. Turina, unpublished diary, Jan. 1–​Dec. 31, 1940, Mar. 2 [FJM, LJT-​M-​Per-​9];
Turina, unpublished diary, Jan. 1–​Dec. 31, 1941, May 12 [FJM, LJT-​M-​Per-​9].
27. Turina, unpublished diary, Jan. 1–​Dec. 31, 1941, Apr. 5.
28. Turina, unpublished diary, Jan. 1–​Dec. 31, 1940, Apr. 13 and Nov. 12; Turina,
“Y va de cuento,” Dígame, Feb. 15, 1944, 6.

H o w t o B e a M u s i c C r i t i c i n 1 9 4 0 s   S pa i n   [ 37 ]
38

29. Letter from Turina to the Marquis of Lozoya, Oct. 2, 1945, unpublished [FJM,
LJT-​Cor-​Tur-​15]; letter from the Marquis of Lozoya to Turina, Oct. 16, 1945,
unpublished [FJM, LJT-​Cor-​81]; letter from Turina to Eduardo López-​Chavarri,
Oct. 25, 1945, unpublished [FJM, LJT-​Cor-​Tur-​14].
30. Letter from Nemesio Otaño to Manuel de Falla, July 20, 1939, unpublished
[AHSL, 004/​010.012].
31. Letter from Julio Gómez to José Subirá, Apr. 9, 1940, unpublished [BNE,
M.SUBIRÁ/​1/​105].
32. Turina, “Disonancias musicales,” Dígame, Feb. 27, 1940, 7.
33. Turina, “Homenaje a Falla,” Dígame, Oct. 21, 1941, 9.
34. Adolfo Salazar, La música contemporánea en España (Madrid: Ediciones La Nave,
1930), 247–​255.
35. Turina also complained, in his diaries, about Halffter’s “hypocrisy,” “scheming,”
and “shamelessness” in the rehearsals leading up to the performance, which may
have been another reason for the sarcastic comment. See Turina, unpublished
diary, Jan. 1–​Dec. 31, 1941, Oct. 11 and Nov. 7.
36. Turina, “Crónica pianística’,” Dígame, Jan. 15, 1944, 7; Turina, “Música, clarines y
voces,” Dígame, Apr. 2, 1946, 7; Turina, “Las divagaciones de un oyente,” Dígame,
Oct. 15, 1946, 6.
37. Turina, “Ya somos tres,” Dígame, Apr. 23, 1940, 7.
38. Letter from Turina to Pilar Mendicuti, Mar. 2, 1946, unpublished [FJM, LJT-​Cor-​
Tur-​18]; Turina, “In memoriam,” Dígame, Feb. 1, 1944, 7; Turina, “Y va de cuento,” 6.
39. Federico Sopeña, “Cuatro estados de la crítica musical madrileña. En torno a Peña
y Goñi,” El Español, Mar. 27, 1943, 9.
40. Alan Hoyle, “Introduction:  The Intellectual Debate,” in Spain’s 1898

Crisis: Regenerationism, Modernism, Postcolonialism, ed. Joseph Harrison and Alan
Hoyle (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), 26–​32.
41. María Palacios, La renovación musical en Madrid durante la dictadura de Primo
de Rivera. El Grupo de los Ocho (1923–​1931). Madrid:  Sociedad Española de
Musicología, 2008, 11–​13; Casares, “Música y músicos,” 20.
42. For other continuities between the Second Republic and the Franco regime, see
also Gemma Pérez Zalduondo, “Continuidades y rupturas en la música española
durante el primer franquismo,” in Joaquín Rodrigo y la música española de los años
cuarenta, ed Javier Suárez-​Pajares (Valladolid:  Glares, 2005), 55–​78; Germán
Gan Quesada, “Músicas para después de una guerra … Compromisos, retiradas y
resistencias,” in Discursos y prácticas musicales nacionalistas (1900–​1970), ed. Pilar
Ramos López (Logroño: Universidad de La Rioja, 2012), 278–​279.
43. Florence Belmonte, “Los periodistas de la prensa del Movimiento (1937–​

1945):  entre la ética y el realismo,” in Del gacetero al profesional del periodismo.
Evolución histórica de los actores humanos del cuarto poder, ed. Carlos Barrera
(Madrid: Fragua, 1999), 145–​146; Concha Langa Nuño, “El periodista-​combatiente.
La imagen de la prensa desde la prensa ‘nacional’ (1936–​1939),” in Del gacetero al
profesional del periodismo. Evolución histórica de los actores humanos del cuarto poder,
ed. Carlos Barrera (Madrid: Fragua, 1999), 128–​129.
44. Belmonte, “Los periodistas de la prensa del Movimiento,” 145–​154; Javier Terrón,
La prensa de España durante el regimen de Franco. Un intento de análisis politico
(Madrid: Centro de Investigaciones, 1991), 46–​86.
45. Terrón, La prensa de España, 106; Rosa Cal, “Apuntes sobre la actividad de la
Dirección General de Propaganda del Franquismo (1945–​ 1951),” Historia y
Comunicación Social, no. 4 (1999), 19–​20.

[ 38 ]  Music Criticism and Music Critics in Early Francoist Spain

  39

46. José Javier Sánchez Aranda and Carlos Barrera del Barrio, Historia del periodismo
español desde sus orígenes hasta 1975 (Pamplona: Eunsa, 1992), 454–​503.
47. For a first-​person account on consignas, see Miguel Delibes, La censura de prensa en
los años 40 (y otros ensayos) (Madrid: Ámbito, 1995), 9.
48. Anonymous, “Editorial,” Boletín del Colegio de Directores de Bandas de Música
Civiles, no. 23 (1945), 3.
49. Anonymous, “Editorial,” Revista Literaria Musical, no. 28 (1945), 3.
50. Manuel Prados y López, Ética y estética del periodismo español (Madrid:  Espasa
Calpe, 1943), 19.
51. Ibid., 31.
52. Ibid., 41.
53. Ibid., 31.
54. Ibid., 72.
55. José Antonio Gutiérrez, “La labor crítica de Joaquín Rodrigo en el diario Pueblo
(1940–​1946),” in Joaquín Rodrigo y la música española de los años cuarenta, ed.
Javier Suárez-​Pajares (Valladolid: Glares, 1995), 404–​405.
56. Antonio Fernández-​Cid, “La orquesta nacional y sus problemas,” La estafeta liter-
aria, no. 17 (1944), 8. See also Tomás Andrade de Silva, “El año musical,” Música.
Revista quincenal, no. 2 (1945), 3; and Joaquín Rodrigo, “Necesidad de una estre-
cha colaboración musical,” Radio Nacional, no. 117 (1941), 10.
57. See, for example, Rodrigo A. de Santiago, “Los concursos nacionales de música,”
Boletín del Colegio de Directores de Bandas de Música Civiles, no. 36 (1946), 12,
requesting the launch of state-​funded orchestras to perform prize-​winning works
in the Spanish provinces; and Nemesio Otaño, “La temporada musical en Madrid,”
Ritmo, no. 139 (1940), 3, asking the government to take charge of musical life in
Madrid to avoid miscoordination and to build an adequate concert hall.
58. Delibes, La censura de prensa, 9.
59. Turina, unpublished diary, Jan. 1–​Dec. 31, 1939, July 16.
60. Turina, “La Orquesta Sinfónica 1939,” Ya, July 19, 1939, 7.
61. Turina, “En el yunque,” 6; Turina, “¡Bien por ese sindicato!” Dígame, Nov. 29,
1942, 6.
62. Letter from Turina to Paquita Velerda, Apr. 12, 1941, unpublished [FJM—​LJT-​
Cor-​Tur-​28].
63. Anonymous, “Propósitos,” Ritmo, no. 133 (1940), 3. Although the article is not
credited to an author, it is highly likely that the author was Otaño himself.
64. Ibid., 3.  See also, on the issue of the relaunch of Ritmo, Joaquín Rodrigo,
“Reaparición de la revista Ritmo,” Radio Nacional, no. 88 (1940), 15.
65. Anonymous, “Propósitos,” 3.
66. Francisco Parralejo Masa, “Jóvenes y selectos:  Salazar y Ortega en el entorno
europeo de su generación,” in Los señores de la crítica. Periodismo musical e ideología
del modernismo en Madrid (1900–​1950), ed. Teresa Cascudo and María Palacios
(Sevilla: Doble J, 2011), 71–​72; Parralejo, “Crítica musical y radicalización política
durante la II República:  el caso de ABC,” Revista de musicología, vol. 20, no. 1
(2009), 537–​552.
67. Eugenio D’Ors, “Glosas para abrir una revista nueva,” Música. Revista quincenal,
no. 1 (1944), 3.
68. Anonymous, “Editorial,” Música. Revista Quincenal, no. 22 (1946), 3.
69. Arturo Menéndez Aleyxandre, “Cultura Musical,” Ritmo, no. 223 (1949), 4.
70. Antonio Fernández-​Cid, Panorama de la música en España (Madrid: Espasa-​Calpe,
1949), 267–​268.

H o w t o B e a M u s i c C r i t i c i n 1 9 4 0 s   S pa i n   [ 39 ]
40

71. Gerardo Diego, Joaquín Rodrigo, and Federico Sopeña, Diez años de música en
España (Madrid: Espasa Calpe, 1949), 70. Although the book was jointly credited
to Diego, Rodrigo, and Sopeña, differences in the writing style and approach sug-
gest that Sopeña wrote the chapter on composition and Rodrigo the chapter on
performance, with Diego in charge of music criticism and musicology. This dis-
tribution also avoided the potential conflict of interest posed by having Rodrigo
write on composition, or Sopeña on music criticism.
72. Sopeña, “Cuatro estados,” 9.
73. Antonio Fernández-​Cid, “Entrevista con Regino Sainz de la Maza,” El Español, no.
20 (1945), 12. Fernández-​Cid raised a similar point in arguing that most music crit-
ics held other jobs and as a result musical circles in Madrid were quite small, which,
in his view, was a source of “moral problems”; see Fernández-​Cid, Panorama, 267.
74. Regino Sáinz de la Maza, “Informaciones musicales,” ABC, June 12, 1942, 13.
75. Karen Painter, Symphonic Aspirations:  German Music and Politics 1900–​ 1945
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), 209.
76. For example in Anonymous, “Peregrino de la Falange por los senderos de España,”
Vértice, no. 7–​8 (1937–​38), 22; Antonio de las Heras, “Música,” Informaciones, Nov.
16, 1939, 7.
77. Leopoldo Neri de Caso, “La guitarra como símbolo nacional:  de la música a la
ideología en la España franquista” (2006), http://​secc.es/​media/​docs/​22_​3_​
NERI_​DE_​CASO.pdf (accessed April 2014); Neri de Caso, “Regino Sainz de la
Maza: crítico musical,” 372–​373.
78. Anonymous, “Peregrino de la Falange.”
79. Antonio de las Heras, “Éxito de Sainz de la Maza en el Español,” Informaciones,
Nov. 28, 1944, 1 and 3.
80. Anonymous, “Peregrino de la Falange.”
81. Neri de Caso, “La guitarra como símbolo nacional.”
82. Regino Sáinz de la Maza, “Informaciones teatrales. Orquesta Sinfónica,” ABC, Feb.
27, 1940, 14.
83. Sáinz de la Maza, “Acorde en la ausencia del maestro Arbós,” Vértice, no. 23
(1939), 7.
84. Sáinz de la Maza, “Acción educadora de la música,” Radio Nacional, no. 135
(1941), 16.
85. Gemma Pérez Zalduondo, “La música en el contexto del pensamiento artístico
durante el franquismo,” in Dos décadas de cultura artística en el Franquismo (1936–​
1956), ed. Ignacio Henares Cuéllar, Cabrera García, María Isabel, Gemma Pérez
Zalduondo and José Castillo Ruiz (Granada: Universidad de Granada, 2001), 94.
One of these contests has been analyzed in Christiane Heine, “El cuarteto de
cuerda en el Concurso Nacional de Música de 1949,” in Joaquín Rodrigo y la música
española de los añs cuarenta, ed. Javier Suárez-​Pajares (Valladolid: Universidad de
Valladolid, 2005), 149–​172.
86. Examples of musical works published by Ediciones del Consejo Central de la
Música are Enrique Casal Chapí, El caballero de Olmedo; Eduardo Martínez Torner,
Canciones populares españolas; Salvador Bacarisse, Nana del niño muerto and Tres
movimientos concertantes; Evaristo Fernández Blanco, Trío en do mayor.
87. See, for example, José María Franco, “Informaciones musicales,” Ya, July 11,
1939, 7; Anonymous, “Informaciones y noticias musicales,” ABC, July 6, 1939, 19;
Anonymous, “Los nuevos académicos de Bellas Artes,” Ritmo, no. 134 (1940), 3.
88. Rafael Salazar, “Miguel Fleta,” Radio Nacional, no. 73 (1941), 5.
89. Anonymous, “El sexteto de Radio Nacional,” Radio Nacional, no. 39 (1939), 5.

[ 40 ]  Music Criticism and Music Critics in Early Francoist Spain

  41

90. Anonymous, “Bodas de oro del Orfeón Pamplonés,” Tesoro sacro-​musical, no. 12
(1942).
91. Alberto Huerta, “Sarasate,” Arriba España, Sep. 21, 1937, 4.
92. Federico García Sánchez, “Por los siglos de los siglos. Navarra en el centenario de
Sarasate y Gayarre,” ABC, June 30, 1944, 17. See also, on Sarasate, Ángel Sagardía,
“El españolismo de Pablo Sarasate a través de sus actos, frases y labor de composi-
tor,” El Español, Aug. 5, 1944, 6.
93. Anonymous, “Música,” Arriba España, Jan. 19, 1937, 4. See also, on Gayarre,
Gabriel de Ybarra, “Gayarre y su Roncal. Memorias en la tierra que le oía cantar,”
El Español, Aug. 5, 1944, 7.
94. On Hispanic-​German music exchanges, see Eva Moreda Rodríguez, “Hispanic-​
German Music Festivals During the Second World War,” in The Impact of Nazism on
Twentieth-​Century Music, ed. Erik Levi (Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 2014), 309–​322;
Javier Suárez-​ Pajares, “Festivals and Orchestras:  Nazi Musical Propaganda
in Spain During the Early 1940s,” in Music and Francoism, ed. Gemma Pérez
Zalduondo and Germán Gan Quesada (Turnhout, Belgium:  Brepols, 2013),
59–​98. Music exchanges with Italy were also significant, with reviewers focusing
heavily on the Latin or Mediterranean character that allegedly united Spain and
Italy. See Eva Moreda Rodríguez, “Italian Musicians in Francoist Spain, 1939–​1945:
The Perspective of Music Critics,” Music and Politics, 2 (2008), http://​quod.lib.
umich.edu/​m/​mp/​9460447.0002.105/​-​-​italian-​musicians-​in-​francoist-​spain-​
1939–1945?rgn=main;view=fulltext [last access: June 2016].
95. Nemesio Otaño, “El eminente director de orquesta alemán Herbert von Karajan,
en Madrid,” ABC, May 21, 1940, 16.
96. Letter from Nemesio Otaño to Manuel de Falla, July 1, 1940, unpublished [AHSL,
004/​010.019].
97. Regino Sáinz de la Maza, “El director Franz Kowitschny y el tenor Alf Rauch, en
el círculo de Bellas Artes,” ABC, Feb. 12, 1941, 12.
98. Joaquín Rodrigo, “Al margen del festival de música hispanoalemán,” Escorial, no.
17 (1942), 423.
99. Anonymous, “Conrado del Campo dirige en Berlín dos conciertos,” El Alcázar,
Jan. 10, 1942, 6.
100. Anonymous, “Ha regresado de Berlín el maestro Conrado del Campo,” El Alcázar,
Jan. 23, 1942, 7.
101. Anonymous, “La semana musical hispano-​alemana a través de la prensa del
Reich,” Ritmo, no. 159 (1942), 7.
102. Lydia Goehr, “In the Shadow of the Canon,” Musical Quarterly, vol. 86, no. 2
(2002), 314. According to Goehr, with the musical canon taking shape through-
out the nineteenth century, “having at least found its history, Germany was
no longer living or making one”; this indeed seems to have been the approach
Spanish critics took to German music, being interested in the German canon only
up to Richard Strauss.
103. Rodrigo, “Al margen del festival,” 423.
104. Rodrigo, “Los festivales de música hispano-​alemanes,” Radio Nacional, no. 170
(1942), 12.
105. For example, Conrado del Campo, “Primer festival hispano-​alemán,” El Alcázar,
Jan. 27, 1942, 7.
106. See Moreda Rodríguez, “Hispanic-​German Music Festivals,” 318–​321.
107. For example, in Regino Sáinz de la Maza, “Don Luis Millán y la música cifrada para
vihuela,” Vértice, no. 30–​31 (1940), 8, reprinted in Radio Nacional, no. 151 (1941), 4;

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42

Sáinz de la Maza, “Variaciones sobre la guitarra,” Música. Revista Quincenal, no.

4 (1945), 8–​9; also Antonio Fernández-​Cid, “Entrevista a Regino Sáinz de la
Maza,” 12.
108. For example, Federico Sopeña, “Música, ausencias y homenaje,” Arriba, Oct. 17,
1939, 7; Manuel Ruiz Aguirre, “La guitarra,” El Español, Nov. 11, 1944, 8; Sopeña,
“Informaciones musicales,” ABC, Nov. 11, 1943, 19; Joaquín Turina, “Recital de
Sainz de la Maza,” Ya, Nov. 18, 1939, 6; José María Arozamena, “Español: Recital
de guitarra Sainz de la Maza,” ABC, June 7, 1939, 20.
109. Regino Sáinz de la Maza, “Si no escucháis la música, amigos …” ABC, Aug. 6,
1939, 3.
110. See, for example, Julio Gómez and Rodolfo Halffter on Bacarisse’s disdain for
the audience: Julio Gómez, “Sociedad Filarmónica Cuarteto Rafael,” El liberal,
Mar. 28, 1933; Rodolfo Halffter, “Tres movimientos concertantes para violin,
violonchelo y orquesta, op. 18, de Salvador Bacarisse,” La Voz, May 15, 1935. See
also Parralejo Masa, “Jóvenes y selectos,” 67–​68.
111. Regino Sáinz de la Maza, “Revuelo y júbilo en la grey musical,” ABC, Oct. 7,
1939, 3.
112. See Primo de Rivera’s speech on the occasion of the founding of Falange in
1933, reprinted in José Antonio Primo de Rivera, Discurso fundacional de Falange
Española (Madrid: Consejo Nacional del Movimiento, 1970).
113. Regino Sáinz de la Maza, “Artistas imperiales. Antonio de Cabezón, músico y
organista,” Vértice, no. 14 (1938), 8.
114. See Alistair Hennessy, “Ramiro de Maeztu:  Hispanidad and the Search for a
Surrogate Imperialism,” in Spain’s 1898 Crisis:  Regenerationism, Modernism,
Postcolonialism, ed. Joseph Harrison and Alan Hoyle (Manchester:  Manchester
University Press, 2000), 105–​120.
115. Ramiro de Maeztu, Defensa de la Hispanidad (Madrid: Acción Española, 1934).
116. Ernesto Giménez Caballero, Genio de España (Madrid:  Ediciones de La Gaceta
Literaria, 1932), 29–​30.
117. Ibid., 176.
118. Manuel García Morente, Idea de la Hispanidad (Buenos Aires:  Espasa Calpe,
1938), 9.
119. Ibid., 13.
120. Ibid., 14.
121. Ibid., 14.
122. Giuliana di Febo, Ritos de guerra y de victoria en la España Franquista (Bilbao: Desclée
de Brouwer, 2002), 83–​87.
123. Richards, A Time of Silence, 16.
124. Letter from Adolfo Salazar to Ernesto Halffter, Aug. 26, 1943, reprinted in Consuelo
Carredano (ed.), Adolfo Salazar. Epistolario. 1912–​ 1958 (Madrid:  Fundación
Scherzo/​Publicaciones de la Residencia de Estudiantes, 2008), 588; and letter
from Adolfo Salazar to Ernesto Halffter, Dec. 3, 1945, reprinted in ibid., 638.
125. Letter from Adolfo Salazar, Rodolfo Halffter, and Jesús Bal y Gay to Carlos
Chávez, Nov. 27, 1951, reprinted in ibid., 801–​802.
126. Antonio de las Heras, “Regino Sainz de la Maza en el María Guerrero,”
Informaciones, Feb. 25, 1949, 5.

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  43

CHAPTER 2

Reviewing Contemporary Music

W ith Turina and Sáinz de la Maza having a prominent role in recon-

structing Spanish musical life, it is not surprising that both of them
were involved in two of the most widely reviewed and influential concerts to
take place in the aftermath of the Civil War. The first was the Madrid perfor-
mance of Joaquín Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez, with Sáinz de la Maza as
the soloist and the Orquesta Nacional conducted by Jesús Arámbarri under
the sponsorship of Turina’s Comisaría on December 11, 1940.1 The second
was a concert-​homage to Manuel de Falla on October 14, 1941, organized
again by the Comisaría at the Teatro Nacional, with Ernesto Halffter con-
ducting the Orquesta Nacional in Noches en los jardines de España, dances
from El amor brujo and El sombrero de tres picos, and a semistaged perfor-
mance of El retablo de maese Pedro (in its first performance in Madrid since
1933). Federico Sopeña, then at the beginning of his four-​decade career as a
critic and arts administrator, attended and reviewed both events for Arriba.
This in itself was not at all remarkable, since prominent events organized
by the Comisaría were bound to be attended, and enthusiastically reviewed,
by the major Madrid newspapers and magazines. Unlike with other review-
ers, however, Sopeña’s assessment of these two events came to be consid-
erably influential in the historiography and criticism of twentieth-​century
Spanish music—​in the same way that Adolfo Salazar’s opinions on new
music during the 1920s and 1930s survived beyond his time.
In the early 1940s, however, Sopeña was an unlikely candidate to
become such an influential figure. Born in 1917, he was still a teenager
and a student of the Conservatorio de Madrid during the years in which
the Grupo de los Ocho were active in Madrid, but he attended new music
concerts with a keen interest2 and had a fascination with the writings of
44

Salazar3; unlike most other music critics in early Francoism, however, he

never developed a career as a practical musician before or after the war.
According to Sopeña’s own narrative, he was forced to spend the Civil War
in Republican Madrid.4 After the war ended, with a law degree under his belt
but not interested in practicing law professionally, he learned in September
1939 that Manuel de Falla had left for Buenos Aires. This encouraged him
to write an article on Falla, which he sent to Arriba “as a spontaneous con-
tributor.”5 Without any other effort on his part, or so the narrative goes,
he was then hired (“The article was published, and then someone phoned
me and offered me the post of music critic”),6 in time for him to review in
full the first concert season in Madrid after the Civil War, which promptly
started in October. A year later, in November 1940, without any signifi-
cant experience of arts administration, he was appointed secretary of the
Comisaría de Música. It would be disingenuous, however, to think that
Sopeña’s trajectory was the product of sheer luck; his networking skills
also seem to have played a very significant role. Before his appointment
at Arriba, he was already acquainted with Antonio Tovar,7 a falangist intel-
lectual who had been put in charge of Radio Nacional during the Civil War.
Similarly, Sopeña soon became part of the circle of close friends of Joaquín
Turina’s8 and a member of the tertulia (a social gathering for discussing lit-
erary or artistic matters) held at the Lyon d’Or café,9 which included Turina
and such other well-​known musicians as Cubiles, Rodrigo, and Sáinz de la
Maza, as well as falangist intellectuals such as Pedro Laín Entralgo.
Sopeña’s meteoric rise in the aftermath of the Civil War makes him a
product of the early Franco regime in a very particular way. Turina, Sáinz de
la Maza, and others already had careers in criticism or other areas of music
before the Civil War, and it is with this in mind that their writings should
be read; they adapted to the newly established regime by capitalizing on
ways of thinking about music that they had been following for years, but
that acquired new meanings or new relevance under Francoism. Sopeña’s
early and subsequent career, in contrast, would never had happened—​or
at least, not as it did—​outside the Franco regime, specifically outside the
Falange intellectual environment that came to be known as Falange Liberal.
Some of the most prominent members of the Falange Liberal, or lib-
eral falangists, such as Dionisio Ridruejo, Tovar, and Laín Entralgo, started
their political careers during the Civil War working for the press and propa-
ganda services of the Franco regime; most of them were in their late twen-
ties or early thirties at the time and had a university education. Concerned
with intellectual and artistic engagement as a way of reshaping all facets
of the Nuevo Estado under fascist principles after the Civil War, under the
auspices of the Dirección de Prensa y Propaganda of Falange and of the

[ 44 ]  Music Criticism and Music Critics in Early Francoist Spain

  45

minister for foreign affairs, Ramón Serrano Suñer (a falangist himself and
also Franco’s brother-​in-​law), a number of them founded the periodical
Escorial in 1940, all the while keeping control of the state’s press and propa-
ganda apparatus.
The Falange Liberal’s romance with the Franco regime was short-​lived,
though. Serrano Suñer was forced to resign as early as 1940, and by 1945
control over the press and propaganda had been transferred to the Opus
Dei Catholic faction, with fascist ceremony and rhetoric being preserved by
the regime only as lip service to the ideals of José Antonio Primo de Rivera.
Some liberal falangists then progressively detached themselves from
Francoism, becoming more critical of the regime, among them Emiliano
Aguado, José Luis Aranguren, and most conspicuously Dionisio Ridruejo,
who famously ended up leaving Spain. This detachment involved reinter-
preting and reshaping the relationship between the Falange and the Franco
regime between the Civil War and 1945 so as to present the Falange Liberal
under a new light. The Falange (thus argued the newly self-​described liberal
falangists) had never shared with early Franco governments the desire to
annihilate and send the enemies of Francoism and their intellectual con-
tributions into oblivion; rather, in the turmoil and confusion of the early
1940s, they had always attempted to make sure that the diverse points of
view and strands of Spanish intellectual life, including liberalism, were well
represented and heard, at least in publications such as Escorial.10 As early as
1952, Ridruejo included himself and other members of the Falange on the
side of the comprensivos (the comprehensive), as opposed to the excluyentes
(the exclusive), by which Ridruejo referred to the Catholic–​Opus Dei faction
led by Rafael Calvo Serer; the latter group, according to Ridruejo, worked
to “exclude” other Spaniards, and the former tried to “convert, convince,
integrate, and redeem other Spaniards,” including those who had differing
political opinions, such as the exiles.11 Ridruejo’s words themselves, how-
ever, leave little doubt that a focus on inclusion was not informed by true
liberal concerns, but rather by fascist ideals of “stripping one’s adversary of
any valid points he might have or have had by appropriating such points for
oneself,” in Ridruejo’s own words.12 Nevertheless, with the Catholic excluy-
entes now in control of press and propaganda and with memories of the
Francoist repression of the early 1940s still fresh, Ridruejo succeeded in
portraying the comprensivos as a sort of internal dissidence throughout the
regime, from its very beginnings during the Civil War—​a portrayal that
greatly informed perceptions of the Falange Liberal in late Francoism and
beyond.13
Sopeña seemed happy to describe himself as a member of the Falange
Liberal and claimed that he was the “baby brother” of Laín Entralgo, Tovar,

R e v i e w i n g C o n t e m p or a r y   M u s i c   [ 45 ]
46

Ridruejo, and other falangist intellectuals.14 Indeed, unlike most other lib-
eral falangists, Sopeña did not start his career during the Civil War, but
had to wait until the Franco regime was established, not only because he
was seven to ten years younger than the others, but because he perceived
his own intellectual training as somewhat lacking in comparison with the
rest; the others

had already graduated from university when the war started, they were in the
prime of life, they knew Europe, while I was a frustrated musician and pianist,
and still a student …, and still a bit of an adolescent, because I was a book-
worm, because my family was very modest …, because I  was too much of a
romantic.15

There are other significant components that merit attention in Sopeña’s

self-​portrait as a member of the Falange Liberal. The most crucial is per-
haps his admiration of Salazar and other musicians ostracized in early
Francoism, such as Bartolomé Pérez Casas, which he cited as proof that he
shared the Falange Liberal’s concern to make sure that prominent intel-
lectuals who did not support the Franco regime but were nevertheless of
excellent caliber were not excluded from construction of the Nuevo Estado.16
Sopeña himself repeatedly named Salazar as a model and an inspiration
both for himself and for Spanish music critics more generally.17 It is true
that he did so mostly from the 1950s onward and that he made very few
references to Salazar during the 1940s, a time in which memories of the
Second Republic Civil War were still fresh and exiles were rarely mentioned
by name, whether to criticize or to praise them. Nevertheless, Sopeña’s
similarities with Salazar did not go unnoticed even in the early years of the
regime: on the subject of Sopeña’s and Salazar’s preference for French over
German music, Julio Gómez tellingly complained in a letter to his friend,
José Subirá: “You already know by heart all the commonplaces of the little
Parisian musical games:  everything German, or related to Germany, is a
bore… . Alas! We have not moved on yet—​but those who have remained
with us are even worse than those who have left.”18
Consonant with Sopeña’s self-​identification with the Falange Liberal,
in his memoirs he drew on his admiration for Salazar and other exiles to
portray himself and the other liberal falangists as internal dissidents even
during the very first years of the Franco regime. Indeed, Sopeña claimed
that, throughout the Franco regime, his career had been fraught with dif-
ficulties because he was “too liberal” and because he had always strived
to “defend the intellectuals.”19 He portrayed the Falange Liberal, led by
Serrano Suñer, as single-​handedly trying to keep the Spanish intellectual

[ 46 ]  Music Criticism and Music Critics in Early Francoist Spain

  47

tradition alive during the first years of the regime, driven by “the pleasure
of fighting against the most stubborn propagandistas” and, more generally,
against the “fastidious cultural indigence of the powers-​that-​be,”20 without
describing precisely what kind of difficulties he and his Falange Liberal col-
leagues had faced.
Sopeña’s portrayal of his early career, and of the Falange Liberal more
generally, as a struggle against a regime stubbornly set on intellectual
mediocrity is difficult to reconcile, not only with the Falange Liberal’s
hegemony on press and propaganda during the years 1938–​1945, but also
with Sopeña’s meteoric rise during these years. Indeed, apart from his
appointments at Arriba and the Comisaría de Música, which gave him the
opportunity to take part in a number of high-​profile international events
with propaganda and diplomatic aims,21 shortly after the start of his career
he was writing for some of the most visible and prestigious music and arts
periodicals, and published several single-​authored books, including biogra-
phies of Turina and Rodrigo. It becomes even more puzzling if we consider
that, unlike Ridruejo, Aranguren, and other liberal falangists, Sopeña was
never ostracized in the later stages of the Franco regime. Having been one
of the few music critics to repeatedly argue that music should have a place
at Spanish universities, or that Spanish conservatoires should at the least
provide universitylike training in music,22 and having taught extracurric-
ular courses in music at the universities of Salamanca and Madrid,23 he
was appointed director of the Conservatorio de Madrid from 1951 to 1956.
Additionally, he was elected as a member of the Academia de Bellas Artes
de San Fernando in 1958, he was comisario de música from 1971 and 1972,
and after the Franco regime came to an end he was director of the Museo
del Prado from 1981 to 1983—​all the while advancing his career as a music
critic and a very prolific writer of books on music.
There is a crucial difference, however, with Ridruejo and others: Sopeña
detached itself from the Falange Liberal at a relatively early stage and was
probably not too affected by its later demise. Crucially, he left Madrid and
his appointment at the Comisaría de Música in October 1943 to train as a
priest at the Vitoria seminary, in the Basque Country, just as the Falange
Liberal was starting to decline.24 He also left his staff post as music critic
at Arriba, although he still contributed occasionally to it and other publi-
cations. Thus, when ordained as a priest in 1946, he was able go back to
Madrid and take on again a more active role in Spanish musical life with
his prestige intact.
Considering Sopeña as a member of the Falange Liberal, and one who
identified as such even after the Falange Liberal was dismantled, crucially
helps understand several aspects of his career as a music critic during the

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1940s. Clearly, he was interested not only in reviving the past, but also in
shaping the future of the Nuevo Estado. Among music critics writing in the
1940s, he was the only one who engaged with contemporary music (from
Stravinsky to Messiaen, and from Falla to Rodrigo) systematically, beyond
the opportunities for doing so provided by his staff music critic routine. He
was also the only one to constantly ask himself how Spanish and foreign
models could be successfully applied in order to create music that was truly
Spanish but also new; that is, Sopeña did not simply long for the avant-​
garde to be swept away and for the new order to be restored, as Turina
did, but instead sought to adapt some of the elements brought over by the
avant-​garde to Spanish music, so long as they could be suitably national.
In this regard, whereas other critics, particularly those writing daily for
newspapers, sometimes appeared overwhelmed by the task of giving unre-
lentingly positive reviews to whatever was happening in Madrid and as a
consequence often did not reflect on where it was that such developments
were taking Spanish music, Sopeña never quite lost sight of the big picture
and did not hesitate to turn some of those events into milestones of the
rebirth of Spanish music under Franco. He clearly thought that he was not
just writing music criticism, but writing music history. Indeed, in writing
in his memoir that “When I see our ‘official’ musicologists who are unable
to write true history from the archives, I am almost glad that I did not fall
into the Roman nets of Anglès,”25 he seemed to imply that he was writing
true history by recording contemporary events for posterity. Sopeña’s dis-
dain for Spanish musicology, which had typically focused on Spanish music
mostly from the Middle Ages to the Baroque Era and totally neglected con-
temporary music, was another trait he shared with Salazar, who, during
the 1920s and 1930s, had expressed similar reservations about Spanish
musicology and those he had scornfully labeled as “the wise men of the
archives.”26

REWRITING RODRIGO AND FALLA

A prominent example of Sopeña writing history as it unfolded before his

eyes—​or rather, transforming an event into music history shortly after it
happened—​was the first Madrid performance of the Concierto de Aranjuez.
It is true that the concert was touted as a significant event by several of the
reviewing critics it was, after all, a premiere by a relatively unknown, young
composer who could fill the gap that the Grupo de los Ocho had left, and it
was also one of the first public performances of the Orquesta Nacional and
an appearance by its star performer, Regino Sáinz de la Maza, playing one

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  49

of the first concertos ever written for the guitar.27 Nevertheless, few of crit-
ics articulated why exactly they thought the performance would be a mile-
stone in post–​Civil War Spanish music. Most reviews emphasized that the
concerto was not only very solid technically, but also a truthful expression
of Spanishness, borrowing from both low-​brow popular Spanish culture
(of which the guitar was a powerful symbol) and high art traditions such
as Domenico Scarlatti. Nevertheless, they were less specific in articulating
why they thought the concerto was significant for the present and future of
Spanish music.28 Moreover, not everyone regarded the first performance of
the concerto with the same enthusiasm; Otaño himself, in a letter to Falla,
expressed his horror that the work had been compared to Falla’s Noches en
los jardines de España and he felt obliged to argue against these opinions
in a radio broadcast because Rodrigo “is subtle and well-​intentioned, but
his talent is limited.”29 Julio Gómez was also highly critical of the concer-
to’s success and wrote to José Subirá, “The main event [in Madrid musical
life] has been the first performance of Concierto de Aranjuez, by Joaquín
Rodrigo, who has been the object of a pre-​concert promotion and a post-​
concert success which has never been seen in Spain—​not even in the best
days of the Salazar-​Halffter duo.”30
However, the first performance of the Concierto de Aranjuez quickly stuck
as one of the most significant musical events in post–​Civil War Spain,31
with music critics naming it as a milestone. The Concierto was repeatedly
selected as one of the canonic works of Spanish contemporary music, to
be performed in high-​profile music exchanges between Francoist Spain
and other countries: it was included in the program of the third Hispanic-​
German music festival in August 1942 and on the visit of the Orquesta
Nacional and the Comisaría de Música to Lisbon in April 1943. Even in con-
temporary scholarship, the first performance of the Concierto is frequently
named as the first significant milestone in musical life under the Franco
regime.32 Sopeña’s input as a critic, writer, and member of the Comisaría
was crucial in elevating the Concierto de Aranjuez to the status of turning
point; after the work was performed in Madrid, Sopeña strived to portray
it not only as an excellent work worth being part of the Spanish canon, but
also as the exact work that both Spanish and international audiences were
awaiting following the end of the Civil War.
An important part of this process was to make Rodrigo and the Concierto
part of an illustrious, well-​established genealogy in Spanish music; in this,
Sopeña followed Salazar, whose narrative of Spanish music focused on a
few quasi-​heroic figures (Pedrell, Falla, and finally Ernesto Halffter) almost
single-​handedly leading Spanish music.33 Sopeña’s historiographic prem-
ises (history of music as a succession of hero figures) were almost identical

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to Salazar’s, although the names were not exactly the same. For example,
in a talk about Spanish music during the visit of the Comisaría to Lisbon,
Sopeña chose to focus on Falla, Turina, and Rodrigo, crucially placing
Rodrigo beside the two living Spanish composers having the most signifi-
cant international reputations. What Falla, Turina, and Rodrigo shared, in
Sopeña’s opinion, was that their music was intrinsically Spanish, but never
picturesque or provincial; it had a universal appeal because it was based on
feeling and emotion.34 Later that same year, in a retrospective account of
how Spanish music had evolved and progressed in the first four years of
the Franco regime, he portrayed the “generation of musicians … led by
Turina,” who had gathered successes for Spanish music in Europe before
the war, as the direct predecessors of Rodrigo and the Concierto de Aranjuez
in 1940.35 Sopeña thus entirely skipped the Grupo de los Ocho and the
other young composers active during the Second Republic, with the excep-
tion of a passing mention of Ernesto Halffter, who thus lost the “hero”
status he had held in Salazar’s writings.
Nevertheless, Sopeña did not portray Rodrigo simply as a new reincar-
nation of Turina’s and Falla’s ideals, but as a reincarnation that perfectly
befitted modern times. This is the main argument underpinning Sopeña’s
1946 biography of Rodrigo36—​in itself an exceptional book for many rea-
sons. Indeed, rather than a proper academic biography complete with a
scholarly apparatus, the book consists of a few biographical chapters pro-
foundly and self-​admittedly informed by Sopeña’s friendship with Rodrigo,
followed by commentaries of Rodrigo’s works in a language accessible to a
nonspecialist reader, focusing on the aesthetic values on the music rather
than on detailed analytical work. It was also one of the first books to be pub-
lished on a living and still relatively young Spanish composer, as acknowl-
edged by Sopeña himself37; biographies of Falla were published by Pahissa
and Sagardía in 1945 and 1946 respectively, shortly before the composer’s
death, but Falla was by then internationally known and had a long career
behind him. Not surprisingly, in line with Sopeña’s focus on hero figures,
his book on Rodrigo was preceded by a similar book on Turina38 and fol-
lowed, in 1950, by a selection and edition of Falla’s writings.39
A further work in which Sopeña developed at length the notion of
Rodrigo as the composer who had best responded to the needs and wants
of contemporary audiences was his chapter on music composition for Diez
años de música en España. In despite of Sopeña’s self-​confessed aversion to
music historiography, the chapter certainly comes quite close to being an
attempt at writing a proper history of musical composition in the ten years
following the Franco regime. No histories of Spanish music, contemporary
or otherwise, had been published in Spain since Salazar’s 1930 La música

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  51

contemporánea en España40; it is therefore not difficult to imagine that, after

his biographies of Turina and Rodrigo, Sopeña would have intended to
transform his reflections on what he witnessed during the years 1939–​1949
into proper music history. His narrative of Spanish music after the Civil
War in these two works is crucially articulated around a need—​thus pre-
senting the events he narrated as inevitable rather than merely contin-
gent on the historical circumstances41—​to find a central figure for Spanish
music after Falla left the country following the Civil War.42 Sopeña argued
that Falla’s absence meant Spanish music had now no clear reference, and
that the situation was perceived by other composers and audiences as “pro-
visory” and unstable.43
Furthermore, Sopeña argued, neither international nor Spanish music
seemed to have any valid models to offer to make up for Falla’s absence.
Contemporary music seemed to be increasingly alienated from its audi-
ences and even from performers themselves (“I remember,” he wrote, “the
impression of strangeness after listening to [Stravinsky’s] Jeux de Cartes or
his violin concerto”),44 and the only option left to audiences if they wanted
to reconcile themselves with music was to look back at Brahms’s sympho-
nies and Beethoven’s quartets.45 Sopeña acknowledged that some had
hoped that Ernesto Halffter, being Falla’s student and the most prominent
young composer during the 1920s and 1930s, could fill the void left by Falla
in post–​Civil War music. Nevertheless, although he admitted that Halffter
was a fine composer and conductor, Sopeña argued that he had ultimately
not quite risen to the challenge of becoming “the musician of these years”46;
that honor went to Rodrigo instead.47 In the same way Salazar had named
Ernesto Halffter as the leading composer of the young generation, with
members of the Grupo de los Ocho and others occupying a secondary posi-
tion with respect to Halffter,48 Sopeña did not hesitate to name Rodrigo as
the lone leader (“the spotlight towards the new generation”)49 among the
Spanish composers, young or not, active during the 1940s.50 Perhaps even
more crucially, Sopeña regarded Rodrigo’s fate as closely interlinked with
his own as a critic, not only because the two men developed a close friend-
ship from 1940 onward,51 but because Sopeña regarded his own career as a
critic as dependent on discovering and elevating a new composer suitable
for the new era he was living in (“There is no significant criticism without a
‘new man’ to be discovered, I told myself since autumn 1939”).52
What had allowed Rodrigo and the Concierto de Aranjuez to inevitably
prevail among other Spanish (and international) composers was, accord-
ing to Sopeña, the fact that Rodrigo had dared to “move away from arti-
ficialness, from weirdness” and to fully bring feeling and emotion back
to music,53 thus giving Spanish audiences “a message suitable to things

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52

they had just sensed,”54 and ensuring an unprecedented success.55 As with

Turina’s articles, it is not difficult to imagine that Sopeña was directing his
criticism toward the Grupo de los Ocho, some of whose members were par-
ticularly drawn to neoclassicism and specifically its ironic, antisentimen-
tal aspects.56 For Sopeña, however, it was also of paramount importance
to underline that Rodrigo did not simply represent a return to musical
nationalism or to Spanish tradition; Sopeña was adamant that there was
no way back and that the “new worlds of sound conquered in the twentieth
century” should be absolutely preserved, though this should be necessarily
accompanied by “tenderness” and by “a compulsory and personal Spanish
accent.”57
Sopeña’s focus on feeling, emotion, and sincerity (as opposed to dehu-
manization) did not apply to the Concierto de Aranjuez only; Sopeña made
use of similar categories to turn the 1941 homage to Falla, and more spe-
cifically the semistaged performance of the Retablo, into a milestone in
Spanish music history post Civil War. As with the first performance of the
Concierto de Aranjuez, the concert-​homage to Falla quickly earned its place
in the narrative of recovery of Spanish music following the war.58 As was
the case with the Concierto, enthusiasm was not uniform originally among
reviewers, though; Rodrigo, for example, thanked the Comisaría for having
organized the concert, but admitted that it would be “foolish” to regard the
concert as proof that Spanish concert life had totally recovered, although
he admitted that “we are certainly on our way to do so, and we can now see
the possibilities and the ways to achieve this.”59 Again, Sopeña’s contribu-
tion was not limited to praising the event and thanking the Comisaría; he
also seized the opportunity to emphasize the values of feeling and emotion
he saw in the Retablo. With this, he again framed the Franco regime as a
new era for Spanish music in which the postulates of the Grupo de los Ocho
were replaced by humanity.
In the 1920s the Retablo, together with Falla’s harpsichord concerto, was
the object of much admiration among Salazar, the Grupo de los Ocho, and
other composers because Falla, in turning from Andalusia to Castille for
musical inspiration, had proved that he could indeed be the model for a
truly Spanish model for their music without sentimentality and clichés.60
Rodrigo himself seemed to be close to the Grupo de los Ocho in his review
of the Falla concert; he focused on the Castilian nature of the Retablo and
considered Falla’s neoclassical castellanismo as superior to his andalucismo,
complaining even that El sombrero de tres picos (a conspicuously andalucista
work) had been included in the program, because “it is perfectly useless
and even harmful, even though it was a good performance.”61 Rodrigo’s dis-
cussion of castellanismo was also deeply indebted to the thesis of Spanish

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  53

musical mysticism first developed by the French Hispanist Henri Collet in

1913,62 which further allowed Rodrigo to establish a connection between
Falla and other Spanish composers allegedly influenced by mysticism, such
as Tomás Luis de Victoria.
Sopeña agreed with Rodrigo—​and with the Grupo de los Ocho—​in pre-
ferring castellanismo to andalucismo. Nevertheless, Sopeña was not drawn
to the neoclassical austerity of castellanismo, as the Grupo de los Ocho had
been. Nor was he interested in castellanismo as a way of simply embracing
the Spanish past, but rather of embracing it with a particular purpose: to
drive away dehumanization of art and music and bring back feeling and
emotion, thus inaugurating a new stage of Spanish modern music. In a way,
what Sopeña was doing was reclaiming Falla from the Grupo de los Ocho.
Or, as Sopeña put it in his commentary of the genesis and initial impact of
the Retablo:

In the years of El retablo de maese Pedro, the idea of music as sentimental pro-
jection was at death’s door. It seemed as if divine grace had fled the world, and
no one was thinking of combining skill with inspiration, of giving themselves
ecstatically to a force coming from no one knows where […]. A genius musician,
Stravinsky, seemed to represent the only plausible approach: objectivity, order,
rigorous formalism, plasticity, rejection of tenderness, a grandiose understand-
ing of music as architecture.63

This was certainly not the last time Sopeña compared Stravinsky to Falla,
with the former composer being the embodiment of coolness, detachment,
dehumanization, and intellectualism, and the second bringing in emotion,
feeling, sincerity, and inspiration with a distinctly Spanish-​Castilian flavor
to modernism. In his talk on Spanish music during his visit to Lisbon in
April 1943, Sopeña argued: “For Falla, music is, above all, emotion, feeling,
and when it is not feeling, it is only an artifice. Stravinsky, on the other
hand, refuses the idea that music can express any kind of feeling and says
it is useless to express emotions or passions.”64 Nevertheless, it is not that
Sopeña disliked or despised Stravinsky, as other Spanish critics did; actu-
ally, he thought that Stravinsky and Falla were together “the two poles of
genius of contemporary music.”65 He also wrote three articles on Stravinsky
for Radio Nacional in 1941 in which he ultimately decided that Stravinsky
was not a suitable model for new music because a composer “must not com-
pose out of purely musical intuition, but rather must take an emotional
state as his starting point.”66 Nevertheless, the articles show Sopeña’s
efforts to engage with Stravinsky’s musical and aesthetic approaches rather
than simply dismiss them. And it was not simply technical skill that Sopeña

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54

appreciated in Stravinsky; whereas, Sopeña argued, the years before the

Civil War had seen an increasing popularity of atonality owing to “left-​
wing politics,” Stravinsky nevertheless remained a point of reference for
all musicians because of his sense of “order and hierarchy.”67 Sopeña also
gave a positive review to Alexandre Tansman’s “controversial” biography of
Stravinsky, because it presented Stravinsky as “an orderly musician and the
composer who brought over the restoration of tradition.”68

THE FASCIST CONNECTION: GIMÉNEZ CABALLERO’S

ARTE Y ESTADO

In the context of an authoritarian regime, and with Sopeña being involved

in a fascist party, at least initially, it may be easy to see his positive com-
ments on Stravinsky’s sense of order and hierarchy as the influence of
political ideology on his music criticism. Nevertheless, the focus on feeling
and emotion as the characteristics that brought Rodrigo and Falla to the
forefront not only of Spanish but also of universal music has conspicuous
fascist roots as well; in 1935, Ernesto Giménez Caballero claimed that con-
temporary art was in dire need of feeling and emotion in his book Arte y
estado, and his ideas on the matter proved highly influential on Sopeña and
other music critics, which will be discussed later, and also on other aspects
of the arts and humanities under the Franco regime.69
Born in 1899 and initially an admirer of Ortega y Gasset, Giménez
Caballero started his writing career in 1923 with a memoir of his years as
a soldier in the Morocco campaigns (Notas marruecas de un soldado), which
reflected his early thinking about Spain’s genio70; later on, he tried his hand
at avant-​garde poetry and in 1927 founded a literary journal with the title
La Gaceta Literaria. His experiments with the avant-​garde stem, in a way,
from his disillusionment with Ortega y Gasset during the 1920s; Giménez
Caballero, by then already a staunch cultural nationalist, had come to
despise Ortega y Gasset’s cosmopolitanism. Although he still agreed with
Ortega y Gasset in considering that contemporary art had alienated the
masses, he argued that the avant-​garde was not to be blamed for it; on
the contrary, he believed that the avant-​garde could help artists reconnect
with the people of their own nation.71 Avant-​garde, however, did not help
Giménez Caballero’s standing as a writer; his poetry collection, Yo, inspector
de alcantarillas (1928), was a commercial failure. However, he soon found a
new way to channel his political activism, after a visit to Italy in 1928 dur-
ing which he met Curzio Malaparte, Filippo Marinetti, and other promi-
nent fascist intellectuals and artists. Giménez Caballero became fascinated

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  55

with Mussolini’s corporations of writers and artists, which, in his opin-

ion, guaranteed that art was not a mere individualistic pursuit but rather
served the interests of the nation; shortly thereafter, in February 1929, he
developed in the pages of La Gaceta the notion of a Spanish fascism.72
Giménez Caballero’s efforts to develop a specifically national fascism
continued in his 1933 with his book La nueva Catolicidad. He described fas-
cism as a movement toward universalism; it was crucial, however, that such
universalism take its roots in regeneration of each country’s own genius,
otherwise it could become mere internationalism or cosmopolitanism.73 In
the same year, he was invited by José Antonio Primo de Rivera to become
one of the founding members of Falange. Giménez Caballero’s career
within the party was not free from difficulties, though; whereas he insisted
that the Falange should be a Spanish version of Italian, and secondarily
German, fascism, other falangists, including Primo de Rivera himself, were
wary of foreign influence. Such disagreements even resulted in Giménez
Caballero being temporarily suspended from membership in the Falange
shortly before the Civil War.74
In La nueva Catolicidad, Giménez Caballero gave art a prominent role in
bringing over the regenerative political solutions that, in his view, Spain was
in need of (“The Poet is the male of politics. And the political activist is his
passive, maternal counterpart, the one who is fertilized and gives birth”75).
Two years later, he published Arte y estado, which focused exclusively on
the role of art in the fascist state.76 With art and the world allegedly being
“unbalanced,”77 Giménez Caballero dedicated an extensive portion of the
book to diagnosing the current problems of art and suggesting solutions.
He argued that contemporary art was plagued by two opposed, but equally
pervasive and detrimental, trends:  liberal art and communist art. The
art of nineteenth-​century “liberal Europe” was “individualistic,” and this
clashed with his desire to appeal to the masses.78 In the twentieth century,
according to Giménez Caballero, liberal had evolved, under the influence of
Judaism and capitalism, into “immediate, surrealist and materialist art”—​
the avant-​garde.79 He was, nevertheless, equally hostile to those art forms
generated by communism (“oriental, Bolshevik” art80), which he considered
“internationalist”—​and, as such, not suited to reflect each nation’s unique
genius81—​and the ultimate dehumanizing art.82
Giménez Caballero argued that both types of art were affected, to differ-
ent extents, by the same three main problems that rendered them unable
to be truly national and, as such, to be filled with feeling and emotion. The
first was mechanization and the increasing importance of the machine over
human intervention (in music, for example, player pianos, saxophones,
radios, gramophones).83 This fit well with his mistrust of technological

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progress more generally: in Genio de España, he had already warned about

how technology rendered traditional social units and the individual him-
self more uniform, thus eroding the sense of national genius or national
identity that had to be rekindled in order for national regeneration and
rebirth to happen (“They wanted to substitute the Medieval guilds with
the Machine. And they wanted … to provide the surprised masses with a
humanist, liberal culture with no scope other than to make them believe in
their own indefinite and hypothetical perfection”).84
Elitism and pure art was the second main problem affecting contempo-
rary art, in the East and the West85; this happened, allegedly, because art-
ists had abandoned the excesses of romanticism and eliminated all traces of
feeling and emotion from their art.86 It is not difficult to see that Giménez
Caballero was following his former mentor, Ortega y Gasset, here. But the
focus on feeling and emotion has parallels in other fascist movements,
with Italian, and especially German, fascism reacting against rationality as
well—​as the legacy of the Enlightenment and the French revolution—​and
emphasizing irrationality and sheer emotion instead.87 The third problem
named by Giménez Caballero was the absence of a market for such dehu-
manized artistic products, which forced the various national governments
to subsidize art that was not able to connect with their people anymore.88
Giménez Caballero’s solutions for the problems of art were fully conso-
nant with his understanding of fascism as a movement toward universal-
ism solidly rooted in regeneration of a country’s own genius.89 Art itself,
he argued, necessarily had to transcend the boundaries of the individual;
it had to push the person toward abandoning his individuality, “becoming
fatherland,” and ultimately achieving “the highest eternal state: the peace
and contemplation of God.”90 In music, he further maintained, this would
involve abandoning mechanization and technology, going back to “the
most elementary: the singer of folk songs.” This would make it possible for
Spain to achieve the ultimate aim of art: contemplation of God.91

DEVELOPING A THEORY OF MODERNIST MUSIC

Focus on feeling and emotion as the way to redeem art was already a promi-
nent element in Sopeña’s reviews of Concierto de Aranjuez and El retablo de
maese Pedro, as has been discussed earlier in this chapter. Nevertheless, it
was only after he came back from the Vitoria Seminary that we find him
consistently applying Giménez Caballero’s ideals to his criticism of con-
temporary music, and more specifically his discussion of how authentically
Spanish modern music should be; he did so in a series of articles published

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  57

in Arbor starting 1947.92 The Arbor articles synthesized and systematized

some of the ideas on modern music he had developed in previous years as
staff music critic for Arriba and as a writer for other publications; they are
also a prelude to his undertaking, in the 1950s, of roles that allowed him a
more active and influential contribution to shaping Spanish contemporary
music, particularly the directorship of the Conservatorio de Madrid and
the role of coordinator of the section for contemporary music within the
Instituto Español de Musicología, both from 1951 onward.93
That Sopeña, a former liberal falangist, chose to publish some of his
major articles in Arbor may raise some questions. Indeed, Arbor, which
included articles in various humanities, arts, and sciences for an academic
but not necessarily specialist audience, was published under the auspices of
the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas. The CSIC, in turn, was
founded by the Franco regime in 1939 to promote scientific research—​with
a distinctly Spanish and Catholic flavor—​in all areas. From its origins, the
CSIC was under the control of the propagandistas and the Opus Dei, who
did not necessarily get along well with the Falange; the struggle between
both factions was indeed rather intense around the years in which Sopeña
published his three articles.94 There are several explanations, however, for
why Sopeña chose to go to a propagandista rather than Falange publication.
The reasons may in part have been eminently practical: by 1947, some the
Falange-​controlled periodicals and magazines that could have been suit-
able outlets for his articles were no longer operative. Vértice ceased publica-
tion in 1944, Radio Nacional in 1945; Arriba, being a daily newspaper, and
with Antonio Fernández-​Cid having replaced Sopeña as staff music critic,
was probably more apt for concert reviews than for extended articles, and
Sopeña himself believed that musical life in Madrid was too monotonous
to “build an entire doctrinal body upon it.”95 Publishing in Arbor therefore
made sense professionally, besides helping him reestablish his career away
from the Falange: one of Sopeña’s long-​term ambitions was to bring music
into the current intellectual debate of early Francoist Spain by sharing a
space with experts in other humanities disciplines.96 Arbor, being a multi-
disciplinary periodical, gave him the opportunity to do this.
Nevertheless, the Falange still had outlets where Sopeña could have pub-
lished his work; for example, Escorial, the Falange Liberal’s flagship journal,
did not cease publication until 1950, and Sopeña had published two arti-
cles there in 1941.97 But it is likely that, by the time he came back from the
Vitoria seminary, he wished to detach himself from a declining Falange and
thus chose to write for Arbor instead. Nevertheless, although still heavily
reminiscent of Giménez Caballero’s Arte y estado, other elements praised by
Sopeña, such as the return to the past and the focus on traditional music,

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could be welcomed by a generally conservative, pro-​Franco audience with-

out necessarily raising suspicions of falangism.
Indeed, it is worth noting that, despite the strong similarities between
his thinking and Giménez Caballero’s, Sopeña did not once name Giménez
Caballero in his Arbor article series. With many former liberal falangists
becoming ostracized in the late 1940s, this was probably to be expected;
Giménez Caballero’s career was itself in decline by the mid-​to-​late 1940s.98
It may also seem rather surprising at first sight that, in the first of the three
Arbor articles, Sopeña chose to present himself as a follower and successor
of Salazar, at a time in which the exiles were still practically absent from
musical life in Spain and were hardly ever named in the press—​although
Sopeña’s mention of Salazar was lukewarm enough that it could hardly
be mistaken for a defense of the exiles or a claim to bring them back into
Spain. Salazar, claimed Sopeña, had experienced the Second World War
and its consequences for art and music from far away; Salazar could there-
fore not understand contemporary music.99 Sopeña thus acknowledged
that Salazar had been the only Spanish critic to address new music sys-
tematically before the Civil War, but at the same time he was implicitly
stripping Salazar—​and, by definition, all of the Second Republic musical
establishment—​of his old, supposedly well-​earned legitimacy to comment
on contemporary music and to attract attention to himself as Salazar’s suc-
cessor in providing a well-​informed, thorough assessment of contempo-
rary music and its impact on Spain.
Nevertheless, even if Sopeña is comparable to Salazar in that both con-
sistently addressed and judged new music and their direction in Spain, the
content of Sopeña’s articles is more reminiscent of the views of Giménez
Caballero than of Salazar. Sopeña claimed that, by the mid-​1930s, mecha-
nization and technological progress in music (“angry, determined, domi-
nating techniques, shaped in the course of years of morbid fascination with
novelty”) had reached the point of saturation; composers started to look
for “an authentic channel for sincerity” instead.100 In doing so, some young
composers had mistakenly gone back to “a frank and often blunt neo-​
romanticism” that Sopeña considered too clichéd and stereotyped to be able
to express true feeling.101 Stravinsky and Schoenberg, although acknowl-
edged by Sopeña as the two most significant innovators following the First
World War, were similarly unsuitable as models for new music because both
of them had purposefully avoided emotion.102 Instead, Sopeña suggested
that nationalism could be just what music needed to solve its most pressing
problem—​in the same way that Giménez Caballero thought art should go
back to its national essence in order to be reinvigorated with emotion and
feeling, and become universal. In this respect, Sopeña named Bartók along

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  59

with Falla, whose Retablo Sopeña described as “boldness subjected to the

dimensions of incandescent and pure humanity.”103 Sopeña warned that no
younger composer had yet become the model others needed; nevertheless
he saw some rays of hope, particularly in France: the “collective spirit” of
French composers, which had allowed them to get away from pure music
(again, reminiscent of Giménez Caballero’s admiration for Italian corpora-
tions of writers and artists), and Messiaen’s focus on “singing for God” as a
way to bring back humanity.104
The second of Sopeña’s articles focused on musical nationalism as the
way forward for contemporary music. Following Giménez Caballero’s res-
ervations about nineteenth-​century art, he was careful to make a distinc-
tion between “Romantic nationalism” (Smetana, Dvořák, Liszt, Grieg,
some of Sibelius), which audiences liked not because of “racial criteria” but
rather because they were based on easily recognizable “romantic patterns,”
and “essential” nationalism (exemplified by Bartók and Falla). According
to Sopeña, it was only the latter, which derived from “folklore laboratory
work,” that could bring sincerity back into music and thus help compos-
ers attract an audience.105 He again named Falla’s Retablo as the work that
had brought emotion back to Spanish music in the late 1920s, a time when
Spanish audiences were starting to become disappointed with dehumani-
zation and were already “receptive to the quest for universality, open to a
brand of Spanish music sincerely made to the measure of man.” After the
Civil War, the Retablo, according to Sopeña, had definitely brought emotion
back into Spanish music, not only influencing Rodrigo but also redeeming
Ernesto Halffter, whose work had “matured … thanks to a joyful, carefree
and heart-​felt nationalism”106—​once more, a likely reference to Halffter’s
initial forays into the avant-​garde, from which he had then reportedly been
redeemed by embracing feeling and emotion again. Sopeña’s third article
again explored the issue of feeling and emotion in the international land-
scape, concluding that postromanticism, which relied on trite formulae
that did not allow achievement of sincerity, had been even worse than neo-
classicism, which was elitist and did not have a “foundation in the com-
munity, roots in a complete universe.”107 Sopeña again suggested Messiaen
and folklore as potential inspirations to compose music that was a reflec-
tion of the community while elevating the individual toward God.108

OTHER CRITICS ON MODERNIST MUSIC

Sopeña’s steady commitment to discussing and reviewing contemporary

music certainly singles him out from the other critics writing in early

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Francoism. The 1940s in Spanish music have often been portrayed as a reac-
tion against modernism and the avant-​garde,109 and in general terms there
was a return to more traditional ways of understanding music. The 1940s
saw a new golden age for composers of the older generation who practiced
various brands of nationalism (Turina, Gómez, del Campo, Benito García
de la Parra) and for younger composers who were, again, closer to Rodrigo
or andalucista Falla then they were to Stravinsky, Schoenberg, or the Grupo
de los Ocho (among that younger set, José Moreno Gans, Jesús García
Leoz, Ángel Martín Pompey, José Muñoz Molleda). Similarly, a majority of
critics were much less interested in, and much more critical of, modernist
styles of music than Sopeña was.
Nevertheless, music critics other than Sopeña writing under Francoism
did not share a uniformly negative attitude toward modernism, or to
what 1940s critics and music historians usually labeled música moderna
(modern) or contemporánea (contemporary),110 which, broadly speaking,
included Debussy, Richard Strauss, Schoenberg, Falla, Stravinsky, Ravel,
and Dukas.111 Most of the critics, coming from differing backgrounds and
generations, found themselves sympathizing with some of these compos-
ers more than with others, which makes it difficult to uniformly char-
acterize the attitude of Spanish music critics of early Francoism toward
modernism. A further issue is that critics were not always knowledgeable
of the music they were writing about. This was true especially of the early
1940s, with the Second World War and Franco’s autarquía making it diffi-
cult for scores to be circulated and for new works to be performed in Spain.
But in some cases it extended beyond these early years; Shostakovich was
mentioned several times in the Spanish press between 1946 and 1948 as
an example of the Soviet Union’s rigid control of music, thus providing
an opportunity to implicitly make the Franco regime appear more liberal
by comparison, though most critics openly admitted they did not know
Shostakovich’s works.112 This, however, did not prevent some of them from
passing negative judgment on the Russian’s music113 or his submissive atti-
tude and reluctance to defend his artistic autonomy.114
In other respects, however, as time moved on critics became familiar
with a wider range of music and sometimes their opinions changed as a
result; they also changed as a result of having moved on to a climate in
which autarquía and self-​sufficiency were no longer a badge of national
pride and in which some of the most conspicuous traits of Civil War and
early Francoism discourse (open racism and anti-​Semitism, and a focus
on physical annihilation of Spain’s enemies) were slowly becoming anach-
ronistic. An illustrative example was, from 1943 onward, a certain surge
of interest in British contemporary music, as Spain tried to detach itself

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  61

from the Axis and, later on, join the Western Bloc. British orchestral con-
temporary music was indeed a rarity in Madrid programs before 1945,115
but from 1946 on several works by Britten were performed in Madrid
for the first time (Variations on a Theme by Frank Bridge, Simple Symphony,
Sarabande, Passacaglia), with music critics reacting positively and even
enthusiastically.116
Giménez Caballero’s ideas on art were certainly an important, although
not the only, influence on a number of critics, particularly in writings
published during the Civil War or shortly thereafter—​although, unlike in
Sopeña, such influences were not absorbed consistently so as to formulate a
cohesive approach to modernist music. For example, at the beginning of the
Civil War, Manuel Quesada agreed with Giménez Caballero in considering the
avant-​garde as the product of both an elitist approach brought over by
the capitalist economy (“the divorce between producers and consumers … ,
the cause of which is primarily the materialistic politics of the years after the
First World War”) and the influence of Marxism “and its desire to destroy
everything which means spirituality and culture, faith and devotion to the
splendor of the Fatherland.” The ultimate cause of both capitalism and
Marxism was, in Quesada’s opinion, Judaism.117 Interestingly, among those
composers who had managed to escape the avant-​garde and were instead
contributing to the momentum of Spanish music, Quesada named Falla,
Turina, Jesús Guridi, and del Campo—​but also Ernesto Halffter, who was
closer to the elitist, avant-​garde approach Quesada so despised.
Rodrigo’s reservations about the radio and its harmful role in the devel-
opment and dissemination of the avant-​garde before the Civil War show a
similar anticapitalistic, anti-​industrial focus. He argued that the radio “fal-
sified harmonic function, adulterated melodic progression and produced
moody and meaningless music,” in international modernism “and its sequel
in Spain.”118 This, however, should not be read as proof that Francoist music
critics, or even Rodrigo himself, were staunch luddites: Rodrigo acknowl-
edged the important role radio could play in disseminating Spanish
music,119 which is fully consonant with the importance paid to radio as a
propaganda tool in early Francoism.120 However, this being a mere months
after the end of the war and with some of the members of the Grupo de
los Ocho having been actively involved in radio programming (Bacarisse,
Fernando Remacha), it makes sense to read Rodrigo’s remark as a rebut-
tal against those who were highly visible when he was starting his career
rather than as a full-​fledged antitechnological stance.
But it was perhaps Giménez Caballero’s focus on emotion, feeling, and
even the irrational that was his most influential legacy on Spanish critics
reviewing modernist works. Conrado del Campo claimed in an interview

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that no one should feel ashamed “to feel emotion under the charm of a
pure melody dressed with simple clothes” and confessed that he could not
understand “those who think that music should not be a reflection of the
most intimate feelings of the artist who writes it,” by which he was likely
referring to the self-​confessed attempts at avoiding sentimentalism of
the Grupo de los Ocho (some of whom, interestingly enough, had stud-
ied under del Campo at the Conservatorio de Madrid). Del Campo instead
advocated going back to a “more sincere, emotional and disinterested way
of thinking about musical problems.”121 In a similar attack on the Grupo’s
and Salazar’s influence on music policies during the Second Republic,
P.  Yáñez wrote shortly after the war that “Because of those members of
society who should direct and educate the audiences’ taste, the audiences
seem to increasingly veer towards easy and burlesque music.” He then went
on to deplore how feeling and humanity were nowhere to be found in mod-
ern art, and that “some prove a certain kind of silly pride when they abstain
themselves from the great human emotions contained by works such as
Franck’s or Beethoven’s.”122
This did not mean, however, that emotion, feeling, sincerity, or lyricism
could not be injected into works that otherwise exhibited the usual stylistic
features of modernism, thus rendering it more acceptable and even desir-
able; many critics did not have an issue with specific musical techniques
such as dissonance, polytonality, or atonality, but rather with the use of
such elements to (it was feared) alienate audiences and avoid expressing any
kind of emotional content. On the occasion of the first performance of the
Portuguese composer Fernando Lopes-​Graça’s piano concerto in Madrid,
de las Heras could not hide his bewilderment in writing that the work’s
construction was “bizarre, polytonal,” but it was ultimately redeemed by
its “sincerity” and its “hunger for truth,” which Lopes-​Graça had suppos-
edly achieved by taking inspiration from two masterpieces of Spanish mod-
ernism:  the asceticism and synthetic language of Falla’s Retablo and the
popular cheerfulness of Ernesto Halffter’s Rapsodia portuguesa.123 Similarly,
Sáinz de la Maza enthusiastically wrote about a number of contemporary
Chilean works performed in 1947 in Madrid124 because, “in spite of the
advanced language in which they are written, they are filled with a rough
and ardent lyricism.”125
It is no coincidence, however, that both de las Heras and Sáinz de la
Maza were referring to Iberian and Ibero-​American music respectively,
since feeling and emotion were often understood as intrinsically Iberian,
Mediterranean, or Latin characteristics. This made the avant-​garde trends
of the 1920s and 1930s even more harmful; they were not only negative for
music itself, but also profoundly anti-​Spanish and contrary to perceived

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  63

national values. Antonio de las Heras described Stravinsky’s neoclassi-

cism as “glittering fireworks” that had attracted the attention of Spanish
composers and thus destroyed the “racial elements” that, in de las Heras’s
opinion, should be the foundation of Spanish music. This negative influ-
ence had disappeared, it was said, only after the Civil War.126 Composer
José Forns, who also taught aesthetics of music at the Conservatorio de
Madrid, praised the Italian composers of the Generazione dell’Ottanta
(Casella, Respighi, Pizzetti) because they were respectful in their revisiting
of the old Italian masters, injecting “vitality and human passion” in every
rendition and fully following “ethnic characteristics” such as chiaroscuro
and contrast in the musical phrases to avoid “intellectualism,” which Forns
regarded as a negative trait in music.127
Concerns about feeling and emotion also informed responses to
Schoenberg and Stravinsky, possibly the two most contested and contro-
versial modernist composers in early Francoism. Before the Civil War, the
music of Schoenberg was certainly not universally embraced by music crit-
ics, not even those most firmly committed to modernism; it is true that
Roberto Gerhard brought the music of the Second Viennese School, and
even some of its members, to Barcelona, but responses there were mixed,128
and Salazar never took Schoenberg, or his students such as Gerhard, too
seriously.129 But at least some publications, even if not fully enthusiastic
about Schoenberg’s ideas, discussed his project as the continuation of
the Austro-​Germanic tradition and hypothesized that, in the future, his
work could become orthodoxy, in the same way Beethoven’s and Wagner’s
had.130 Salazar, as co-​editor of Nuestra Música, which he founded in Mexico
together with other Republican exiles, did commission and print an article
by Schoenberg as part of a series in which composers wrote about their own
aesthetics.131 In Francoist Spain, by contrast, the music of Schoenberg had
all but disappeared from concert programs, mentions in music criticism
were scarce and dismissive,132 and even the few critics who showed some
familiarity with Schoenberg’s techniques and approach to music, such as
Monsalvatge and Forns, acknowledged his merit in sketching and develop-
ing new channels for expression but were severe in judging the outcomes.
Montsalvatge admitted that Schoenberg could be deemed “a genius” due
to his perseverance, but when it came to the music, he judged it as “intel-
lectual, cold, deprived of emotion”133; Forns highlighted the “seriousness”
of his musical constructions but doubted that Schoenberg’s theories could
be a fruitful influence on younger composers.134
Unlike Schoenberg, Stravinsky was generally considered a composer at
least worth engaging with, and he was indeed the living non-​Spanish com-
poser who appeared most frequently in Spanish concert programs:  Jeux

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de Cartes, Petrouchka, The Firebird, the Violin Concerto, and L’Histoire du Soldat
were all performed by Madrid orchestras during the 1940s, and certainly
Spanish critics knew Stravinsky’s works better than they knew Schoenberg’s or
Shostakovich’s. He enjoyed, at least on some level, the sympathy of the regime;
at the beginning of the Civil War, he joined a group of French intellectuals in
signing a manifesto in support of Franco,135 and the Spanish government recip-
rocated by naming him an honorary member of the Academia de Bellas Artes
de San Fernando. The criticism he received from the Soviet Union also earned
him some praise, and he certainly had passionate supporters among Spanish
music critics. Turina, in his inaugural speech at the Academia in 1940, praised
Stravinsky because, like Bach and Beethoven, he had never totally abandoned
tonality and at the same time introduced important innovations in musical
form; Schoenberg, in contrast, had abandoned tonality, thus dehumanizing his
music, but kept traditional musical forms as “old skeletons.”136 Montsalvatge
appreciated Stravinsky’s connection to “the milestones of Western civiliza-
tion,” with his music being intrinsically anti-​communist and Christian.137
For other critics, however, Stravinsky still represented the main pillar
in dehumanization of music, or, as put by Sáinz de la Maza in his review
of L’Histoire du soldat, the “caricature-​like, brutal way of expression which
debases musical language with the most insolent nonchalance and the most
premeditated aggressiveness.”138 Sáinz de la Maza argued that Stravinsky
was to be blamed for introducing such ways of understanding music in
Spain and leading Spanish composers to write “nonsense” during the 1920s
and 1930s.139 Sopeña likely played a significant role in disseminating the
notion of Stravinsky as a symbol of dehumanization, and his comparison
of Falla and Stravinsky as to their different approaches to emotion and
feeling was repeatedly reused by several writers on music; for del Campo,
Stravinsky was intrinsically “sad,” which Falla, with his focus on feeling and
emotion, was not.140 Rafael Sánchez Mazas, a well-​known falangist writer
who occasionally wrote on music as well, found “elements of destruction,
revolution and even of fury and cruelty” in Stravinsky’s music; these ele-
ments, he stated, were nowhere to be found in Falla.141

SOPEÑA: THE MUSIC CRITIC OF EARLY FRANCOISM?

Sopeña’s influence in shaping understandings of Spanish music did go

beyond the Stravinsky-​Falla dichotomy some of his contemporaries repro-
duced, or beyond his portrayal of Rodrigo as the composer Spanish audi-
ences were waiting for after the Civil War. Indeed, as one of the few writers

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  65

on Spanish contemporary music during the 1940s and through the remain-
der of the Franco regime, Sopeña has been and still is extensively quoted
as a secondary source in bibliographies of Spanish music of the twentieth
century and even the nineteenth century.142 He can therefore be considered
successful in his attempt at becoming Salazar’s successor and acting not only
as a reviewer of musical life under Francoism, but also as a historian who
selected, recorded, and filled with meaning for posterity those composers,
works, and events he considered worthy of being part of the Spanish canon.
It is more doubtful, however, that he was successful in promoting his
specific brand of Spanish modernism among young composers and other
critics; for example, when Messiaen visited Madrid and Barcelona for the
first time in 1949, Sopeña was highly enthusiastic of his music as a poten-
tial model for Spanish composers, but other critics were far more skeptic,
and it cannot be said that Messiaen exerted a transforming influence on
Spanish composers.143 And although Sopeña, during his tenure as direc-
tor of the Conservatorio de Madrid, befriended and mentored a number
of young composers who would then go on to become some of the main
names of the Spanish avant-​garde from the late 1950s, such as Cristóbal
Halffter, these young composers did not draw mainly on nationalism
and religious inspiration but rather on the European post-​1945 avant-​
garde, and ultimately on Webern’s legacy, which Sopeña would probably
have regarded as dehumanized. 144 In contrast, the Spanish avant-​garde,
despite its aspirations to universalism, had a very clear commitment
to renovating Spanish music qua Spanish music, in the same way as
Sopeña had; much importance was placed by avant-​garde composers
on absorbing the various international avant-​garde trends as a way of
helping Spanish music evolve and develop, and reach a standard wor-
thy of a civilized country.145 And although the historiography of Spanish
twentieth-​century music—​some of it written by avant-​garde composers
themselves—​has tended to regard the avant-​garde as ubiquitous from
the late 1950s onward,146 it cannot be forgotten that Sopeña’s protégé,
Joaquín Rodrigo, did manage to sustain a successful career during the
later decades of Francoism while essentially remaining loyal to the style
and postulates of the Concierto de Aranjuez, which Sopeña so praised in
his writings. It can be argued that the not-​always-​straightforward suc-
cess and influence of Sopeña’s legacy under Francoism mirrors, in a way,
the Falange’s. Sopeña was not able to lead renovation of Spanish music
according to his own postulates, in the same way as the Falange’s hopes of
national rebirth were shattered by the mid-​1940s147; nevertheless, both the
Falange and Sopeña managed to adapt and survive through the remaining

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decades of the Franco regime, and to reshape some of their discourse so

that it became a significant milestone of the regime.
One reason Sopeña was able to remain influential was the broader appeal
some elements of his theory of modernist music could have for other fac-
tions of the regime that were not necessarily fascist. Indeed, how Sopeña
integrated traditional music and Spanish church music into his discourse
on modernist music—​and the fact that such a discourse was, in the first
place, directed toward creating something specifically new and Spanish—​is
heavily reminiscent of Giménez Caballero, but, at the same time, it could
easily be absorbed by various critics from different political backgrounds,
writing under the Franco regime: interest in traditional and early music,
which Sopeña had named as the milestones of the rebirth of Spanish
music, had been commonplace in Spanish musical life at least since the late
nineteenth century, with Felipe Pedrell. In other words, this does not mean
that all mentions—​and there are many—​of Spanish traditional or early
music in music criticism in the early Franco era must be understood as an
influence of Sopeña, of Giménez Caballero, or of fascism more generally;
very often, music critics who, coming from very diverse backgrounds, had
become interested in traditional or early music found themselves adapting
their writings on such subjects to the new circumstances. It was not always
easy to do so, and Sopeña, for all of his enthusiasm, called folklore and
early music “the two most rebellious fields” in Spanish musical life.148 The
vicissitudes of some of the critics in overcoming these difficulties will be
the focus of the next two chapters.

NOTES

1. The first performance of the Concierto took place in Barcelona on November

9, 1940, with Sáinz de la Maza as the soloist accompanied by the Orquesta
Filarmónica de Barcelona under César Mendoza Lassalle.
2. Federico Sopeña, Historia de la música española contemporánea (Madrid:  Rialp,
1958), 196 and 246–​247.
3. Sopeña, “Vicente Salas Viu,” Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos, no. 216 (1967), 650.
4. According to Sopeña’s own narrative, he was initially conscripted by the
Republican side but eventually deserted and spent the rest of the war in Madrid
in hiding; see Sopeña, Defensa de una generación (Madrid: Ediciones Taurus, 1970),
20; Sopeña, Escrito de noche (Madrid: Espasa Calpe, 1985), 63–​65.
5. Sopeña, Escrito, 174.
6. Ibid., 174.
7. Ibid., 175.
8. Joaquín Turina, unpublished diary, Jan. 1–​Dec. 31, 1940, 13 April.
9. Federico Sopeña, Vida y obra de Manuel de Falla (Madrid: Turner Música, 1988), 229.

[ 66 ]  Music Criticism and Music Critics in Early Francoist Spain

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10. Santos Juliá, “¿Falange liberal o intelectuales fascistas?” Claves de razón práctica,
no. 121 (2002), 2.
11. Dionisio Ridruejo, “Excluyentes y comprensivos,” El Ateneo, no. 8 (1952), 5.
12. Ibid.
13. The first retrospective study attempting to portray the Falange Liberal as internal
dissidents within the regime can be considered to be José Carlos Mainer, Falange
y literatura (Barcelona: Labor, 1971). More recent studies reject this hypothesis,
arguing instead that the Falange Liberal was fully aligned with the ideology
and goals of early Francoism; see Santos Juliá, “La Falange liberal o de cómo
la memoria inventa el pasado,” in Autobiografía en España: un balance, ed. María
Ángeles Hermosilla Álvarez and Celia Fernández Prieto (Madrid:  Visor Libros,
2004), 127–​144; Juliá, “¿Falange liberal o intelectuales fascistas?” 4–​13; Eduardo
Iáñez, No parar hasta conquistar:  propaganda y política cultural falangista:  el
grupo de “Escorial”, de la ocupación del Nuevo Estado a la posteridad (1936–1986)
(Gijón: Trea, 2011).
14. Sopeña, Defensa, 20; Sopeña, Escrito, 175.
15. Sopeña, Defensa, 20.
16. Sopeña, Escrito, 169.
17. For example, Sopeña’s 1958 history of Spanish music is explicitly presented as
a sequel to Salazar’s 1930 La música española contemporánea: Sopeña, Historia de
la música española, 13. Sopeña also gave a laudatio of Salazar at the Academia de
Bellas Artes de San Fernando on the occasion of Salazar’s death:  Anonymous,
“Crónica de la Academia,” Academia, no. 7 (1958), 109.
18. Letter from Julio Gómez to José Subirá, Mar. 24, 1941, unpublished [BNE,
M.SUBIRÁ/​1/​105].
19. Sopeña, Defensa, 20.
20. Sopeña, Escrito, 85.
21. These include not only the three Hispanic-​German art music festivals in 1941 and
1942, but also a visit to Vienna to participate in the celebrations of the 150th anni-
versary of Mozart’s death in 1941, organized by the Nazi government; Sopeña was
joined by Turina, Rodrigo, and José Forns (see Federico Sopeña, “El 150 aniversa-
rio de la muerte de Mozart,” Arriba, Dec. 9, 1941, 6; Sopeña, “El 150 aniversario de
la muerte de Mozart,” Arriba, Dec. 16, 1941, 7). Sopeña also visited Lisbon in 1943
and 1944 with the Orquesta Nacional, to participate in events aimed at promoting
Spanish music.
22. See, for example, Federico Sopeña, “Sobre el Conservatorio Nacional,” Arriba, Oct.
26, 1939, 7; Sopeña, “Otra vez sobre el Conservatorio Nacional,” Arriba, Nov. 2,
1939, 7.
23. Anonymous, “Crónica cultural. La musicología en España,” Arbor, vol. 7, no. 20
(1947), 209.
24. Anonymous, “Federico Sopeña,” Arriba, Oct. 6, 1943, 7.
25. Sopeña, Escrito, 176.
26. Adolfo Salazar, “Musicología,” El Sol, Feb. 20, 1934, 5. See also Salazar, “El estado de
la música española al terminar el primer año de la República,” El Sol, Jan. 1, 1932, 6;
Salazar, “La República y el Cancionero de Barbieri,” El Sol, Apr. 14, 1933, 35.
27. Mario Castelnuovo-​Tedesco’s first guitar concerto was completed in 1939 and first
performed by Andrés Segovia that same year in Uruguay; nevertheless, most crit-
ics referred to Rodrigo’s concerto as the first guitar concerto ever, suggesting that
they were unfamiliar with Castelnuovo-​Tedesco’s work.

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28. Gerardo Diego, “Notas teatrales,” ABC, Dec. 12, 1940, 10; José María Franco,
“Música,” Ya, Dec. 12, 1940, 6; Joaquín Turina, “Rodrigo de Vivar,” Dígame, Dec.
17, 1940, 7; Antonio de las Heras, “Música,” Informaciones, Dec. 12, 1940, 6; Víctor
Ruiz Albéniz [as Chispero], “Canta la guitarra,” Informaciones, Dec. 12, 1940, 6;
Anonymous, “Concierto de Aranjuez,” Radio Nacional, no. 108 (1940), 5.
29. Letter from Nemesio Otaño to Manuel de Falla, Aug. 20, 1941, unpublished
[AHSL, 004/​010.014].
30. Letter from Julio Gómez to José Subirá, Dec. 25, 1940, unpublished [BNE,
M.SUBIRÁ/​1/​105].
31. Examples written while still under Francoism include Antonio de las Heras, “La
música en el año que termina,” Informaciones, Dec. 31, 1940, 7; Joaquín Rodrigo,
“La música en 1940,” Pueblo, Dec. 31, 1940, 8; de las Heras, “Música,” Informaciones,
June 12, 1942, 6; Regino Sáinz de la Maza, “Informaciones musicales,” ABC, June
12, 1942, 13.
32. See Tomás Marco, Spanish Music in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge and

London:  Harvard University Press, 1993), 130–​ 131; Pérez Zalduondo,
“Continuidades y rupturas en la música española durante el primer fran-
quismo.” In Joaquín Rodrigo y la música española de los años cuarenta, ed Javier
Suárez-​Pajares,” 70.
33. Suárez-​Pajares, “Adolfo Salazar: luz y sombras,” in Música y cultura en la Edad de
Plata 1915–​1939, ed. María Nagore, Leticia Sánchez de Andrés, and Elena Torres
(Madrid: ICCMU, 2009), 209.
34. Anonymous, “La Orquesta Nacional, en Lisboa,” Arriba, Apr. 3, 1943, 7.
35. Federico Sopeña, “La música de estos años,” Arriba, Oct. 1 1943, 3.
36. Sopeña, Joaquín Rodrigo (Madrid: Ediciones y Publicaciones Españolas, 1946).
37. Ibid., 9–​10 and 39.
38. Federico Sopeña, Joaquín Turina (Madrid:  Ediciones y Publicaciones
Españolas, 1946).
39. Manuel de Falla, Escritos sobre música y músicos (Buenos Aires: Espasa Calpe, 1950).
40. Gilbert Chase’s The Music of Spain was originally published in 1941, and the Spanish
translation (done by a Spanish exile, Jaume Pahissa) was published in Buenos
Aires in 1943; however, there is no evidence of either having been circulated in
early Francoist Spain. See Gilbert Chase, The Music of Spain (New York: Norton,
1941); Chase, La música de España (Buenos Aires: Hachette, 1943).
41. Sopeña, Joaquín Rodrigo, 40.
42. Sopeña, Diez años, 147.
43. Sopeña, Joaquín Rodrigo, 39.
44. Sopeña, Diez años, 174.
45. Sopeña, Joaquín Rodrigo, 40.
46. Sopeña, Diez años, 156–​159.
47. Ibid., 178.
48. María Palacios, “El Grupo de los Ocho bajo el prisma de Adolfo Salazar,” in Música y
cultura en la Edad de Plata 1915–​1939, ed. María Nagore, Leticia Sánchez de Andrés,
and Elena Torres (Madrid: ICCMU, 2009), 290–​292.
49. Sopeña, Diez años, 189.
50. Among los jóvenes (“the younger ones”), Sopeña named Muñoz Molleda, García
Leoz, Vicente Asencio, Miguel Asíns Arbó, Moreno Gans, Matilde Salvador,
Montsalvatge, Carlos Suriñach, and Francisco Escudero. Diez años, 172.
51. Sopeña, Joaquín Rodrigo, 10 and 15.
52. Ibid., 13.

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53. Sopeña, Diez años, 185.

54. Sopeña, Joaquín Rodrigo, 41.
55. Ibid., 84.
56. Ruth Piquer Sanclemente, “Clasicismo, nuevo clasicismo y neoclasicismo.

Aproximación al concepto estético de neoclasicismo musical en España,” Revista
de Musicología, no. 28 (2005), 987–​989.
57. Sopeña, Diez años, 189. See also Sopeña, Joaquín Rodrigo, 90.
58. For example, Federico Sopeña, “El nacionalismo en la música de estos años,”
Arbor, vol. 9, no. 27 (1948), 405; Conrado del Campo, “La música,” El Alcázar, Oct.
31, 1941, 7; Joaquín Rodrigo, “Gran semana de música hispanoalemana,” Pueblo,
Jan. 27, 1942, 7.
59. Joaquín Rodrigo, “Concierto homenaje a Manuel de Falla,” Pueblo, Oct. 16, 1941, 3.
60. Rodolfo Halffter, “Manuel de Falla y los compositores del Grupo de Madrid de la
Generación del 27.” In Rodolfo Halffter. Tema, nueve décadas y final, ed. Antonio
Iglesias (Madrid: Fundación Banco Exterior, 1991), 412; María Palacios, La reno-
vación musical en Madrid durante la dictadura de Primo de Rivera. El Grupo de los
Ocho (1923–​1931) (Madrid:  Sociedad Española de Musicología, 2008), 263;
Carol A. Hess, Manuel de Falla and Modernism in Spain, 1898–​1936 (Chicago: Chicago
University Press, 2001), 270.
61. Rodrigo, “Concierto homenaje,” 3.
62. Ibid., 3; Joaquín Rodrigo, “En torno al homenaje a Falla,” Escorial, no. 12 (1941),
120–​124. On Falla’s mysticism, see Moreda Rodríguez, “A Catholic, a Patriot,
a Good Modernist: Manuel de Falla and the Francoist Musical Press,” Hispanic
Research Journal, vol. 14, no. 3 (2013), 217–​220. On Collet’s concept of Spanish
musical mysticism, see Samuel Llano, Whose Spain? Negotiating Spanish Music in
Paris, 1908–​1929 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 69–​77; Pilar Ramos
López, “Mysticism as a Key Concept of Spanish Early Music Historiography,” in
Early Music—​Context and Ideas II. International Conference in Musicology (Cracow:
University of Cracow, 2008), campusvirtual.unirioja.es/​ titulaciones/​
musica/​
fotos/​13_​ramos.pdf (accessed April 2014).
63. Federico Sopeña, “Homenaje a Falla,” Arriba, Oct. 16, 1941, 3.
64. Anonymous, “La Orquesta Nacional, en Lisboa,” 4.
65. Federico Sopeña, “Música, ausencias y homenaje,” Arriba, Oct. 17, 1939, 6.
66. Federico Sopeña, “Igor Strawinsky,” Radio Nacional, no. 163 (1941), 5. See also
Sopeña, “Igor Strawinsky,” Radio Nacional, no. 161 (1941), 7; and Sopeña, “Igor
Strawinsky,” Radio Nacional, no. 162 (1941), 6.
67. Sopeña, Dos años de música en Europa (Madrid: Espasa Calpe, 1942), 65–​66.
68. Sopeña, “Strawinsky, de Alexandre Tansman,” Arbor, vol. 12, no. 37 (1949), 152–​153.
69. See, for example, in the visual arts María Isabel García Cabrera, Tradición y van-
guardia en el pensamiento artístico español (1939–​1959) (Granada: Universidad de
Granada, 1998); for playwriting, Sultana Wahnón, “The Theatre Aesthetics of the
Falange,” in Fascism and Theatre: Comparative Studies on the Aesthetics and Politics
of Performance in Europe, 1925–​45, ed. Gunter Berghaus (Providence, RI, and
Oxford: Berghahn, 1996), 191–​209.
70. Douglas W. Foard, The Revolt of the Aesthetes: Ernesto Giménez Caballero and the
Origins of Spanish Fascism (New York: Lang, 1989), 25; Aránzazu Ascunce Arenas,
Barcelona and Madrid: Social Networks of the Avant-​Garde (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell
University Press, 2012), 158.
71. Douglas W. Foard, “The Forgotten Falangist: Ernesto Giménez Caballero,” Journal
of Contemporary History, vol. 10, no. 1 (1975), 10.

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72. Ibid., 10–​11.
73. Ernesto Giménez Caballero, La nueva Catolicidad. Teoría general del Fascismo en
Europa, en España (Madrid: Ediciones de La Gaceta Literaria, 1933), 107.
74. Foard, “The Forgotten Falangist,” 5.
75. Giménez Caballero, La nueva Catolicidad, 210.
76. Foard, The Revolt, 205–​206.
77. Ernesto Giménez Caballero, Arte y estado (Madrid:  Ediciones de La Gaceta
Literaria, 1935), 124.
78. Ibid., 54.
79. Ibid., 129.
80. Ibid., 57.
81. Ibid., 54.
82. Ibid., 201.
83. Ibid., 185–​190, 202.
84. Ibid., 161.
85. Ibid., 126.
86. Ibid., 193 and 195.
87. Peter Davies and Derek Lynch, The Routledge Companion to Fascism and the Far
Right (London: Routledge, 2002), 90.
88. Giménez Caballero, Arte y estado, 54 and 153.
89. Giménez Caballero, La nueva Catolicidad, 107.
90. Giménez Caballero, Arte y estado, 263.
91. Ibid., 204. See also Ernesto Giménez Caballero, “Por la radio se va derecho al
cielo,” Radio Nacional, no. 17 (1939), 5.
92. Federico Sopeña, “La música europea de estos años,” Arbor, vol. 8, no. 23 (1947)
165–​177; Sopeña, “El nacionalismo en la música,” 401–​476; Sopeña, “El problema
de la música contemporánea,” Arbor, vol. 19, no. 67–​68 (1951), 449–​456.
93. Anonymous, “Crónica,” Anuario Musical, 6 (1951), 230. On Sopeña’s tenure at
the Conservatoire, see Contreras, “El ‘empeño apostólico-​literario’ de Federico
Sopeña,” in Los señores de la crítica. Periodismo musical e ideología del modernismo
en Madrid (1900–​1950), ed. Teresa Cascudo and María Palacios (Sevilla: Doble J,
2011), 331–​335.
94. A well-​known example was Laín Entralgo’s essay España como problema, published
in 1948, which argued that utopian visions of Spain had not thus far materialized
in a project for Spain, to which Calvo Serer replied in España, sin problema that
such tensions between utopian visions had already been resolved by the Franco
regime through regeneration of Catholicism. See Pedro Laín Entralgo, España
como problema (Madrid:  Seminario de Problemas Hispanoamericanos, 1948);
Rafael Calvo Serer, España, sin problema (Madrid: Rialp, 1949).
95. Federico Sopeña, “Joaquín Rodrigo, crítico musical,” Música. Revista Quincenal,
no. 16 (1945), 6.
96. For example, Sopeña, “La música en la Generación del 98,” Arbor, vol. 11, no. 36
(1948), 459–​464.
97. Sopeña, “Notas sobre la música contemporánea,” Escorial, no. 3 (1941), 101–​122;
Sopeña “Joaquín Turina,” Escorial, no. 7 (1941), 244–​288.
98. Foard, “The Forgotten Falangist,” 4.
99. Sopeña, “La música europea,” 165.
100. Ibid., 177.
101. Ibid., 167.
102. Ibid., 168.

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103. Ibid., 177.
104. Ibid., 173.
105. Sopeña, “El nacionalismo en la música,” 404.
106. Ibid., 474–​475.
107. Sopeña, “El problema de la música contemporánea,” 450–​452.
108. Ibid., 454.
109. Such a paradigm of the music of early Francoism as not only a conservative
but specifically an antimodernist nadir has certainly been predominant in
many studies about the period. See, for example, Gemma Pérez Zalduondo,
“La utilización de la figura y la obra de Felip Pedrell en el marco de la exal-
tación nacionalista de posguerra (1939–​1945),” Recerca Musicològica, no. 11–​12
(1991), 467–​487; Ignacio Henares Cuéllar and María Isabel Cabrera García,
“El conflicto modernidad-​tradición. La fundamentación crítica en la preguerra
y su culminación en el Franquismo,” in Dos décadas de cultura artística en el
Franquismo, ed. Ignacio Henares Cuéllar, María Isabel Cabrera García, Gemma
Pérez Zalduondo, and José Castillo Ruiz (Granada:  Universidad de Granada,
1991), 31–​57; Michael Walter, “Music of Seriousness and Commitment:  The
1930s and Beyond,” in The Cambridge History of Twentieth-​Century Music, ed.
Nicholas Cook and Anthony Pople (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press,
2004), 286–​305.
110. These are indeed the words critics most frequently employed to refer to the music
of their time, with modernista and vanguardista being used mostly in a deroga-
tory manner (Antonio Fernández-​Cid, “Música,” Arriba, Mar. 1, 1949, 7; Joaquín
Turina, “La nueva España musical,” Radio Nacional, no. 50 (1939), 13.
111. A. Albert Torrellas, Historia de la música (Barcelona:  Seix Barral, 1942), 80–​84;
Rafael Benedito, Historia de la música (Madrid:  Sección Femenina de FET y de
las JONS, 1946), 180–​190; José Subirá [as Jesús A. Ribó], Historia universal de la
música (Madrid: Plus Ultra, 1945), 462–​473.
112. Pedro Carré, “Shostakovich, el compositor enigma,” Ritmo, no. 208 (1948), 8;
Federico Sopeña, “Una sinfonía rusa,” Alférez, no. 1 (1947). Further examples
of news stories focusing on Shostakovich’s situation under the Zhdanov decree
but not making any reference to Shostakovich’s music are Anonymous, “Música
‘capitalista y retrógrada’ se estrenará en el Metropolitan,” Pueblo, Feb. 14, 1948,
5; Anonymous, “Reacciones anticomunistas de Hollywood,” La Vanguardia, May
8, 1948, 7; M. Blanco Tobío, “Música antidemocrática,” Pueblo, Feb. 12, 1948, 5.
113. Carlos Suriñach, “Estados que intervienen en las creaciones musicales,” Música.
Revista Quincenal, no. 27 (1946), 14. Suriñach, a composer himself, admitted that
he did not know Shostakovich’s symphonies but hypothesized that they were
“long, innocent bores in the style of Bruckner and Tchaikovsky.”
114. Xavier Montsalvatge, “Strawinsky y Shostakovich, polos opuestos,” La Vanguardia
Española, Aug. 7, 1948, 8.
115. The exceptions were Vaughan Williams’s Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis (per-
formed by the Orquesta Nacional in March 1943) and London Symphony (again
by the Orquesta Nacional in November 1944), which were generally praised
for their respect for English folk and art music; see Regino Sáinz de la Maza,
“Informaciones musicales,” ABC, Mar. 25, 1943, 16; Joaquín Rodrigo, “Música,”
Pueblo, Mar. 25, 1943, 7; Rodrigo, “Música,” Pueblo, Nov. 25, 1944, 7.
116. For example, José Forns, “La sociedad internacional para la música contem-
poránea ha reanudado sus actividades,” Harmonía, no. 32 (1947), 11; Regino Sáinz
de la Maza, “Informaciones musicales,” ABC, Nov. 11, 1947, 16.

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117. Manuel Quesada, “La música y su influencia en la cultura nacional,” Ideal de

Granada, Dec. 27, 1936, 2.
118. Joaquín Rodrigo, “La música en la radiodifusión,” Radio Nacional, no. 52 (1939), 12.
119. Ibid., 12.
120. For example, Ramón Serrano Suñer in an interview, Anonymous, “Una conver-
sación sobre Radio con el Excelentísimo sr. Ministro del Interior,” Radio Nacional,
no. 1 (1939), 3; Nemesio Otaño, “La música de las emisoras de radio,” Ritmo, no.
145 (1941), 3; Anonymous, “La radio como factor de educación musical,” Radio
Nacional, no. 34 (1939), 3; Anonymous, “Sobre la educación musical de la radio,”
Música. Revista Quincenal, no. 8 (1945), 3.
121. Conrado del Campo, cited by Juan de Alcaraz, “Nuevos juicios sobre la música
pura y la música de programa,” Radio Nacional, no. 237 (1943), 5.
122. P. Yáñez, “César Frank,” Radio Nacional, no. 42 (1939), 13.
123. Antonio de las Heras, “Música,” Arriba, Apr. 15, 1942, 7.
124. These included Domingo Santa Cruz’s Canción de cuna; Alfonso Leng’s Preludio
and Cima; Alfonso Letelier’s Canción de cuna, Balada, and Suite grotesca; and
Próspero Bisquert’s Piezas.
125. Regino Sáinz de la Maza, “Noticias musicales,” ABC, Feb. 28, 1947, 17.
126. Antonio de las Heras, “El primer problema que plantea la música española,”
Arriba, Nov. 7, 1943, 7.
127. José Forns, “Siluetas radiofónicas de grandes músicos. El moderno renacimiento
italiano,” Radio Nacional, 136 (1941), 14.
128. José María García Laborda, “Compositores de la Segunda Escuela de Viena en
Barcelona,” Revista de Musicología, vol. 23, no. 1 (2000), 187–​220; Diego Alonso
Tomás, “Música nacional de categoría universal: catalanismo, modernidad y fol-
clore en el ideario estético de Roberto Gerhard tras el magisterio Schönberguiano
(1929–​31),” in Discursos y prácticas musicales nacionalistas (1900–​1970), ed. Pilar
Ramos López (Logroño: Universidad de La Rioja, 2012), 255–​275.
129. Javier Suárez-​Pajares, “Adolfo Salazar: luz y sombras.” In Música y cultura en la
Edad de Plata 1915–​1939, ed. María Nagore, Leticia Sánchez de Andrés, and Elena
Torres (Madrid: ICCMU, 2009), 211.
130. Anonymous, “Schönberg,” Ritmo, no. 69 (1933), 7–​9.
131. Arnold Schoenberg, “Mi evolución,” Nuestra música, no. 16 (1949).
132. For example, Federico Sopeña, “Schönberg-​Bartok,” Arriba, Oct. 26, 1950, 7.
133. Xavier Montsalvatge, “Schoenberg o la música atomizada,” La Vanguardia
Española, July 25, 1951, 5.
134. José Forns, “Arnold Schoenberg,” La Vanguardia Española, Sep. 6, 1944, 7.
135. Norberto Almandoz, “Leyendo libros,” Ritmo, no. 136 (1940), 8.
136. Joaquín Turina, “La arquitectura en música,” reprinted in Escritos de Joaquín
Turina, ed. Antonio Iglesias (Madrid: Alpuerto, 1982), 45–​47.
137. Montsalvatge, “Strawinsky y Shostakovich,” 17.
138. Regino Sáinz de la Maza, “Informaciones musicales,” ABC, Apr. 1, 1948, 17.
139. Victorino Echevarría, “Aspectos:  tema con variaciones,” Boletín del Colegio de
Directores de Bandas de Música Civiles, no. 29 (1945), 8.
140. Conrado del Campo, “Música,” El Alcázar, Mar. 13, 1946, 8.
141. Rafael Sánchez Mazas, “Ha muerto en la Argentina el maestro Falla,” Arriba,
Nov. 15, 1946, 3.
142. A  recent example is Walter Aaron Clark and William Craig Krause, Federico
Moreno Torroba: A Musical Life in Three Acts (New York: Oxford University Press,
2013), 240.

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143. Federico Sopeña, “Música,” Arriba, Mar. 1, 1949, 6; José Luis Pinillas, “Crónica
cultural,” Arbor, vol. 12, no. 40 (1949), 611; see also Germán Gan Quesada, “Three
Decades of Messiaen’s Music in Spain: A Brief Survey, 1945–​1978,” in Messiaen
Perspectives 2:  Techniques, Influence and Reception, ed. Christopher Dingle and
Robert Fallon (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013), 301–​322.
144. Tomás Marco, Spanish Music in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge and
London: Harvard University Press, 1993), 155–​157.
145. Ibid., 156; Tomás Marco, Música española de vanguardia (Madrid:  Guadarrama,
1970), 15–​19.
146. Ibid., 27–​ 28; Germán Gan Quesada, “A la altura de las circunstancias …
Continuidad y pautas de renovación en la música española,” in Historia de la
música en España e Hispanoamérica, vol. 7: La música en España en el siglo XX, ed.
Alberto González Lapuente (Ciudad de México:  Fondo de Cultura Económica,
2012), 169.
147. Stanley G. Payne, Fascism in Spain, 1923–​1977 (Madison: University of Wisconsin
Press, 1999), 398.
148. Sopeña, Joaquín Rodrigo, 29.

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  75

CHAPTER 3

The Sound of Hispanidad

Reviewing Early Music

I n November 1939, the mortal remains of José Antonio Primo de Rivera

were carried on falangists’ shoulders from Alicante, where Primo de
Rivera had been executed on November 20, 1936, to the sixteenth-​century
monastery of El Escorial, some thirty miles northwest of Madrid. The sol-
emn state funerals confirmed José Antonio, as he was commonly referred
to under the regime, as the most conspicuous martyr of the Civil War and
further stimulated his personality cult, which lasted through the Franco
regime to our day. It was not by chance that the monastery of El Escorial
had been chosen to host José Antonio’s tomb: a magnificent work of archi-
tecture, it was built by Philip II as a burial place for his father, Charles V,
with both monarchs having been behind Spain’s colonial expansion in
America and the Pacific; it had been described by Giménez Caballero as the
ultimate artwork and a symbol of Spanish genius1; and its architecture was
considered to be monumental yet austere, said to mirror the Spanish char-
acter.2 Franco himself had been given the keys of the monastery, and he
walked into and out of it under a canopy in a ceremony aimed at confirming
him as the head of state, legitimized by the grace of God, shortly after the
end of the Civil War.3
The music for Primo de Rivera’s state funeral was not left to chance
either. Nemesio Otaño, who both organized the event and reviewed it for
Radio Nacional, selected Tomás Luis de Victoria’s Officium Defunctorum
(“the eternal voice of the Church, one, holy, Catholic and apostolic”) and
sixteenth-​and seventeenth-​century trumpet fanfares (“the war sounds of
imperial Spain, the sounds which accompanied our deeds in the highest
76

peak of our military power and conquests”) as the background music for the
funeral.4 Both Victoria’s work and the trumpet fanfares had been composed
in the years of the Spanish Empire, which the Franco regime, consonant
with principles of Hispanidad, was trying to revive. Indeed, the music of the
Spanish empire occupied a privileged position not only in José Antonio’s
funeral, but also in Francoist music criticism more generally: polyphonists
(Victoria, Morales, Guerrero), organists (Cabezón, Cabanilles), vihuelistas
(Narváez, Millán, Fuenllana), and theoreticians (Ramos de Pareja) had all
composed their music and written their works in the same period in which
Spain, under the rule of the Austrias, became the most powerful nation
in the world and a bulwark of Catholic orthodoxy in the face of the rise of
Protestantism. This does not mean that Spanish early music was constantly
played in state-​sponsored concerts and on Spanish radio, on the contrary,
whereas Martínez Torner had complained that there were precious few
opportunities to hear Spanish early music live in Spain under the Second
Republic,5 the situation had all but changed under Francoism, and critics
were well aware of it.6 Exceptions were few and included the guitar recit-
als of Sáinz de la Maza performing the vihuela repertoire and the visits to
Madrid of a few choirs and escolanías (children’s choirs) from the provinces
performing Spanish polyphony.
Nevertheless, there were other ways in which Spanish early music could
be disseminated among generalist audiences, thus escaping the boundaries
of academic monographs and journals. Otaño regularly wrote for nonspe-
cialist publications as a music critic, and so did Anglès, also a priest and
a musicologist. Though not a full-​time, professional musicologist, Julio
Gómez also regularly expressed his thoughts and concerns about Spanish
early music and its research under the new regime. These three writers
on Spanish early music, united by a shared love of the repertoires and the
belief that such repertoires were a milestone in shaping Spanish identity,
and coming from contrasting backgrounds and political positions, dif-
fered in their understanding of the link between Spanish early music and
national identity, and how could it be better researched and promoted.

NEMESIO OTAÑO: UNVEILING THE EPIC OF SPANISH

EARLY MUSIC

Of the three men, Otaño was most actively involved in government musical
policies. Born in 1880, he had enjoyed a successful career in church music
both in his native Basque Country and in Castile, as an organist, choir mas-
ter, researcher of liturgical music, composer of the Motu Proprio movement,

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and music critic; he founded and from 1907 to 1922 directed Música Sacra
Hispana, a magazine specializing in church music. But he never engaged in
high-​level arts management until the Franco side gave him the opportunity
to do so; he spent the first five months of the war in his native Azkoitia, still
under the control of the Republican government. As soon as the Francoist
troops gained control of the city, Otaño showed his commitment to the
cause by giving talks about Spanish music in various cities on the national
side.7 This, together with his efforts in organizing musical life, soon gar-
nered him an influential position, which he kept in the years following the
war. Musicians of all kinds and ideologies regularly wrote to Otaño, implor-
ing his protection, pleading with him to give positive reports about them
to the Francoist authorities so that they would be allowed to work again,
asking for a leg up in the various oposiciones and state exams.8 Even Falla
asked for protection for his former student, Ernesto Halffter, and his friend
Miguel Salvador9; and Enrique Casals managed to enlist Otaño’s support to
procure a Spanish passport for his exiled brother, Pau Casals.10
Otaño’s research interests before 1936 focused mostly on liturgical music.
During the Civil War, however, he developed expertise in a new area: the
military music of Spain, mostly from the time of the Austrias. This was not
simply a scholarly pursuit; Otaño explicitly regarded his skills and involve-
ment in musicological research as both a patriotic duty and part of his pas-
toral mission as a priest. In a letter to Falla in 1938 he announced that he
was “stirring up the whole history of Spanish music” to disseminate it “as
broadly as possible”; specifically, he was interested in early Spanish military
music, “splendid, but known by very few.” Otaño felt more at ease (and more
attuned with his desire to help the Francoist army win the war) conducting
research in the archives than being in charge of the nitty-​gritty of organiz-
ing musical life on the National side, which he scornfully described as “that
fuss which is patriotic music.”11 Otaño’s choice of military music as his latest
research interest was not at all casual: with Franco himself being a general of
the Spanish army and the army having a crucial part in defeating the Second
Republic and literally creating the new Spain by military conquest, it is no
surprise that militarism played a more significant role under Francoism
than it did in the German and Italian fascist regimes. Similarly, some of the
key ideas that eventually came together under the concept of Hispanidad,
such as longing for national regeneration by returning to the past and a
providentialist view of the history of Spain, had been significant in military
circles since at least the late nineteenth century.12
Otaño soon started giving public talks and lecture recitals on Spanish
early military music in various Spanish cities on the nationalist side, with
local newspapers and the newly created magazines of the Francoist side

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disseminating and amplifying Otaño’s ideas. His archival research soon bore
fruit as well, and Spanish military hymns from the past were performed in
public again; this led Radio Nacional to praise Otaño for having refuted “the
legendary claim that Spain’s instrumental music was of poor quality” and to
compare Antonio Rodríguez de Hita—​a seventeenth-​century composer of
religious, theatrical, and military music—​with Gluck and Händel.13
Otaño’s mission, however, was not to simply inform the public about
the forgotten treasures of Spanish military music; consonant with the
ideas of Hispanidad and national resurrection, the military hymns of the
past had to help construct the new Spain of the future. Otaño himself
composed a hymn for Franco (¡Franco! ¡Franco!) in the style of the music
he had been researching in the archives, which Norberto Almandoz, also a
priest and Otaño’s student, praised in these terms: “The vigorous inspira-
tion of Father Otaño, at the service of such a noble cause, has produced this
work… . After God and His saints, there is nothing more sacred than the
cult to the Fatherland and its heroes.”14 Another significant effort to make
archival research relevant for constructing the new Spain was Otaño’s cam-
paign to have the Marcha de Granaderos readopted as the Spanish national
anthem; it had functioned as the national anthem since the 1770s and was
replaced by Himno de Riego during the Second Republic. By referring to it
as Marcha de Granaderos instead of the more common Marcha real, Otaño
(and the press) emphasized the military nature of the march instead of its
monarchist implications.15
After the war ended, apart from his successive appointments at the
Comisaría de Música and the Conservatorio de Madrid, Otaño contrib-
uted to reconstructing musical life under the new regime by taking over
the directorship of the magazine Ritmo after negotiations with Fernando
Rodríguez del Río, who had headed the editorial committee after Rogelio
Villar’s death.16 The appointment certainly allowed Otaño to extend his
already considerable influence into the realm of music criticism, but he
admitted in a letter to Anglès that the new appointment was a chore he
was taking over simply for the sake of Spanish music:

I have agreed to take over the directorship because that was the only solution
which allowed the magazine to be published and paper to be procured—​my col-
leagues at Prensa y Propaganda will not be able to say no. Moreover, although
I have very little time for such things, it was advisable to make an effort so that
we musicians can at least have a modest newsletter.17

Ritmo, which in the years 1929–​1936 focused on concert life in various

Spanish cities and general news about contemporary Spanish music, was

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probably not the most obvious publication from which to disseminate

Spanish early music. Nevertheless, under Otaño’s directorship, early music
did become a significant topic in Ritmo, as it was in Radio Nacional and
Vértice; not by chance, the latter two were published by the Delegación
Nacional de Prensa, under the control of the Falange. Ritmo’s new focus
was obvious from its very first issue after the war: Otaño followed the edi-
torial in which the newly relaunched magazine announced its intention of
serving the new regime, as has been discussed in Chapter 1, with his own
research on the Marcha de Granaderos18—​as if to suggest that reconstruc-
tion of the country had started by restoring the national anthem itself.
Thanks to his efforts, the Marcha de Granaderos was readopted as the
national anthem right after the end of the war. Otaño was quick to point
out in the article that his research was groundbreaking: no Spanish musi-
cologist, he claimed, had so far devoted any attention to the Marcha, “this
very transcendental factor of unification and affirmation of our patriotic
faith.” Spanish musicology had thus failed, he implied, to fulfill its patri-
otic duties during “the greatest period of decadence of our history, with
our long-​lived institutions and our centers of spiritual education in decline
thanks to nonsensical revolutions and foolish ideas.”19 In a second article
for Ritmo a few months later, he called for introduction of sixteenth-​to-​
nineteenth-​century military music into the Falange-​led military training
of Spanish boys and young men; every nation, Otaño argued, needed “the
military spirit, which means discipline, order, organized strength, safety
and defense of the fatherland,” and the best way to achieve this in the new
Spain was, precisely, by looking back at the past.20
Contributors to Ritmo other than Otaño also found in the magazine an
environment receptive to Spanish early music, including its most charac-
teristic instruments. Just as Sáinz de la Maza and others presented the
guitar as the successor of the vihuela and therefore an artifact for national
regeneration, the organ-​building company Organería Española attempted
to do the same with its instrument by means of a paid advertisement in
Ritmo21:

When the Glorioso Movimiento Nacional22 ended and we saw before ourselves
the immense load of work which remained to be done after the Marxist destruc-
tion, one of the concerns of the shareholders of this business was whether organ
building should continue as it had been before the Movimiento, completely sub-
jected to foreign influences, using deficient tubular organs which demanded
constant repairs, with only a few exceptions; with incomplete equipment,
in a way which is completely contrary to the Spanish taste and soul and the
organists of the present days; with nineteenth-​century misbalanced, tasteless

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harmonization, etc.; or whether the time had come to introduce a revolution in

our organs in a completely SPANISH sense, creating an entirely SPANISH organ-​
building industry.

The aftermath of the Civil War was certainly a time of rebirth for Organería
Española. The company was founded in 1941 in Azpeitia (very near Otaño’s
home town of Azkoitia) by Ramón G.  Amezúa to continue the legacy of
his relative Aquilino Amezúa, a well-​known local organ builder deceased
in 1912. In the late nineteenth century, Aquilino Amezúa himself had
defended the notion of a purely Spanish way of building organs, and wrote
a pamphlet on the subject on the occasion of the 1890 Universal Exhibition
in Barcelona. Amezúa was, at the time, reacting against the increasing
commercial success of French organ builders, who were exporting their
organs into the Basque Country and Navarra.23 What was originally a mix-
ture of nationalism and commercial protectionism in Amezúa’s pamphlet
was adapted by the newly established Organería Española to fit into the
framework of Hispanidad: first, the advertisement reflected the notion
of the Civil War as a process of cleansing and purification during which
all those elements alien to the perceived Spanish essence (Marxism, left-
ism, etc.) were swept away by the Francoist army, or even expurgated, like
illness from a sick body; then, the need for regeneration and reconstruc-
tion carefully avoiding foreign influences was highlighted. A few months
later, Ramón G. Amezúa made the connection between organ building and
Hispanidad even clearer in an article published in Radio Nacional. Amezúa
called for eliminating foreign influences from Spanish organ building as a
return to the imperial past; it was indeed under the Spanish empire that
Spanish organ music and performance had flourished, with Antonio de
Cabezón (1510–​1556), Francisco Correa de Arauxo (1584–​1654), and Juan
Bautista Cabanilles (1644–​1712). Again, for Amezúa, revival of the organ
was not merely a matter of nostalgia or tradition. He asserted that, after an
authentically Spanish school of organ building was established, a blooming
national school of composition would soon follow:24

After the Liberation Crusade, now that all our efforts must be aimed at the
resurgence of our Fatherland and the dissemination of our imperial tradition to
revive the glorious past and return to our greatness, now it is the time to start
an energetic campaign to get rid of foreign influences and return to the legiti-
mately Spanish organ.

Ritmo also offered extensive coverage of the centenary of Victoria in 1940,25

starting with an editorial article in June that encouraged all Spanish

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  81

musicologists to take advantage of the centenary to thoroughly research

the composer’s life and works, because “such a great and exemplary figure
of universal art and the highest glory of Spanish musical history deserves
to admired by everybody, once and for all.”26 Some Spanish musicologists
and, more generally, writers and politicians with an interest in Victoria
responded to Ritmo’s call; subsequent issues of Ritmo, until November
1940, all contained at least one article on him,27 and the year ended with
a 112-​page themed issue on Victoria, complete with an edition of four of
his motets.28 Otaño was prominently involved in the official celebrations
as well, again showing his belief that musicological research had to serve
practical ends: government officers for education and the arts travelled to
Victoria’s hometown of Ávila, in Castile; a mass was celebrated in honor
of Victoria; Otaño gave a lecture on Victoria’s life and works; and some of
Victoria’s music was performed. Jesús Rubio, who was then subsecretary
for education, gave a speech that illustrates why Victoria was so appealing
for the early Franco regime. Rubio defined the notion of empire as “the
domination over elements which are, by nature, different to each other,”
thus referring to the role of Spain in ostensibly bringing together, linguis-
tically, culturally, and religiously, the diverse populations of America and
other parts of the world, all the while establishing itself as the bulwark of
Catholicism against expansion of Protestantism. Polyphony, Rubio argued,
was the musical expression of empire—​because polyphony was about
bringing disparate melodies together as a unity.29 Rubio further argued
that El Escorial was the best place to listen to Victoria’s polyphony, because
they both were symbols of the unity of Spain. His polyphony, however,
was again not simply a memory from the past, a symbol from a bygone
empire; another reason Victoria’s music was profoundly Spanish, according
to Rubio, was that “a characteristic of Spanish culture is the reproduction
of archaic ideals which acquire unexpected novelty and brilliance after hav-
ing been reshaped in a modern environment.”30
The Victoria celebrations, however, may not seem as significant as would
be expected of a composer of international standing and one so obviously
illustrative of Hispanidad; they can certainly be considered modest com-
pared with the large Bach, Wagner, or Bruckner festivals of Nazi Germany,
or with the celebratory military parades of the Franco regime itself. Even
Ritmo acknowledged that the celebrations in Ávila were anything but lavish
(“There were no impressive official commemorations”31), and the only other
events to commemorate Victoria’s centenary were lectures and lecture
recitals by Sopeña in a few cities of the Spanish provinces32; but there was
no large Victoria festival or concert in Madrid. Nor was the centenary very
successful in terms of encouraging performance of Victoria’s works: Sopeña

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complained that the high-​profile music festival Quincena Musical de San

Sebastián did not include any performances of Victoria’s works,33 and
Gómez deplored the centenary not having encouraged Spanish choirs to
include more of Victoria’s works in their repertoire.34 Events in Ávila and
elsewhere were not extensively featured in the Madrid newspapers and
magazines, which did not even send correspondents to cover the events.
The reasons for this relative disinterest must be sought in the fact that
the Civil War had only recently ended; with Otaño and other members
of the Comisaría busy elsewhere reorganizing musical life in Madrid, it
is understandable that preparations for the Victoria celebrations in Ávila
had to be rushed. Audiences, however, could still familiarize themselves
with Victoria and his role within Hispanidad through Ritmo. The magazine
had originally called for “an in-​depth study of Victoria’s life and works”35;
a number of contributors chose to research Victoria’s family origins and
national identity. Some attention was devoted to the question of whether
he should be considered a Spanish or a Roman composer. F.  Barberá
claimed that other researchers had exaggerated Palestrina’s influences on
Victoria, whose style, he argued, could not be Palestrinian because he had
spent his formative years in Spain, absorbing the “expressivist” principles
and technique of what he called the Spanish school of polyphony. Barberá
also alluded to Collet’s thesis of Spanish musical mysticism to establish a
further reason for Victoria being considered Spanish rather than Roman.36
Nevertheless, most of the contributors’ efforts to establish Victoria’s
standing as “a genius of the Race”37 did not focus on whether his years
in Rome had turned him into an Italian composer, but rather on whether
his family lineage was Castilian and “old” enough—​“old” here meaning
Christian, not only in the religious but also in the racial sense. Indeed,
although the word raza had been frequently used in the debates about
musical nationalism predating the Civil War, referring to national spirit,
essence, or identity rather than to genetic makeup, under the Franco
regime raza became literal in meaning.38 Whereas Hispanidad was insepa-
rable from Catholicism, it was not enough to simply be a Catholic; one had
to be descended from generations of Catholics. Hispanidad fully material-
ized not only after the religious and political unity of Spain was achieved
by the Catholic monarchs in 1492; the defeat of Granada, the last Muslim
kingdom to survive in the Iberian Peninsula, and the expulsion of the Jews
resulted in ethnic unity as well. From then on, limpieza de sangre (cleanli-
ness of blood), or being a cristiano viejo (old Christian), came to denote not
only pure Christian descent but a sign of social status as a true Spanish citi-
zen. Although no longer used to formally discriminate against minorities,
limpieza de sangre enjoyed a revival in Francoist mythology; for example,

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Saint Theresa of Ávila, the sixteenth-​century nun, writer, and founder of

the Carmelite order, was hailed during the Franco regime as the Saint of
the Race (la santa de la raza).39
Contributors to Ritmo were also concerned with establishing Victoria’s
status as cristiano viejo. Although they may simply have been aware that
being a cristiano viejo was a prerequisite for presenting Victoria as a sym-
bol of Hispanidad, it is likely they were trying to respond explicitly to the
widespread notion that Victoria had Muslim blood. This claim was first
made by the Italian priest and musicologist Giuseppe Baini, in 1828; he
apparently mistranslated the “more” in “more hispano” (literally, “in the
Spanish style,” a formula that was often appended to Victoria’s composi-
tions, meaning that the plainchant hymn melody came from the Spanish
and not the Roman rite) as “moro” (Moor).40 None of the authors contrib-
uting to Ritmo named Baini, although some of them mentioned cryptically
other musicologists holding mistaken ideas about Victoria’s family origins.
The Marquis of Lozoya wrote two articles exploring the genealogy, conclud-
ing that although he did not come from an aristocratic family, his ancestors
had been “rich merchants” on both maternal and paternal sides; he also
paid special attention to those of Victoria’s ancestors who had been mem-
bers of the Church.41 Ferreol Hernández wrote about Victoria’s bloodline,
arguing that his Castilian background—​and, therefore, his Christian back-
ground as well—​went back several generations,42 whereas Fernando del
Valle Lersundi rejected the hypothesis that Victoria had been born in pov-
erty; rather, the family had been one of the richest and most respected of
sixteenth-​century Ávila, which, according to del Valle Lersundi, should be
enough to dispel any suspicions about the purity and antiquity of his line-
age,43 with purity and antiquity referring, again, to a pure and old Christian
background.

HIGINIO ANGLÈS: HISPANIDAD MEETS PEDRELL

Otaño was not the only priest-​musicologist to occupy a prominent posi-

tion under the Franco regime and write, in the nonspecialist press, about
his research and the role of early music in constructing the Nuevo Estado.
Unlike Otaño, Anglès, as founding director of the Instituto Español de
Musicología since 1943, was engaged in musicology full-​time, whereas
for Otaño it was one of several roles. Although both men came from simi-
lar church music backgrounds, had research interests in early music, and
held offices in early Francoism, it must not be assumed that their views on
Spanish early music and its dissemination to lay audiences were identical;

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indeed, although both managed to adapt to the Franco regime and sub-
stantially develop their careers under it, this was probably easier for Otaño
than it was for Anglès.
Born in 1888 in Maspujols (Tarragona, Catalonia), Anglès was ordained
at the Tarragona seminary and then studied musicology in Barcelona under
Felipe Pedrell, regarded as the father of Spanish musicology and a pioneer
in collecting and editing both Spanish traditional and early music. It was
Pedrell who in 1917 got Anglès a position as head of the Music Department
at the Biblioteca Nacional de Catalunya.44 Until 1936, Anglès developed
his career in Catalonia, with occasional research stays at German univer-
sities, such as Freiburg and Göttingen in 1923–​24, and Göttingen again
in 1928. He was also committed to defending and promoting Catalan cul-
ture at a time in which social support for Catalan self-​government was on
the rise. He was a member of the Institut d’Estudis Catalans, he regularly
used his native Catalan in publications and private correspondence, and
his research also focused, to a considerable extent, on Catalan early music
(mostly Medieval and Renaissance),45 although he also published a few
works of importance on Spanish topics (most notably his 1935 edition of
the Las Huelgas codex).
Anglès fled Barcelona at the beginning of the Civil War; being a priest, he
was concerned about his personal safety under the Republican side, which
was well known for its anticlericalism. He used his professional contacts
abroad to settle in Munich, living at a convent and conducting academic
research in collaboration with German musicologists.46 In early 1938,
however, he asked Otaño to help him go back to Spain and reconstruct his
career there. Although Otaño was hardly sympathetic to those who had
fled Spain, he agreed to give good references for Anglès to Francoist offic-
ers to help dissipate doubts about Anglès’s commitment to Franco’s project
for the new Spain.47 The relationship between the two men was not free of
difficulties: when Otaño mentioned that Anglès’ past Catalan nationalist
sympathies could be a problem in the new regime48 and that Anglès would
not be officially invited to return to Spain but would instead have to submit
an application to the authorities for its examination, Anglès felt offended.49
Anglès eventually returned to Spain in summer 1938 after Otaño and
the Spanish prelate Isidro Gomá provided positive references for him.
He first entered the country as a guest speaker of the Cursos de Verano
Internacionales de Santander, a summer school organized by Franco’s
Ministry of Education in order to help the regime strengthen its inter-
national prestige in the arts and sciences.50 The relationship—​and the
tensions—​between the two men did not end there; Anglès now needed fur-
ther help from Otaño to reestablish his career under the new regime, given

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that the Catalan institutions in which he thrived had now been dismantled.
Eventually, in January 1939 Otaño put forward Anglès’s name to head a
“department of musicology” within the newly founded Consejo Superior
de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC).51 The Department of Musicology was
finally founded in 1943 under the name Instituto Español de Musicología
(IEM), and Anglès was appointed as its first director. The appointment
allowed Otaño to retain his influence on most of the institutions that had
relatively high impact on musical life and music policies (the Conservatorio
de Madrid, Ritmo, and in part the Comisaría de Música), whereas Anglès
remained in charge of the less-​influential area of musicological research.
Otaño, however, was adamant that the directorship of the IEM was an
excellent opportunity for Anglès and the best option available for relaunch-
ing his career after the Civil War, particularly taking into account that he
was, Otaño argued, practically unknown in Madrid.52
Under the new regime, Anglès was torn between his own sympathies
and preferences, both political and scholarly, and the conditions in which
he now had to work. As a conservative Roman Catholic, it is understand-
able that Anglès harbored sympathies for Francoism versus the Second
Republic. There were other aspects of the new regime, however, with
which Anglès arguably felt less comfortable:  his strong sense of Catalan
self-​identity clashed with Francoist centralism, and, unlike Otaño, he cer-
tainly never expressed any satisfaction at the death or exile of those who
opposed the Franco regime.53 On the contrary, during the Franco era he
remained friends with some of the exiles, among them Jesús Bal y Gay and
Roberto Gerhard, who had worked with him at the Biblioteca Nacional de
Catalunya. Anglès was similarly conflicted about his professional status: in
public, he repeatedly expressed his gratitude to the regime for providing
support for academic research in music,54 but in private he was consider-
ably more skeptic about the conditions he had to work in. For example, he
felt overwhelmed by Otaño’s attempts to control every aspect of Spanish
musical life, and he had to assert himself to be allowed to appoint people of
his choosing as IEM staff members.55
The two flagship projects of the IEM similarly proved problematic for
Anglès. Monumentos de la música española, a series of editions of Spanish
early music, was launched in 1941, even before the IEM was founded; the
CSIC clearly realized the importance such a project could have for cultural
reconstruction of the country. Anglès did contribute a significant number
of volumes, although this time his focus on composers from the Catalan-​
speaking regions was less conspicuous than it was before the Civil War; his
editions included the music of the courts of the Catholic monarchs and of
Charles V, sonnets and villancicos by Juan Vázquez, and the complete works

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by Victoria and Morales.56 Nevertheless, because of the perceived strategic

importance of the project, Anglès was given rather tight deadlines he was
not happy with, as he felt it did not allow him to properly conduct archival
work57; he also resented the fact that, with paper supplies being scarce, he
was not given sufficient allocation to print his personal, non-​IEM projects,
such as his edition of Cantigas de Santa María.58 The second flagship project
of the IEM was an annual music journal, Anuario Musical, first launched
in 1946. From at least 1932, Anglès had harbored hopes of founding an
academic periodical focusing on Spanish music from the Middle Ages to
the nineteenth century, and from the start he wanted to name it Anuario
Musical.59 When the journal was finally founded under the Franco regime,
however, Anglès was not entirely enthusiastic about it. He confided in his
friend Subirá that there were not enough good music scholars in Spain to
guarantee solid articles for every issue, and he suspected that the CSIC
was pushing the idea “just to give the impression that some serious work
is happening: we quickly write some articles, and that’s already the great
musicology periodical!”60 Similarly, despite Anglès’s original intentions,
few non-​Spanish scholars published their work in Anuario Musical during
the 1940s, possibly owing to the isolation of the Franco regime.
Nevertheless, leaving aside Anglès’s discomfort with the Francoist appa-
ratus, his way of understanding music history could potentially fit relatively
well with the dominant concept of Hispanidad—​which therefore made him
suitable to direct the IEM and to write about Spanish music history for a
nonspecialist audience. The roots of Anglès’s understanding of Spanish
music history have to be sought in the writings of his teacher, Pedrell, a
pioneer in gathering and researching both Spanish early and traditional
music with the aim of turning it into the foundation of a national school of
composition.61 Pedrell’s attempts at renovation and his narrative of Spanish
music history were based, to a great extent, on the assumption that Italian
opera had had a negative effect on eighteenth-​and nineteenth-​century
Spain and thus prevented a truly national school of music from fully devel-
oping; therefore, Pedrell argued, the true essence of Spanish music must
be sought before the eighteenth century. Pedrell regarded his activity as
a musicologist as a scientific pursuit, thus relying on what he considered
scientific tools and methods (editions, transcriptions, organological stud-
ies) to accomplish his mission.62 Although research into a country’s musical
past with the aim of promoting ideas of national identity is certainly not an
inherently right-​wing pursuit—​several of the exiles, for example, conducted
research on early music with similar aims—​Pedrell’s approach to music his-
tory was adopted almost verbatim by the IEM in its research program.63
The IEM’s goals focused on rediscovering and promoting the “treasures”

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(tesoros) of Spanish early and traditional music, and the tools of the IEM
for rediscovering and recovering these treasures were, essentially, the same
as Pedrell’s: its foundational goals named cataloguing, collection, transcrip-
tion, and edition as the main tools Spanish musicologists had available to
rediscover these treasures. The IEM’s focus on Spanish music was therefore
presented as a patriotic duty, which fit well with Francoist nationalism.
Pedrell’s understanding of Spanish music also fit imperial nostalgia: the
decline he described in eighteenth-​and nineteenth-​century music matched
almost perfectly the putative decline of Hispanidad after the Austrias,
and foreign influences were similarly regarded with suspicion both by
Pedrell and in narratives of Hispanidad. It is therefore not surprising that
Pedrell’s narrative of Spanish music history, strengthened with allusions
to Hispanidad to explain periods of splendor or decline, soon became com-
monplace in music criticism. Sopeña even claimed in a talk that “Spanish
music in the first half of the nineteenth century can be summed up in one
word: nothing.”64 Tomás Andrade de Silva wrote that, after the seventeenth
century, “Spanish music went down a path of decline which was as fast as it
was deplorable. Music became impersonal, conformist and vulgar, and wel-
comed all kinds of influences from foreign fashions and tastes, to the point
that it lost, in all of its variations, its clear national physiognomy.”65 It was
again a racial force equivalent to Hispanidad, according to music critics, that
forced Spanish music out of its decline; Eduardo López-​Chavarri claimed
that a “powerful instinct” led Granados and Albéniz to react against the
foreign-​dominated panorama of nineteenth-​century Spanish music,66 and
Mariano Daranos wrote that “Before 1800, the Spanish musical landscape
vanished, but it reappeared a century later, more energetic, more commu-
nicative, and, above all, closer to the purest Iberian tradition.”67
Following Pedrell, Italian opera was frequently named as the cause of
the decline of Spanish nineteenth-​century music. Composer and conduc-
tor Victoriano Echevarría accused Philip V of having severely harmed
Spanish theatrical music by employing an Italian theater company in
his court.68 In particular, zarzuela was considered to have been almost
irreparably wounded by Italian influences—​and by a free-​market, mer-
cantilist approach to music that allegedly came with them.69 It was not
that nineteenth-​century zarzuelistas (Francisco Asenjo Barbieri, Federico
Chueca, Emilio Arrieta, Gerónimo Giménez, Tomás Bretón) were entirely
despicable; on the contrary, some critics praised them for having created a
genre with a national, Spanish component at a time in which Italian influ-
ences were overwhelming. Sopeña claimed that 80  percent of Barbieri’s
musical personality was Italian, but the remaining 20  percent, in being
Spanish, was “pure and original.”70 At the same time, the zarzuelistas were

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to be blamed, or at least pitied, for having missed the chance to create a truly
Spanish opera.71 Again, some critics saw the Franco regime as an opportu-
nity to revive zarzuela and turn it into a true Spanish opera tradition, in the
same way other areas of national culture were being brought back to life
after the war. A few critics rushed to suggest government measures, which,
however, were never put into practice: Fernández-​Cid, one of the most con-
spicuous supporters of zarzuela, called for a state-​owned company devoted
to production and promotion of the genre72; he argued that its staff should
be paid only minimum wage, to ensure they would be working for the sake
of the nation and not for personal profit. Revista Literaria Musical urged the
government to pass a law to regulate zarzuela, and to protect impresarios
so that composers could focus on writing music without having to worry
about anything else.73 Victor Ruiz Albéniz also called for more government
support, and he suggested that the government should establish a national
zarzuela company and grant tax exemptions to such entities.74
Among the many critics who brought Spanish early music into the musi-
cal press, Anglès was one of the most conspicuous voices to write on the
topic in nonspecialist publications, namely in Radio Nacional, to which he
first contributed in December 1939. Given that he had very rarely engaged
in this kind of writing before, and that, at the time, he still had not been
confirmed as founding director of the IEM, it is plausible that he was look-
ing to increase his visibility outside his native Catalonia—​as suggested by
Otaño—​and to establish himself as a supporter of the new regime. Indeed,
in his very first article he implicitly presented his status as a professional
musicologist as crucial for the newly established regime: it was of pressing
importance, Anglès claimed, to establish, once and for all, the role Spain
had in universal music history, because in the past many amateur musi-
cologists had severely harmed Spain’s musical prestige with their insuffi-
ciently researched writings.75 Certainly, no one could accuse Anglès of not
having properly researched the topic he chose for his first Radio Nacional
article: the Cantigas de Santa María, which he had been studying since the
late 1910s.76 Anglès made use of his expertise to dispel a myth dissemi-
nated by amateur musicologists that did not fit well with the new ideals
of Hispanidad: there were some medieval melodies in the cantigas, Anglès
argued, that such musicologists had been unable to identify, and they thus
hypothesized that these melodies were of Arab origin. This was, in Anglès’s
opinion, totally wrong; he thought they were purely Spanish.77 With the
cantigas being, according to Anglès, sufficiently important by themselves to
give Spain a “prominent place” in the history of monody,78 Anglès’s inten-
tion was to define the work as purely Spanish in the racial sense and the
religious.

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  89

In a subsequent article, Anglès focused on a similarly crucial topic for

musical construction of Hispanidad: music in the court of the Catholic
monarchs, on which he was conducting research for Monumentos de la
música española. He credited Ferdinand and Isabella with having expelled
all foreign musicians from their chapels and having hired Spanish musi-
cians only, who dedicated themselves to “shaping, once and for all, a typi-
cally Spanish musical repertoire.”79 In a later article for Arbor covering the
entirety of Spanish music history, Anglès repeated that it was the duty of
Spanish musicology under the new regime to unveil and rightly appraise
the musical past to make sure that Spanish modern music attained “the
place it deserves in the modern destiny of our Fatherland.”80 And the place
he thought Spain deserved was that of being a pioneer in all eras of music
history: the Hispanic proto-​Christian communities of the sixth and sev-
enth centuries had already made significant contributions to the nascent
liturgical music of the Middle Ages,81 the Iberian Peninsula had also been
home to the first secular songs in Latin,82 and Spanish Renaissance poly-
phonists and vihuelistas had been at the forefront of European music.83
Anglès’s writings for Radio Nacional and Arbor were not the only project
he was involved in to disseminate Spanish early music among general audi-
ences. In May 1941, again as he was awaiting his appointment at the IEM,
he curated an exhibition to celebrate the centenary of Pedrell’s death at
the Biblioteca Nacional de Catalunya (renamed under the Franco regime
as Biblioteca Central de la Diputación de Barcelona). Archival material
donated by Pedrell to the Biblioteca was put on display to present the his-
tory of Spanish music from the Visigoth era, that is, several centuries before
Spain came to exist as a modern nation. “Spain had a peculiar chant and
musical notation as early as the seventh century,” claimed the exhibition’s
catalogue, suggesting, as Giménez Caballero and others had done on the
topic of Hispanidad, that a distinct Spanish identity existed already in the
years of the Visigoth kingdom.84 The Marquis of Lozoya and several local
and provincial government officers attended the opening of the exhibition,
thus making it clear that the new regime was willing to support musicologi-
cal research as well. It is worth mentioning, however, that, both the exhibi-
tion and Anglès’s writings for specialized and nonspecialist publications
avoided using the word Hispanidad in the sense of eternal essence of spirit,
and similarly shied away from mentioning race. Instead, Anglès chose to
emphasize the scientific nature of his scholarly criteria; in his Arbor article,
for example, he wrote that Spain “does not need to indulge in the fantasy
of ennobling its musical past,” because simply unveiling and properly pre-
senting the hidden treasures of Spain, without any unnecessary embellish-
ments, would suffice.85 This was certainly consonant with Anglès’s training

T H E SOUND OF H I S PA N I DA D   [ 89 ]
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in Germany during the 1920s and with the allegedly scientific, objective
approach he generally adopted in his work.86 Nevertheless, the claim
that Spain needed not embellish its musical past may also hide Anglès’s
reluctance in collaborating with a regime that so clearly clashed with his
commitment to Catalonia, especially given that Hispanidad pretty much
obliterated all pretensions to cultural and linguistic diversity within Spain.

JULIO GÓMEZ: A DISSIDENT VOICE?

Despite Anglès’s and Otaño’s personal differences and their contrasting

approaches when it came to presenting Spain’s musical past to the general
public, both of them felt equally outraged when Julio Gómez published
an article in the magazine Harmonía in which he was critical of the newly
founded Instituto Español de Musicología. According to Anglès, indigna-
tion erupted at the Conservatorio de Madrid, and Otaño visited the minis-
ter for national education in order to express his discomfort with Gómez’s
article; indignation, similarly, flared up at the IEM in Barcelona, and its
staff members “could not believe [there was] such ignorance and such care-
lessness from people who seemed to be far more cultured than that.”87
Gómez’s article, however, comes across as rather mild compared with
the controversies that had been so conspicuous in music criticism before
the Civil War and that Gómez himself had taken part in. Indeed, he did not
name the IEM, or Otaño or Anglès, in his Harmonía article.88 Nevertheless,
it is understandable that his rather subdued criticism was all the more vis-
ible in a climate in which any mildly negative comment about musical life
in Spain was normally paired with enthusiastic praise of the government’s
efforts. As Gómez pointed out:

It is very common to say that the State has never done anything; that it is only
now that the State is starting to concern itself with this matter [referring to edi-
tions of musical works], and that in the future everything will be perfectly fine.
This now is always whenever someone who is interested in editing something
in particular—​which is, almost always, the most useless music—​achieves his
goal.89

Gómez argued that the various Spanish governments since the nineteenth
century had in fact supported publication of musical works (he named
Hilarión Eslava’s Lírica Sacra Hispana and Martínez Torner’s Cancionero
musical de la lírica popular asturiana as examples), and that editions of wind
band music in Spain—​in which he was involved through Harmonía—​were

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of the highest quality, even without government support.90 It is not likely

that Gómez was referring to Anglès’s interests when he mentioned “use-
less” music; Gómez believed, and said so in his article, that the liturgical
music from the court of the Catholic monarchs was worth editing.91 Rather,
it was probably Gómez’s skepticism toward the overenthusiasm with which
the IEM’s project had been presented in the press that caused outrage at
both the Conservatorio de Madrid and the IEM itself.
This was not the first time, nor it would be the last, that Gómez was
critical of the policies of the new regime, particularly those concerning
research and dissemination of early music, within the narrow boundaries
where press censorship left him to do so. This is not to say that he opposed
early music research per se in any way; on the contrary, as a music librarian
and musicologist, he was a specialist in the eighteenth-​century tonadilla
escénica. Gómez’s writings in the 1940s are a reminder that interest in early
music flourished in early twentieth-​century Spain across the whole political
spectrum and adopted numerous approaches. After Francoism, however,
some of those approaches revealed themselves as more easily adaptable to
the new regime than others.
Born in 1886, Gómez studied composition under Bretón at the
Conservatorio de Madrid and concurrently graduated with a doctorate
in history from the Universidad Central. From the 1910s onward, he held
various full-​time jobs as a music librarian and archivist, most significantly
at the Conservatorio from 1915. In his spare time, he composed music, his
first success in the Madrid musical scene being Suite en la in 1917; he con-
ducted musicological research, and he wrote music criticism for various
periodicals and newspapers, most significantly El liberal. A self-​confessed
nineteenth-​century nationalist composer, Gómez repeatedly expressed his
disapproval of Salazar’s Europeanist solutions for Spanish music, arguing
instead that Spanish composers should reabsorb their own national tradi-
tions (particularly in theatrical music) as the path to national regenera-
tion92; he was similarly critical of the Grupo de los Ocho and their ironic
approach to music.93
In spite of his dislike for Salazar and the Grupo de los Ocho, which theo-
retically should have helped him fit in the musical life of the early Franco
regime, Gómez’s attempts at reestablishing himself as a critic, composer,
and musicologist after the war initially met with difficulties. Although the
Republican government had urged all civil servants to leave Madrid at the
beginning of the Civil War and join the government in Valencia, Gómez
decided to stay in Madrid, unwilling to abandon the library of the con-
servatoire. After the war, however, some of his colleagues there accused
Gómez of having worked for El liberal and having been a member of various

T H E SOUND OF H I S PA N I DA D   [ 91 ]
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left-​wing organizations and trade unions (Izquierda Republicana, UGT,

Frente Popular). Gómez had to undergo an investigation—​including eleven
days in prison in April 1939 and being removed from his job as a librarian—​
which lasted until the end of 1939.94 However, he eventually managed to
dissipate the suspicions about his loyalty to the new regime by minimizing
his involvement in the leftist organizations.95
Though he avoided major punishment for his political sympathies, a
year after the end of the war Gómez was still not particularly optimistic
about his professional future. In a letter to Subirá, he complained that
all his efforts in favor of Spanish music and musicology had not been
rewarded by the new regime: it is true that Gómez had been reappointed
to his music librarian position at the Conservatorio and claimed he felt
respected as such, but he lamented that he was still forced to compose his
music in his free time, without receiving any support or recognition from
the government. His claims may seem surprising considering that his per-
sonal politics were closer to the Second Republic’s than to Francoism, but
musically he felt more at home in the new regime than among Salazar and
the Grupo de los Ocho, and he confessed to Subirá that he had hoped “to
flourish again as a composer and a critic, because of the natural tendency
which music should have experienced towards a conservative style …
which is, I believe, what I have always defended in my works and my music
criticism.”96 However, broadly considered, Gómez’s career as a composer
certainly advanced during the 1940s. It was under Francoism that he was
appointed, for the first time in his life, to a full-​time teaching position at
the Conservatorio de Madrid, having occasionally covered for his former
teaching Bretón during the 1910s; he was first made a professor of liter-
ary and musical culture in 1944, a professorship created expressly for him,
given his lifelong interest in helping music students develop a humanistic
and literary background.97 On Turina’s death in 1949, Gómez replaced him
as a professor of composition. His visibility as a composer also picked up.
In June 1940, for the first time after the war, he managed to have a work
of his given its first performance (two choral works, actually, in Ávila and
Salamanca, by the Zamora Choral Society), and he was awarded a composi-
tion prize by the Ateneo de Sevilla for his cantata Maese Pérez, el organista.98
During the rest of the decade, a number of Gómez’s works were premiered
by the Madrid orchestras.99 Moreover, generally speaking, Gómez’s creativ-
ity peaked in the Franco era, with some forty works completed between
1940 and 1962.100
It is more complicated to determine whether Gómez equally man-
aged to reconstruct his career as a music critic under Francoism. Once his
investigation had been resolved, Gómez was invited to write for Harmonía

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  93

again—​a periodical addressed to wind band conductors to which Gómez

had already contributed since its founding in 1916, and until it was tempo-
rarily suspended because of the Civil War.101 Gómez’s pre-​and postwar con-
tributions both took the same form: rather than reviewing specific music
works, he wrote a section under the name Comentarios del presente y del
pasado (commentaries about the present and the past) focusing on a range
of problems in Spanish musical life and on aspects of Spain’s musical past
that interested him from his work as a librarian and researcher.
In despite of Harmonía being a niche magazine that certainly could not
boast the circulation of Ritmo or Música. Revista Quincenal Ilustrada, Gómez
was clearly committed to his task of discussing various musical problems
for a readership of wind band conductors. Indeed, he did not see them
as a lesser audience: in line with his interest in spreading musical culture
to all levels of Spanish society, he considered wind conductors “the most
active and efficient section of our musical culture”102 and the only ones
who had significantly improved as a group over the last sixty years.103 He
also thought that, in medium-​sized and small Spanish cities, good wind
bands were more efficient than mediocre symphony orchestras in making
the orchestral repertoire known among the population.104 Nevertheless, he
sometimes could not hide his disappointment that he had not been able to
get a staff music critic position in a newspaper, comparable to the appoint-
ment at El liberal, and in one of his Harmonía articles he claimed that he
had been a music critic and would be happy to become one again if some-
one paid him to do so.105 However, Gómez’s writings for Harmonía—​and
his occasional contributions to Ritmo—​allowed him to express, within the
constraints of Francoist press censorship and the expectations of trium-
phalism placed on music critics, opinions on Spanish early music and its
research that dissented from the official views pressed by Otaño, and to
some extent by Anglès.
Gómez certainly seemed aware of the expectations placed on him as
a writer on music—​and specifically on early music—​by the newly estab-
lished regime. Shortly after Ritmo was relaunched, Otaño commissioned
an article for the magazine. Gómez would have rather published some of
his latest research, but he acquiesced to Otaño’s request that he publish
on the vihuelistas, including some photogravure prints of the vihuela books
kept at the Biblioteca Nacional; Otaño wanted at all costs to feature images
of the vihuela books for reasons of “archeological prestige,” in Gómez’s
words.106 Nevertheless, in the article Gómez still expressed opinions that
dissented from the perspectives Otaño and Anglès were introducing in the
historiography of Spanish early music. Referring vaguely to “Spanish music
criticism” but without naming any historians or critics, Gómez expressed

T H E SOUND OF H I S PA N I DA D   [ 93 ]
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his disagreement with the widespread pretense that the Spanish vihuelistas
had been ahead of their European counterparts and, more generally, that
Spanish musicians had historically been pioneers “in all matters”107—​as
Anglès had argued in Spanish music exhibition in 1941 and, later on, in his
1948 article in Arbor. Similarly, unlike Anglès, Gómez did not hesitate to
accept that Spanish music could have absorbed Arab influences; he claimed
that one of the reasons the vihuela developed in Spain was because the
Muslims had first introduced the lute there.108
Gómez’s articles for Harmonía again avoided naming Anglès, Otaño, or
any other music critic he disagreed with, but he did not hesitate to point out
what he considered to be the flaws of research into early music, which would
be easily recognizable to anyone familiar with the IEM’s work. Although
writing from a self-​confessed nationalist and regenerationist perspective,
Gómez was wary of narrating the history of Spanish music as a story of
triumph, defeat, and regeneration animated by Hispanidad, national iden-
tity, rejection of foreign influences, or any other presumably unifying but
undefined force. Instead of focusing on an abstract idea of national art, he
preferred to focus on the artists who produced it (“Although Art may not
have a fatherland, we artists do—​and if Art does not eat, unfortunately
we artists do have to eat. And the splendor of a country depends, in the
first instance, on the splendor of its artists.”109). Gómez claimed it was a
common mistake among Spanish historians (not only musicologists) to
“attribute to a particular era ideas, feelings, passions and concerns which
pertain to a later time”; for example, he wrote, it was common for Spanish
musicologists to “speak of Spanish music and vigorous reactions of Spanish
nationalism against the invasion of foreign music in times in which no one
considered the national character of music,”110 which Gómez considered
acceptable for “simple minds,” but not sound enough for construction of a
historical argument.111
Again, he named no names, but it is not difficult to imagine him refer-
ring to Anglès; indeed, at the end of the article, he proceeded to question
Pedrell, or rather the prevailing understanding of Pedrell among Spanish
musicologists, which of course the IEM, being based to a great extent
on Pedrell’s postulates, had been keen to promote. In Gómez’s opinion,
Pedrell’s musicological research had not really been the foundation of the
national school of composition of Albéniz, Falla, and Granados because
“fruitful artistic schools are not based upon theories, pedagogy or advice;
they are based upon works.”112 He similarly argued that “the Spanish school
that Pedrell wanted to found with all his theories and works was already
founded and lived next to him, without him noticing it—​and not only did
he not help the members of that school, but rather fought against them

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with all of his energy.”113 Gómez was obviously referring to the zarzuelistas,
such as Chapí, Giménez, and his own teacher, Bretón.114
Consonant with his role as a composer-​ musicologist-​librarian,
Gómez also saw musicology as a means rather than an end in itself,
and in a likely veiled attack on Ritmo and Otaño, he was remarkably
critical of how the newly established regime had chosen to celebrate
Victoria’s centenary:  on one hand, he claimed, the musicologists who
had been publishing articles about the life and works of Victoria were
not adding much to public knowledge; on the other, and more impor-
tantly, interest in musicological research had not encouraged Spanish
musicians to perform Victoria’s works, which should be the ultimate
goal of such musicological research (“Speeches, books, newspaper
articles, are only words”).115 He similarly complained that it had been
impossible to perform Pedrell’s works on the occasion of the centenary
in 1941, given that musicologists had not even thought about produc-
ing performing editions of his works.116 Musicology, he claimed, was
ancillary to music composition and performance; music research should
focus on one’s own country as a way of being “useful” to composers
and performers.117 Gómez thought that Spanish musicologists should
focus on Spanish music, not because it was better than other nations’
but because a musicologist needed firsthand knowledge of his musi-
cal environment (to which Gómez referred ironically as “the telephone
handbook”) rather than of “Egyptian hieroglyphics, cuneiform scripts,
palimpsests and medieval parchments.”118
Gómez’s critical approach to early music research under Francoist Spain
extended to other aspects of musical life; it was, after all, informed not only
by his particular expertise and interests as a music librarian and musicolo-
gist, but also by his view, as a nationalist composer, that early music research
was one of several aspects necessary for cultural and musical regeneration
of the country. He wrote extensively about how the state should protect
musical composition (but disagreed that the Franco regime had been the
first government to do so)119; about the need to unify the curriculum of
all Spanish conservatoires120; and about both the excessive optimism and
excessive pessimism that simultaneously plagued contemporary Spanish
composition, which led critics and musical authorities to consider that all
Spanish contemporary music was either similarly excellent or similarly des-
picable.121 Although his opinions were normally cautiously expressed and
he, like other critics, sometimes felt the need to soften his criticism with
enthusiastic praise of the government or specific officers,122 his writings for
Harmonía reveal the quest of a writer on music to find a space of dissent,
however mild, within the regime.

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NOTES

1. Ernesto Giménez Caballero, Arte y estado (Madrid:  Ediciones de La Gaceta

Literaria, 1935), 254.
2. María Isabel García Cabrera, Tradición y vanguardia en el pensamiento artístico espa-
ñol (1939–​1959) (Granada: Universidad de Granada, 1998), 297–​298.
3. Giuliana di Febo, Ritos de guerra y de victoria en la España Franquista (Bilbao:
Desclée de Brouwer, 2002), 116.
4. Nemesio Otaño, “Los solemnísimos funerales de José Antonio en El Escorial,”
Radio Nacional, no. 57 (1939), 12–​13. The score for the trumpet fanfares, which
Otaño had researched, was reprinted in the magazine, under the generic name of
“toque militar español,” without indication of the composer.
5. Letter from Eduardo Martínez Torner to Adolfo Salazar, Feb. 12, 1924, reprinted
in Emilio Casares Rodicio (ed.), La música en la Generación del 27. Homenaje a Lorca
1915–​1939, ed. Emilio Casares Rodicio, 20–​34 (Madrid:  Ministerio de Cultura/​
INAEM, 1986), 164.
6. For example, both Sopeña and Rodrigo complained that Spanish early music for
organ was not performed often enough. Federico Sopeña, “Madrigalistas,” Arriba,
Apr. 10, 1945, 7; Joaquín Rodrigo, “Música,” Pueblo, Apr. 22, 1943, 7.
7. Letter from Nemesio Otaño to Valentín Ruiz Aznar, Jan. 20, 1937, unpub-
lished [AHSL, 009/​001.011]; letter from Antonio Mompeón to Nemesio Otaño,
Feb. 21, 1937, unpublished [AHSL, 005.068]; letter from Agustín Cadarso García
de Jalón to Nemesio Otaño, Feb. 22, 1937, unpublished [AHSL, 005.070]; let-
ter from José Múgica to Nemesio Otaño, Feb. 2, 1937, unpublished [AHSL,
005.067]; letter from Nemesio Otaño to Manuel de Falla, Nov. 17, 1938 [AHSL,
004/​010.008].
8. Letter from Ignacio Fernández Eleizgaray to Nemesio Otaño, unpublished, day
and month unknown, 1937 [AHSL, 003/​014.001]; letter from Nemesio Otaño
to Manuel de Falla, Mar. 1, 1939, unpublished [AHSL, 004/​010.011]; letter from
César Figuerido to Nemesio Otaño, Apr. 18, 1940, unpublished [AHSL, 004/​
008.034]; letter from Jesús García Leoz to Joaquín Turina, May 2, 1940, unpub-
lished [AHSL, 007/​009.02]; letter from Manuel García Matos to Nemesio Otaño,
July 17, 1940, unpublished [AHSL, 002/​003.008]; letter from Domingo Lázaro
to Eduardo López-​Chavarri, May 12, 1941, reprinted in Eduardo López-​Chavarri.
Correspondencia, ed. Rafael Díaz Gómez and Vicente Galbis López (Valencia:
Generalitat Valenciana, 1996), 323.
9. Letter from Nemesio Otaño to Manuel de Falla, July 1, 1940, unpublished; letter
from Otaño to Falla, Aug. 20, 1941, unpublished.
10. Letter from Juan Puiggrós to Nemesio Otaño, Apr. 11, 1940, unpublished [AHSL,
003/​024.001]; letter from Enrique Casals to Nemesio Otaño, Aug. 19, 1940 [AHSL,
003/​024.003]; letter from Casals to Otaño, Dec. 2, 1940 [AHSL, 003/​024.005].
11. Letter from Nemesio Otaño to Manuel de Falla, Nov. 17, 1938, unpublished.
12. Geoffrey Jensen, Irrational Triumph:  Cultural Despair, Military Nationalism, and
the Ideological Origins of Franco’s Spain (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2002),
80–​114.
13. Anonymous, “Música militar española,” Radio Nacional, no. 2 (1939), 7.
14. Norberto Almandoz, “Música,” Heraldo de Aragón, Aug. 22, 1938.
15. For example, Fernando Irigaz, “Cómo transformar la Marcha Granadera en himno
nacional,” Heraldo de Aragón, Jan. 6, 1937; Anonymous, “Música,” Heraldo de
Aragón, Jan. 30, 1937; Anonymous, “Música,” Heraldo de Aragón, Feb. 18, 1937.

[ 96 ]  Music Criticism and Music Critics in Early Francoist Spain

  97

16. Letter from Fernando Rodríguez del Río to Nemesio Otaño, July 22, 1940, unpub-
lished [AHSL, 017/​003.005]; letter from Rodríguez del Río to Otaño, Oct. 18,
1940, unpublished [AHSL, 017/​003.006].
17. Letter from Nemesio Otaño to Higinio Anglès, Apr. 21, 1940, unpublished [BNC,
Fons Higini Anglès, uncatalogued].
18. Nemesio Otaño, “El himno nacional español,” Ritmo (1940), no. 133, 4–​5.
19. Ibid., 4.
20. Otaño, “El himno nacional y la música militar,” 3.
21. “Organería Española S.A.,” Ritmo, no. 146 (1941), 11.
22. Refers to the Spanish Civil War.
23. Françoise Clastrier and Oscar Candendo, “Órganos franceses en el País Vasco y
Navarra (1855–1925),” Cuadernos de la sección de música, no. 7 (1994), 155 and
200–​201.
24. Ramón G. Amezúa, “El órgano, artísticamente,” Radio Nacional, no. 133 (1941), 14–​15.
25. At the time, Victoria was commonly thought to have been born in 1540. It was
not until 1960 that Ferreol Hernández established that his birth was in 1548, as is
commonly accepted today.
26. Anonymous, “Tres centenarios,” Ritmo, no. 135 (1940), 3.
27. Such articles include Juan de Contreras y López de Ayala [as Marquis de

Lozoya], “Algunas noticias familiares de Tomás Luis de Victoria,” Ritmo, no. 135
(1940), 4; José Artero, “La pobreza de Tomás Luis de Victoria,” Ritmo, no. 136
(1940), 4–​5; Artero, “Dos problemas psicológicos de Victoria,” Ritmo, no. 137 (1940),
4–​5; Artero, “Obras históricas de Victoria,” Ritmo, no. 138 (1940), 6–​7; Artero,
“Obras históricas de Victoria,” Ritmo, no. 139 (1940), 4–​ 5; Artero, “Obras
históricas de Victoria,” Ritmo, no. 139 (1940), 7–​8.
28. Articles in the special issue include Juan de Contreras y López de Ayala [as Marqués
de Lozoya], “Algunas noticias familiares de Tomás Luis de Victoria,” Ritmo, no. 141
(1940), 17–​25; Ferreol Hernández, “La cuna y la escuela de Tomás L. de Victoria,”
Ritmo, no. 141 (1940), 28–​34; Fernando del Valle Lersundi, “La supuesta pobreza
de Victoria,” Ritmo, no. 141 (1940), 35–​37; Nemesio Otaño, “Fundamentos de
las tendencias espirituales y artísticas de Victoria,” Ritmo, no. 141 (1940), 39–​
60; Francisco Pujol, “La estética en la obra de Tomás Luis de Victoria,” Ritmo, no.
141 (1940), 61–​72; F. Barberá, “Tomás Luis de Victoria, músico español,” Ritmo,
no. 141 (1940), 73–​77; David Pujol, “Ideas estéticas de T. L. de Victoria,” Ritmo, no.
141 (1940), 79–​86; Luis Millet, “Recuerdos sobre Victoria,” Ritmo, no. 141 (1940),
87–​90; Higinio Anglès, “A propósito de las ediciones originales de Victoria,” Ritmo,
no. 141 (1940), 91–​101; Nemesio Otaño, “Los últimos años de Victoria en Madrid,”
Ritmo, no. 141 (1940), 103–​110.
29. Jesús Rubio, “Discurso del Ilmo. Sr. Subsecretario de Educación Nacional D. Jesús
Rubio en el día de la inauguración del Centenario en Ávila (7 de mayo de 1940),”
Ritmo, no. 141 (1940), 9. On the idea of empire as a unifying force, and the rami-
fications of this conception in Francoist cultural relations with Latin America, see
Lorenzo Delgado Gómez-​Escalonilla, Imperio de papel. Acción cultural y política exte-
rior durante el primer Franquismo (Madrid:  Consejo Superior de Investigaciones
Científicas, 1992), 123.
30. Ibid., 15.
31. Anonymous, “El centenario de T. L. de Victoria,” Ritmo, no. 135 (1940), 12.
32. Anonymous, “Breve reseña de los actos celebrados en España con motivo del
Cuarto Centenario oficial de Tomás Luis de Victoria,” Ritmo, no. 141 (1940),
111–​112.

T H E SOUND OF H I S PA N I DA D  [ 97 ]
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3. Federico Sopeña, “Prólogo a la quincena musical,” Arriba, Sep. 8, 1940, 7.

3
34. Julio Gómez, “Los vihuelistas españoles del siglo XVI,” Ritmo, no. 134 (1940), 4–​5.
35. Anonymous, “Tres centenarios,” 3.
36. Barberá, “Tomás Luis de Victoria,” 75.
37. Anonymous, “Nuestro número extraordinario,” Ritmo, no. 141 (1940), 5. Other
examples of music criticism naming Victoria as a composer or musician of the
Race are Antonio de las Heras, “Mística y música de un imperio,” Vértice, no. 29
(1939), 5; Tomás Andrade de Silva, “La canción española fuera de España,” Revista
Literaria Musical, no. 34 (1947), 4.
38. For discussions of the concept of race in pre-​1939 music criticism, see Carol A.
Hess, Manuel de Falla and Modernism in Spain, 1898–​1936 (Chicago:  University
of Chicago Press, 2001), 65–​71; Gemma Pérez Zalduondo, “Racial Discourses
in Spanish Musical Literature, 1915–​1939,” in Western Music and Race, ed. Julie
Brown (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 216–​229.
39. Di Febo, Ritos de guerra, 86–​91. Ironically, Saint Theresa was not cristiana vieja;
she was instead descended from conversos, or Jews who nominally converted to
Christianity to avoid being expelled from Spain in 1492, but kept their faith and
rituals in private.
40. Robert M. Stevenson, Spanish Cathedral Music in the Golden Age (Berkeley and Los
Angeles: University of California Press, 1961), 455.
41. Contreras López de Ayala, “Algunas noticias familiares,” 4.
42. Hernández, “La cuna y la escuela,” 27–​34.
43. Valle Lersundi, “La supuesta pobreza de Victoria,” 35–​37.
44. Anonymous, Miscelánea en homenaje a Monseñor Higinio Anglés (Barcelona: Consejo
Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1958–​1961), ix.
45. Publications and editions (all of them published by the Music Department of
the Biblioteca de Catalunya, Barcelona) include Els madrigals i la missa de difunts
d’en Brudieu (1921, with Pedrell); Johannis Pujol. Opera omnia (1927–​1932); Musici
organici Iohannis Cabanilles: Opera omnia (1927–​1956); A. Soler: Sis quintets per a
instruments d’arc i orgue o clave obligat (1933, with Gerhard); La mùsica a Catalunya
fins al segle XIII (1935). Catalan topics on which Anglès published articles during
these years include the Epístola farcida de Sant Esteve, the Cant del la Sibilla,
Mateu Flecha, and Pedrell.
46. Letters from Higinio Anglès to Josep Maria Lamaña, Nov. 1 and 13, 1938, unpub-
lished [BNC, Fons Higini Anglès, uncatalogued].
47. Letter from Nemesio Otaño to Higinio Anglès, Jan. 25, 1938, unpublished [BNC,
Fons Higini Anglès, uncatalogued].
48. Ibid.
49. Letter from Nemesio Otaño to Higinio Anglès, Mar. 14, 1938, unpublished [BNC,
Fons Higini Anglès, uncatalogued].
50. Letters from Nemesio Otaño to Higinio Anglès, May 19 and 22, 1938, unpub-
lished [BNC, Fons Higini Anglès, uncatalogued].
51. Letters from Nemesio Otaño to Higinio Anglès, Jan. 8, 1939, and Apr. 21, 1940,
unpublished [BNC, Fons Higini Anglès, uncatalogued].
52. Letter from Nemesio Otaño to Higinio Anglès, Jan. 8, 1939.
53. Letter from Nemesio Otaño to Higinio Anglès, July 29, 1937, unpublished [BNC,
Fons Higini Anglès, uncatalogued].
54. For example, Higinio Anglès (ed.), La música en la corte de Carlos V (Barcelona:
Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1944), 9.

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55. Letters from Higinio Anglès to José Subirá, Nov. 6, 1943, unpublished [BNE,
M.SUBIRÁ/​1/​11]; and Feb. 9, 1944, unpublished [BNE, M.SUBIRÁ/​1/​11].
56. La música en la corte de los Reyes Católicos, vol. I (1941); La música en la corte
de Carlos V (1944); La música en la corte de los Reyes Católicos, vol. II (1946);
Recopilación de sonetos y villancicos a quatro y a cinco (1946); La música en
la corte de los Reyes Católicos, vol. III (1951); Opera Omnia de Cristóbal de
Morales, 8  vols. (1952–​1971); Opera Omnia de Tomás Luis de Victoria, 4  vols.
(1965–​1968).
57. Letter from Higinio Anglès to Diego Angulo, Sep.  2, 1940, unpublished [BNE,
M.SUBIRÁ/​1/​11].
58. Letter from Higinio Anglès to José Subirá, Mar. 4, 1942, unpublished [BNE,
M.SUBIRÁ/​1/​11].
59. Letter from Higinio Anglès to José Subirá, Jan. 27, 1932, unpublished [BNE,
M.SUBIRÁ/​1/​11].
60. Letter from Higinio Anglès to José Subirá, Nov. 6, 1943, unpublished [BNE,
M.SUBIRÁ/​1/​11].
61. Felipe Pedrell, Por nuestra música (Barcelona: Heinrich, 1891), 17.
62. Juan José Carreras, “Hijos de Pedrell:  la historiografía musical española y sus
orígenes nacionalistas,” Il Saggiatore Musicale, no. 8 (2001), 135.
63. For the research program of the IEM at the time of its foundation, see

Anonymous, “Nuevos institutos,” Arbor, vol. 1, no. 1 (1944), 1. Pedrell’s influence
extended beyond musicological research to other aspects of musical policy under
Francoism; see Gemma Pérez Zalduondo, “La utilización de la figura y la obra de
Felip Pedrell en el marco de la exaltación nacionalista de posguerra (1939–​1945),”
Recerca Musicològica, no. 11–​12 (1991), 476–​480.
64. Federico Sopeña, quoted in Anonymous, “Homenaje a Barbieri en la Asociación de
Cultura Musical,” Pueblo, May 5, 1942, 7.
65. Tomás Andrade de Silva, “Labor musical de la Delegación nacional de propa-
ganda,” Arriba, Nov. 7, 1943, 2.
66. Eduardo López-​Chavarri, “Orientaciones,” Ritmo, no. 182 (1944), 23.
67. Mariano Daranos, “Abolengo de nuestra música de cámara,” ABC, Jan. 16 1942, 3.
68. Victoriano Echevarría, “Orígenes de la zarzuela,” Boletín del Colegio de Directores de
Banda de Música Civiles, no. 34 (1946), 3–​5.
69. Federico Sopeña, “Un estreno de Ramón Usandizaga,” Arriba, Sep. 15, 1940, 7.
70. Sopeña, quoted in Anonymous, “Homenaje a Barbieri,” 7.
71. For example, Rafael Villaseca, “De ‘Guzmán el Bueno’ a la ‘Verbena de la Paloma’,”
ABC, Mar. 10, 1951, 15; Rodrigo A. de Santiago, “Tomás Bretón,” Boletín del Colegio
de Directores de Bandas de Música Civiles, no. 80 (1950), 6.
72. Antonio Fernández-​Cid, “El teatro lírico en España. Al margen de una campaña de
género chico,” Música. Revista Quincenal Ilustrada, 14 (1945), 22.
73. Anonymous, “Editorial,” Revista Literaria Musical, no. 27 (1945), 3
74. Víctor Ruiz Albéniz, [as Acorde], “Zarzuela española,” Arriba, Nov. 7, 1943, 11.
75. Higinio Anglès, “Las cantigas de Santa María del Rey don Alfonso el Sabio,”
Radio Nacional, no. 59 (1939), 4–​5. A second article was published as Anglès, “Las
cantigas de Santa María del Rey don Alfonso el Sabio,” Radio Nacional, no. 87
(1940), 4–​5.
76. Higinio Anglès (ed.), La música de las cantigas de Santa María del Rey Alfonso el Sabio.
Facsímil, transcripción y estudio crítico, vol. 1 (Barcelona: Diputación Provincial de
Barcelona/​Biblioteca Central, 1943), ix.

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77. Recent research, however, has unveiled instances of Arab influence on the canti-
gas, specially in the rhythm; see Manuel Pedro Ferreira, “Andalusian Music and
the Cantigas de Santa Maria,” in Cobras e Son. Papers on the text, music and manu-
scripts of the “Cantigas de Santa María,” ed. Stephen Parkinson (Oxford: Legenda,
2000), 10–​11.
78. Anglès, “Las cantigas de Santa María” (1939), 4.
79. Higinio Anglès, “La música española en la España imperial,” Radio Nacional,
no. 140 (1941), 6–​7.
80. Higinio Anglès, “España en la historia de la música universal,” Arbor, vol. 11,
no. 30 (1948), 50.
81. Ibid., 8.
82. Ibid., 13.
83. Ibid., 18.
84. Higinio Anglès, La música española desde la Edad Media hasta nuestros días: Catálogo
de la exposición histórica celebrada en conmemoración del primer centenario del maes-
tro Felipe Pedrell (18 mayo–​25 junio 1941) (Barcelona:  Diputación provincial de
Barcelona, 1941), 3.
85. Anglès, “España en la historia de la música universal,” 51.
86. Anglès, La música de las Cantigas, ix–​x.
87. Letter from Higinio Anglès to José Subirá, Dec. 29, 1943, unpublished [BNE,
M.SUBIRÁ/​1/​11].
88. Julio Gómez, “Comentarios del presente y del pasado,” Harmonía, October–​
December (1943), 5.
89. Ibid., 5.
90. Ibid., 4.
91. Ibid.
92. Beatriz Martínez del Fresno, Julio Gómez. Una época de la música española
(Madrid: ICCMU, 1999), 23.
93. Ibid., 28.
94. Ibid., 377.
95. Ibid., 381.
96. Unpublished letter from Julio Gómez to José Subirá, Apr. 9, 1940.
97. Julio Gómez, “Comentarios del presente y del pasado,” Harmonía, July–​September
issue (1946), 2; Gómez, “Cultura literaria aplicada a la música. Concepto y plan de
la asignatura,” Harmonía, April–​June (1947), 1–​9.
98. Letter from Julio Gómez to José Subirá, June 23, 1940, unpublished [BNE,
M.SUBIRÁ/​1/​105].
99. These include Maese Pérez in 1941 by the Orquesta Filarmónica, La gacela de
Almoctamid in 1942 by the Orquesta Sinfónica, a piano concerto in 1944 by the
Orquesta Nacional, and Concierto lírico in 1945 by the Orquesta Nacional.
100. Martínez del Fresno, Julio Gómez, 20.
101. Gómez contributed to Harmonía from 1916 to 1916, and then from 1929 to 1935.
See Martínez del Fresno, Julio Gómez, 215.
102. Julio Gómez, “Comentarios del presente y del pasado,” Harmonía, April–​June
(1941), 4.
103. Gómez, “Comentarios del presente y del pasado,” Harmonía, January–​March
(1946), 1.
104. Gómez, “Comentarios del presente y del pasado,” Harmonía, October–​December
(1941), 3; Gómez, “Comentarios del presente y del pasado,” Harmonía,
April–​June (1945), 1.

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105. Julio Gómez, “Comentarios del presente y del pasado,” Harmonía, April–​June
(1944), 3.
106. Letter from Julio Gómez to José Subirá, June 23, 1940.
107. Gómez, “Los vihuelistas españoles,” 4.
108. Ibid., 8. During the remainder of the decade, Gómez only occasionally contrib-
uted to Ritmo, mostly on music bibliography topics he was familiar with thanks
to his work as a librarian; see Julio Gómez, “Un autógrafo de Bizet en la Biblioteca
del Conservatorio,” Ritmo, no. 138 (1940), 4–​6; Gómez, “Un concierto sinfónico
español en 1875,” Ritmo, no. 155 (1942), 4–​5; Gómez, “La biblioteca del conserva-
torio,” Ritmo, no. 160 (1942), 30–​32; Gómez, “Pedagogía y autoanálisis,” Ritmo,
no. 176 (1944), 4–​6.
109. Gómez, “Comentarios,” April–​June (1945), 4.  See also, on Falla’s Spanishness,
Gómez, “Comentarios del presente y del pasado,” Harmonía, January–​March
(1947), 2.
110. Julio Gómez, “Comentarios del presente y del pasado,” Harmonía, October–​
December (1947), 3.
111. Ibid., 5.
112. Ibid., 5.
113. Ibid., 5.
114. Bretón and Pedrell indeed had significant differences over their approaches to
founding a Spanish operatic tradition. See Martínez del Fresno, Julio Gómez, 49.
115. Gómez, “Comentarios,” April–​June (1941), 4.
116. Gómez, “Comentarios del presente y del pasado,” Harmonía, July–​September
(1941), 3–​4.
117. Gómez, “Comentarios,” January–​March (1946), 1.
118. Gómez, “Comentarios,” July–​September (1946), 3.
119. Gómez, “Comentarios,” October–​December (1943), 1–​2; Gómez, “Comentarios
del presente y del pasado,” Harmonía, July–​September (1944), 1.
120. Gómez, “Comentarios,” April–​June (1944), 1; Gómez, “Comentarios del presente
y del pasado,” Harmonía, July–​September (1945), 1–​3.
121. Gómez, “Comentarios del presente y del pasado,” Harmonía, April–​June
(1943), 3–​4.
122. Gómez, “Comentarios,” July–​September (1944), 1; Gómez, “Comentarios del pre-
sente y del pasado,” Harmonía, April–​June (1946), 1.

T H E SOUND OF H I S PA N I DA D   [ 101 ]
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  103

CHAPTER 4

Reviewing Traditional Music
Toward Unity of the Men and the Land of Spain

I n his 1948 article for Arbor on the history of Spanish music, Anglès did
not only write about the musicians working for the Catholic monarchs,
the music of the vihuelistas, and Renaissance polyphony to exemplify how
the spirit or essence behind Spanish identity had expressed itself in sound
through the centuries. Traditional music had also been crucial, according
to Anglès, in granting Spain a significant role in universal music. Anglès
argued, following Pedrell’s concept of música natural,1 that Spanish art and
traditional music—​in other words, Spanish high and low culture—​were in
constant synergy, with Spanish folklore showing traits derived from Greek
culture, Provencal lyric poetry, and medieval religious plays.2 There were no
legacies, however, from the music of Al-​Andalus, as written by Anglès when
he was trying to refute the theory that the melismae typical of the music of
southern Spain had Arab origins3; as with Spanish early music, traditional
music also had to be fitted within Hispanidad, and this made it necessary
to minimize or excise any connections to religions other than Catholicism.
Anglès had a lifelong interest in traditional music. In his youth he col-
lected traditional songs in his home province of Tarragona.4 Nevertheless,
he soon found himself focusing mostly on Spanish early music during his
years at the Biblioteca Nacional de Catalunya, and his interest in traditional
music was not rekindled by the Franco regime in any significant way. His
contributions to Monumentos and Anuario Musical all focused on Spanish
art music, and he was at first skeptical about founding a department of
folk music within the IEM: Otaño intended to create, and direct himself, a
section of folklore within the IEM, but as Anglès, unhappy about Otaño’s
104

interference, confided to Subirá, “let us focus first on the Monumentos and

the catalogues, and then, little by little, we will start to think about folk-
lore.”5 The folklore department of the IEM was eventually founded in 1944,
under the direction not of Otaño but of Marius Schneider, a German folk-
lorist fleeing the Nazi regime whom Anglès personally selected for the job
while he focused on the Monumentos. Schneider remained in office until
1951; during his tenure, he organized fieldwork expeditions, or misiones
folklóricas, in which several researchers collected folk material in vari-
ous regions of Spain, with the aim of creating and publishing a corpus of
Spanish folk music. The IEM also organized regular contests to distinguish
the best compilations of folklore, usually from specific regions.6
It was, however, not the IEM but rather the Sección Femenina that
allowed Spanish traditional music to repeatedly make the headlines in
newspapers and magazines during the early Franco regime. This is because,
according to Sopeña in his 1949 account of the first ten years of music
under Francoism, it was thanks to the Sección Femenina that “authentic
and genuine folklore now regularly visits Madrid, that is, the song, the
dance, the costumes, the ‘atmosphere’, thoroughly reconstructed follow-
ing detailed study. It is only this living folklore that can bring us some-
thing with substantial and effective consequences.”7 The Sección Femenina
was founded in 1934 as the women’s department of the Falange under the
direction of José Antonio Primo de Rivera’s sister Pilar, who remained its
leader through the Civil War and all of the dictatorship until 1977. It was
already during the Civil War that the Sección Femenina developed a strong
interest in traditional music, with its first cohort of instructoras being
trained in 1938.8 These were young women sent by the organization to vil-
lages and rural areas to collect traditional dances and songs, which would
then be published and taught throughout the country by the instructoras
themselves, mainly to children and other young women.
After Franco’s victory, the Sección Femenina was put in charge of organ-
izing education and leisure activities for Spanish girls and young women
throughout the country. Traditional music was, from the beginning, a cru-
cial part of its program:  it was in 1939 that local ensembles of amateur
female performers specializing in traditional song and dance were estab-
lished under the name of Coros y Danzas (literally, “choirs and dances”).
More significantly, on May 30, 1939, the national committee of the Sección
Femenina, in its first significant meeting after the war, which was held in
Medina del Campo with Franco in attendance, named traditional music as
one of the three elements that would ensure the unity of Spain in the future
(the other two were Spanish soil and national-​syndicalism). In the meeting
itself, traditional song and dance were given the utmost importance, with

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thousands of women attending from all regions of Spain and singing tra-
ditional songs as they paraded before Franco.9 The strong presence of tra-
ditional music in large-​scale political events demonstrates how the Sección
Femenina did not regard collecting, publishing, and teaching traditional
music as a mere pastime or a nostalgic attempt at rescuing the music from
the past. On the contrary, such activities had a clear political intention and
were meant to address a specific problem: separatism, particularly in the
Basque Country, Catalonia, and to a lesser extent Galicia. Members of the
Sección Femenina were required to learn and perform songs and dances
from all over Spain; eventually (or such was the rationale), all Spaniards
would be acquainted with traditional music from all Spanish regions and
would also come to regard all of them as their own, thus eroding regional
differences and making traditional music uniform throughout the country.
The cancioneros, or collections of popular songs mainly aimed at nonprofes-
sional performance and teaching, pursued the same end.10 As Pilar Primo
de Rivera put it in a well-​known quotation from 1942:

When the Catalans can sing the songs of Castile, when all Castilians know the
sardana11 and can play the txistu,12 when Andalusian cante13 shows all its depth
and philosophy, when the songs of Galicia get to be known in Levante, when
50,000 or 60,000 voices raise to sing the same song, then we will be able to say
that we have achieved unity among all men and lands of Spain.14

Moreover, with the Sección Femenina being an all-​women institution, the

Franco regime introduced a hitherto unknown gender divide into collec-
tion, promotion, and performance of folklore. Although the equivalent
organizations for boys and young men—​the Frente de Juventudes and,
from 1960 onward, the Organización Juvenil Española—​also included
singing of traditional songs in their training programs, in no way was it
as ubiquitous as within the Sección Femenina. There certainly were other
entities catering to both genres, such as the Organización Sindical de
Educación y Descanso (Trade Organization for Education and Leisure)
within the government-​controlled workers’ association Sindicato Vertical.
The Organización Sindical convened and managed choirs and other tradi-
tional music ensembles throughout the country with the aim of promoting
a way of entertainment for the population that was healthy and morally
appropriate; even so, it did not enjoy the nationwide presence or the press
coverage of the Sección Femenina.
Through song and dance, the Sección Femenina strongly codified the
bodies and gender roles of women,15 but at the same time it gave them
a political role in construction of the nation, at least nominally; through

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their involvement with traditional music, women could, and should, help
achieve and preserve the unity of Spain and educate men and children fol-
lowing traditional Spanish values.16 From the 1940s onward, the political
role of women involved in folklore extended to supporting Spain’s diplo-
matic relations with countries in the Western Bloc. Coros y Danzas toured
abroad for the first time in 1948, under the auspices of the Foreign Service
of the Sección Femenina, giving performances at embassies and cultural
associations in Argentina and Brazil. In the following years they performed
in Peru and Colombia (1949), at the Llangollen festival in Wales (1950),
in the Middle East and the United States (1950), and in Paris, Rome, and
Venice (1951).17 Through numerous reports on the musical activities of the
Sección Femenina and other organizations, or simply by enthusiastically
defending folklore, newspapers and magazines under the early Franco
regime helped establish a connection between Spanish traditional music
and the values of Hispanidad. Writings on Spanish traditional music were
also intended to reach a broader audience than those on early or new music;
indeed, news stories about the Sección Femenina were not confined to the
music columns of newspapers, but appeared in other sections and even
on the front page, and some magazines outside the Madrid mainstream
circles—​such as Boletín del Colegio de Directores de Bandas de Música Civiles
or Revista Literaria Musical—​devoted considerable attention to traditional
music events.
Although it was thanks to these writings that traditional music was
made into an essential component of Hispanidad, interest in traditional
music was by no means a novelty under the Franco regime. The first collec-
tions of Spanish folklore were published in the early nineteenth century;
many more appeared during the remainder of the century.18 As products
of the various nationalist and regionalist movements that flourished dur-
ing this time, most collections aimed to present either the folklore of a
particular region (usually the Basque Country, Catalonia, and Galicia) as a
differential trait setting that region apart from the rest of Spain and assert-
ing its national identity against the perceived cultural monopoly of Castile,
or regional and local differences in traditional music not as an expression
of the existence of differing national identities within Spain but rather as a
manifestation of diversity within unity.19 Pedrell’s Cancionero musical popu-
lar español, published between 1918 and 1922, is an example of the latter;
not surprisingly, it was published during the years in which debates about
national regeneration of Spain were at a peak.
As was the case with research into Spanish early music, during the
first three decades of the twentieth century, interest in traditional music
was not the province of one particular political ideology; governments of

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  107

various sorts supported research and dissemination of folklore under one

form or another, informed by ideas of national self-​awareness and regen-
eration. The Junta para Ampliación de Estudios (Society for Extension
of Studies) and the Centro de Estudios Históricos (Center for Historical
Studies) were founded by Spanish liberal governments in 1907 and 1910
respectively, with the aim of promoting scientific research into all dis-
ciplines as a source of regeneration and progress for the country. They
both supported research into Spanish traditional music, with Eduardo
Martínez Torner collecting Spanish folklore in numerous field trips for the
Junta20 and also contributing to the Centro together with another future
exile, Jesús Bal y Gay. Under the Second Republic, Martínez Torner also
found a welcoming environment for his interest in traditional music: he
took part, together with other well-​known intellectuals such as Federico
García Lorca, Antonio Machado, and the future exile Óscar Esplá in the
Republic’s Misiones Pedagógicas, aimed at introducing a range of cultural
experiences to the Spanish rural population through series of talks, work-
shops, lectures, itinerant libraries, cinema screenings, concerts and recit-
als, and theater performances.21 Similarly, most of the Grupo de los Ocho
and other composers committed to modernization of Spanish music,
such as Roberto Gerhard, showed an interest in folklore both before and
after exile; this was normally coupled with concern and reflection on how
to best make use of Spanish traditional music as a renovating force for
Spanish music, all the while escaping clichéd uses of folklore. In this, Falla
was a model for many.22
Under Francoism, traditional music had to be adapted to the new under-
standings of Spanish identity promoted by the regime. Music journalism
and criticism played an important role in this; for example, a folk song was
now not simply a folk song, but a symbol of the unity of the country and
of the military prowess of the Francoist army. After all, it was surely not by
chance that the first of April—​the same day the Civil War ended in 1939—​
was turned, shortly after the war, into the Día de la Canción (Day of the
Song), perhaps because when Franco announced that the war had ended
“the Spanish population demonstrated their joy by organizing patriotic
demonstrations and singing cheerful songs. Song is a spontaneous expres-
sion of joy, optimism and hope, and at that time Spaniards felt these three
emotions because the war had ended and because a triumphant dawn was
awaiting the Fatherland.”23 Folk songs were not just an expression of joy,
but also a force that crucially helped the military triumph, with Francoist
soldiers often singing them to gather courage and stimulate patriotism
(“the same songs which, not long ago, sounded in the battlefields, sacri-
ficed for the homeland, of Teruel, Ebro, Brunete”).24

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Conversely, some military and war hymns composed during the Spanish
Civil War or shortly before, such as Cara al sol and Montañas nevadas, were
printed in the cancioneros of the Sección Femenina next to bona fide tra-
ditional songs, so as to emphasize that both genres ultimately served the
same aims. The patriotic role of traditional song, however, did not end
with the war effort. After the Civil War, traditional song was to continue
exerting a crucial influence in the cultural and symbolic construction of
Spain, now that physical construction had been achieved; Joaquín Turina
described the Día de la Canción as an impulse for yearlong efforts to
achieve national construction and unity, especially for younger Spaniards.25
Similarly, Adelaida (believed to be a pseudonym for the identity of a female
primary school teacher) named in Radio Nacional the folk song as the basis
of the system of musical instruction that the regime should put in place to
satisfy its aim of “constructing a new Spain.” Musical education at the pri-
mary school level should thus aim to cater for the “emotional and spiritual
needs” of the students, and the best way to do so would be through use of
Spanish folklore in schools.26
Ideas of national unity were, of course, an important part of what
Spanish children should absorb through learning traditional songs, con-
sonant with Pilar Primo de Rivera’s well-​known quote. On the occasion
of the Día de la Canción of 1943, Fernando Rodríguez del Río specifically
addressed the therapeutic power traditional music could have against sepa-
ratism because “[the Día de la Canción] prevents, with rhythms born out of
the community, the spiritual isolation, so disintegrating and lethal, of our
people and our beautiful regions.”27 The task of the Sección Femenina was,
according to Rodríguez del Río, not only to overcome such isolation, but
also to counterbalance individual talent, thus submerging the individual in
the mass: “They do not aim for spectacular successes, nor for the revelation
of outstanding artists; on the contrary, they want the villages, the towns,
the regions, to get to know each other, and, in so doing, to understand and
love each other.”28
Focus on national unity, however, did not mean that all Spanish tra-
ditional music was perceived as totally homogeneous, by the Sección
Femenina or by the critics writing on traditional music; their discourse
left a space to acknowledge regional differences, which sometimes adopted
the form of long-​lasting stereotypes. For example, Julieta Mateo Box char-
acterized the music of several Spanish regions in these terms: “gracious
Andalusia, noble Aragon, refined Galicia, most beautiful Asturias, indus-
trious Catalonia, aristocratic Castile.”29 Diversity, however, was not con-
sidered a trait to be celebrated per se, but rather as nothing other than a
further expression of unity; Eduardo López-​Chavarri named Spain as “the

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world’s richest nation in folklore” and stated that the reason for this was to
be found in Spain’s history, with its succession of invasions and its varied
geography.30 Such historical and geographical diversity, however, argued
López-​Chavarri, had shaped the Hispanic race in a unique way, and thus
the diversity of traditional music, arising from the same historical and geo-
graphical circumstances, was nothing other than a expression of national
identity, or, in his words, the “reintegration of the conscience of the race.”31
López-​Chavarri explicitly praised Franco for his efforts to keep folk song
alive “in order to avoid the disappearance of the soul of our race.”
“Canción popular” (popular song) or simply “canción” (song) was the
term most frequently used by music critics under Francoism to refer to
popular music; folklore, for its part, could have negative connotations,
as will be discussed later. The word song emphasized the vocal nature of
the music, its simplicity (no instruments were needed; the human voice
was enough to recreate popular music), and its potential to be an expres-
sion of both the individual and the community; a monophonic song could
indeed be sung by as few or as many voices as required. Traditional music,
although deemed suitable to provide solutions to the specific problems of
post–​Civil War Spain, was also thought to be atemporal and fundamentally
rural; it was regarded as a fossilized repertoire rather than a living reality,
mirroring general notions that had influenced the compilation and study
of European folklore since the nineteenth century and that were already
becoming outdated in other countries by the 1930s.32 Such notions of tra-
ditional music operated not only in musical criticism or the popular imagi-
nary; they also had a crucial influence on traditional music research. The
IEM organized in 1948 a competition aiming to distinguish the best crea-
tive and scholarly works in a number of disciplines, including traditional
music, and it had very precise entry requirements: “The music of modern
forms of entertainment (cinema, cuplé, zarzuela, etc.) which have grown
popular among the masses will not be taken into account, but only the
music which is undoubtedly popular.” The examples named by the Instituto
were primarily urban, thus suggesting the notion that true popular music
could be found only in rural settings, following Pedrell’s view of traditional
music as música natural.33
Some critics even claimed that geographical isolation was necessary for
preservation of the purest and most original features of the music, without
fear of external contamination: when reviewing a concert of the local cho-
ral society of Tarrasa, in Catalonia, José María Franco praised the purity of
villages “constrained in valleys” because they could “keep their traditions
unaltered.”34 It was not only geography, though, that guaranteed that tradi-
tional music remained faithful to its rural origins, but also a whole culture

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of transmission and learning. For example, spontaneous learning of music

through folklore was implicitly (and sometimes explicitly) compared to the
traditional, stricter, and more strongly regulated learning methods and
procedures of Western art music. In an extended article about the train-
ing of the instructoras in a school of the Sección Femenina, the journal-
ist María Dolores Pérez Camarero commented that “they [the instructoras]
are now learning to feel the music, to know it spiritually” because, despite
the majority of them being conservatory graduates in music, “they used to
know music only mechanically.”35 Pérez Camarero also claimed that women
were more suited than men to the type of work instructoras did; after all,
she argued, the first music ever heard by every human being was the can-
ción de cuna (cradle song) of his or her mother. This particular brand of
musical purity, supposedly achieved through physical isolation and loyalty
to traditional values, was compared to the purity of the race, which should
also remain isolated in order to avoid foreign contamination; Mateo Box
was precisely referring to this perceived contamination by asking rhetori-
cally, “Why do you sing those terrible, extravagant, blackish rhythms and
forget the purity and beauty of our songs?”36
For all the efforts of the Spanish government to promote and dissemi-
nate traditional music, it was often portrayed by music critics as fragile
and threatened by a multiplicity of dangers. In the 1940s, separatism was
supposed to be under control after Franco’s victory, but there were other
pressing dangers: foreign influence (as reflected in Mateo Box’s article),
industrialization, and generally speaking everything threatening the rural
lifestyle in which traditional music was said to flourish. Disruption of
rural space—​by way of being urbanized or the inhabitants leaving for the
cities—​was a threat in itself, and a particularly real one: not only was the
Spanish countryside being depopulated, but the early Franco regime itself,
for all the rhetoric in defense of the past, regarded industrialization as a
pillar in regenerating post–​Civil War Spain.37 Eduardo López-​Chavarri did
not of course explicitly criticize the government’s industrializing measures,
but he lamented that “[the common man] has lost contact with nature, has
forgotten that there is dawn, and morning stars, and streams, and agricul-
ture tasks: the machine turned him into a pleb. His songs to life became
mean political satires or cabaret eroticism.”38 Urban and industrial life,
López-​Chavarri argued, were a threat to the diversity and distinctiveness
that constituted the main feature of Spanish musical essence, for urban
popular music was the same “in New York as in Istanbul, in Bilbao as in
Buenos Aires.” And it would not be long, warned the journalist Javier del
Valle, until those still living in the countryside demanded “fox trots, tangos
and corridos,” because this was the music that was in fashion in the cities.39

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It was the urban population and especially the working classes who
were considered more likely to succumb to negative influence, much of
which was supposedly coming from abroad. In this regard, the traditional-​
music events organized by Educación Sindical were repeatedly praised in
the musical press for allowing workers to entertain themselves by singing
together and socializing, and therefore preventing them from giving in to
more dangerous forms of entertainment. Or as Santiago Riopérez y Milá
put it, “[Educación Sindical] steal the leisure time of workers away from
pernicious vices and forms of entertainment.” Such vices included consum-
erism, which, paradoxically, can be considered to go hand-​in-​hand with the
nascent capitalism fostered by the regime: Riopérez y Milá congratulated
himself that “the working class has abandoned its materialism and is now
busy with spiritual aspirations.”40
Similarly, Sáinz de la Maza praised Educación Sindical for “teaching
the young citizens, who used to pervert the good qualities of the song in
absurd and dull cuplés,41 how to sing the great, good and noble things of
life: Fatherland, love and soil.”42 Sáinz de la Maza thus implicitly recognized
that without the guidance of overarching, ubiquitous state institutions,
the young population could be easily misled by the appeal of the urban and
sophisticated cuplé rather than remain faithful to rural song. Nonmilitary
wind bands, which also received state support, were regarded as potential
vehicles of expression of the “true character of the race,” ideal for perform-
ing arrangements of popular songs originally conceived for voice alone.43
The composer and wind band conductor Eduardo S. Morell similarly high-
lighted the importance of bands and choirs for spiritual development of
the rural population, especially children, to “educate and purify our feel-
ings.” He also deplored that some villages had abandoned these practices,
attracted by more mundane forms of entertainment.44 Bands and espe-
cially choirs could also safeguard moral values as dictated by Catholicism,
in particular those concerning family and sexual mores: Rafael Benedito,
conductor of the Masa Coral de Madrid and a collaborator with the Sección
Femenina, established a connection between choral singing and formation
of patriarchal, traditional, Catholic families in 1945, on the occasion of the
twenty-​fifth anniversary of the Masa: “Our task is so full of moral signifi-
cance and so pure that some of our current singers are the sons and daugh-
ters of the couples who met years ago while singing.”45
Capitalism and consumerism could allegedly also harm traditional
music by turning it into a commercial product dissociated from its values
and essence; in this regard, warned some music critics, it was essential that
traditional music remain an amateur pursuit, such as in the Coros y Danzas
both in Spain46 and abroad. Members of the Coros y Danzas did not receive

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any payment for their work, but instead gave to the state any money the
ensemble earned during international tours.47 Santiago Riopérez y Milá
highlighted the altruistic nature of the Coros y Danzas and claimed, “There
is nothing more convenient to make the different countries embrace each
other, to unite their frontiers, than the cultural missions which they under-
take.”48 The other side of the coin were the dance troupes, which, in the
critics’ opinion, commercially exploited folklore by reducing it to a few
clichéd, exotic traits, such as flamenco café cantantes, about which critic
Dámaso Torres wrote, “Popular song, which has been transmitted from one
generation to another through the centuries, as soon as it gets distorted
and put on tablados49 and stages, stops being popular and loses its scent
and freshness.”50 In a language heavily reminiscent of Giménez Caballero’s
reservations about the commercialization of art, Torres argued that tradi-
tional music should be dissociated from any kind of financial goal in order
to conserve its purity and ability to shape the national conscience of the
country, and also to guarantee that it was indeed a collective, anonymous
enterprise rather than an opportunity for particular individuals to enjoy
undue prominence.
Another example of the commercialization of traditional music was the
so-​called género folklórico or simply folklore—​an early twentieth-​century
derivation of zarzuela’s género chico formulaically based on traditional
music, specially from Andalusia.51 In Ritmo, José Rivera Centeno called the
género folklórico “the monstrosities and caricatures of our true folklore,”
divulged abroad by ensembles and impresarios with “mercantilist” aims.52
The only antidote against the género folkórico, argued Rivera Centeno, was
the Coros y Danzas, who altruistically disseminated Spanish authentic tra-
ditional music abroad. In order to overcome the problem, Rivera Centeno,
as others had done before, suggested stronger intervention of the state in
regulating folklore, namely, to appoint a teacher in every conservatory or
music academy who would be responsible for “preserving the purity and
conservation of the music, instruments and dances of each region.”53

THE DANGERS AND SEDUCTIONS OF JAZZ

Other musical genres could also be a threat to traditional music and the
national values it embodied, especially jazz, whose popularity was on the
rise in 1940s Spain.54 It must be taken into account that, when Spanish
critics used the word, they were referring not only to Dixieland, bebop, and
the like but, more generally, to any genre of popular urban music, especially
those intended for dancing.55 Not surprisingly, during the Civil War and

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the first years thereafter until approximately 1945, racist and anti-​Semitic
arguments informed the discourse on jazz in music criticism:  Giménez
Caballero’s views on art were still influential, and the Spanish govern-
ment was still close to Nazi Germany, besides echoing the long-​standing
right-​wing ideas that a Jewish-​Freemason conspiracy (contubernio judeo-​
masónico) was damaging Spain’s international prestige.56 Many of the writ-
ings on jazz used the derogatory terms “negro” or “negroid” music; the critic
Sebastián Méndez, for example, deplored that many Spanish conservatoire
graduates, having been trained in the Western art music tradition, chose
to play “negroid or foreign music.”57 Derogatory references to the African
origins of jazz were also commonplace, as in El Alcázar, which complained
that hot jazz was so popular in Belgium that “the whole nation dances to
the rhythms imported from the jungle,”58 thus elevating the popularity of
jazz to the scale of national tragedy.
For some critics, it was not simply a matter of jazz displacing indigenous
genres, but rather of it fatally altering the national racial traits in the pro-
cess. Francisco Padín, who was staff music critic at El Diario de Cádiz and
a frequent contributor to Ritmo, was in this regard one of the most vocal
detractors of jazz, frequently warning his readers about the negative con-
sequences that a clash between African music and Spanish society would
have for preservation of the race: “[Jazz musicians] offend our ears with the
rhythm of this black, wild music, even when there is so much to retrieve and
disseminate in the everlasting archive of Spanish folklore.”59 The fact that
jazz remained popular among Spanish audiences in spite of governmental
and journalistic contempt was perceived by Padín as an aberrant reversal
of the natural order established by the intrinsic qualities of the different
races; it was now the colonized, Padín argued, who were attacking the colo-
nizers instead of showing them gratitude (“We Spaniards … should not be
so fond of imitating the negroes, who received baptism and Christian civili-
zation from the hands of our conquerors and evangelizers”60). This reversal
of the natural order could, warned Padín, have extremely negative effects
on gender roles as well, and he accused African music and jazz of produc-
ing effeminate behavior (“There is nothing more opposed to our masculine
racial features than those sweet, decadent, monotone melodies, which, like
an impotent lament, effeminate our souls; there is nothing more unworthy
of our spiritual dignity than those crazy dances”61). Other writers were less
critical than Padín, but they still understood jazz predominantly in terms
of race. Joaquín Rodrigo wrote for El Español an article about “black music
and white music” as part of a special feature on “negro” (sic) culture.62 He
commented on the presence of “black music” in Western art music, citing
the examples of Ravel and Debussy and their jazz-​influenced compositions,

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and even attempted to describe the characteristics of this vaguely defined

“black music”: in Rodrigo’s opinion, “black” music was characterized by the
presence of rhythm, which “tries to replace the very soul of white music: the
melody.”
Other texts echo early Francoism’s obsession with the conspiración judeo-​
masónica, with jazz portrayed as a further tool of the Jewish community to
domesticate the Western nations. As seen in one example written during
the Civil War, this meant specifically Spain, Germany, and Italy:

Spain, Germany and Italy happen to be the greatest musical nations of the
world. Why should we continue paying attention to music which is only suitable
for the negros and American barbarians, but damages the sensibility of those
peoples which have reached the highest peaks even in their popular art? Let fox-​
trots die at once. They are part of the arsenal of the Jewish soul to degenerate
the selected races.63

The idea that jazz was an element of the conspiración did certainly resonate
with some critics; this quotation was first printed in 1938 at the Periódico
de San Sebastián, but Eduardo López-​Chavarri considered its words so
relevant in 1942 that he quoted them in an article about jazz versions of
works of the mainstream art music repertoire, which he compared to “a
slaughter of the great masters.”64 Nevertheless, anti-​Semitism was not
necessarily the norm in writings about jazz, and articles such as López-​
Chavarri’s are the exception rather than the norm; further, most openly
anti-​Semitic articles date from the Civil War and the few years thereafter.
Even López-​Chavarri himself did not explain in detail how exactly this
Jewish attack was orchestrated, and who was facilitating it in Spain and
how. With no significant Jewish community in Spain, let alone a commu-
nity of Jewish musicians, anti-​Semitism was hardly an articulating force
in the discourses of Francoist music critics about jazz; rather, it can be
regarded as a particular expression of racial discourses that typically found
a more present, threatening enemy in the United States and capitalism,
especially in the years before 1945. Critics thus regarded jazz as a symptom
of the rising cultural hegemony of the United States, which would corrupt
Spanish traditional values with cosmopolitanism and immorality. Otaño
argued that all music genres should be represented except for one: “That
artistically and morally reviling music, so insisting and tiresome, which is
modern jazz and its derivations.65” He resorted to the usual racial tropes
to describe jazz as “those exotic dances of the negroes, the product of the
African jungles, transformed artistically, often in a way which is morally
wrong, by the orchestras of the cabarets of the city.” Otaño complained

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that the Americans had “flooded the world with their wild folklore,” which
had taken them “back to the primitive caves in morals and good taste,”
therefore accusing the American government of using jazz as propaganda.
As with Spanish early music or contemporary music, however, slightly
dissenting opinions about jazz can be found in the musical press even
before 1945. It is not that particular publications or authors wholeheart-
edly embraced jazz, but rather that their arguments to reject it were prag-
matic rather than based on racial understandings of music.66 This was the
case with Boletín del Colegio de Directores de Bandas de Música Civiles and
Revista Literaria Musical, which were primarily directed to working musi-
cians, not only from Madrid but also in the provinces, who presumably
had to respond to the demands of their audiences. Therefore, Boletín del
Colegio and Revista Literaria Musical did not focus so much on the racial
origins of jazz—​as Ritmo, for example, did—​but rather on how the increas-
ing popularity of jazz had changed the marketplace for Spanish composers.
Conductor and composer Rodrigo A. de Santiago complained that Spanish
composers did not have any incentive to submit entries to government-​
sponsored composition contests (premios nacionales de música) and chose
to compose light music instead because “they can easily earn more money
by playing a couple of swing songs.”67 Revista Literaria Musical encouraged
young Spanish composers, in a somewhat bitter tone, to write jazz and
dance music because “this is where the money is”; the writer complained
that foreign genres (referred to as “foxtrots”) already amounted to 75 per-
cent of the music being played in Spain, which either destroyed job oppor-
tunities for Spanish composers of popular music or forced them to turn to
foreign genres.68
Professional protectionism and racial rhetoric, however, were not mutu-
ally exclusive and could indeed complement each other rather well. Indeed,
some of the measures taken by professional associations presumably with
the aim of protecting job opportunities for Spanish musicians were exag-
geratedly praised in the musical press for their role in preserving Spanish
racial values. For example, Ritmo published in 1942 an anonymous editorial
supporting recent measures against foreign music adopted by the Sindicato
Nacional del Espectáculo,69 which had banned the “jazzy” or merely “mod-
ern” versions of art music composers.70 The editorial framed the conflict
again in racial terms, labeling such versions as “an invasion of negroid
music, with its performances which profaned the great ideas, treasures of
the musical goldsmithing, and which were a serious threaten to Western
culture and civilization.” It also encouraged readers to denounce transgres-
sions of such regulations, therefore inviting audiences to take an active part
in preserving the purity of the Spanish race. But although the Sindicato

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did adopt some measures such as the ban and also demanded that song
titles be translated from foreign languages into Spanish, requests for gov-
ernmental control coming from music critics and made on the premise of
preserving the purity of the race went largely unheard.71
But even such suggestions for measures of government control based on
racial premises were hard to find past 1945, as the Franco regime was try-
ing to minimize its past associations with the Axis countries and approach
the Western powers instead. In a very different tone from López-​Chavarri
when he was complaining about the “slaughter of the great masters,”
some critics now appreciated the hybridization of jazz and art music, with
positive comments about Gershwin’s and Copland’s works.72 Ritmo itself,
which in the first half of the decade had repeatedly attacked jazz on racial
grounds, was redesigned in December 1950 to accommodate a whole sec-
tion on jazz music. In the previous years, Ritmo had already given some
space to jazz through the writings of the pioneer jazzman and music jour-
nalist Luis Araque, who argued that jazz was not the product of putatively
inferior races, but rather the natural evolution of art music in the twenti-
eth century, and as such it was just as spiritual as art music genres of the
past.73 Also in Ritmo, P. C. Hernández praised jazz because “it is a popular
genre, warmly human, alive and free.”74 Nevertheless, although it is rea-
sonable to think that Ritmo was responding to the change of direction of
the regime’s international politics, this should not be regarded as proof
that the government had an official line on jazz disseminated through the
musical press. It is even doubtful that Ritmo itself had an official line on
jazz, since these examples still coexisted with criticism of jazz on racial
grounds, as in this comment from 194975: “The influence of negroid music
has penetrated alarmingly into the sentimental or romantic souls of the
Latin race… . There are few musicologists and composers among us who
defend the Hispanoamericanism of our indigenous music. Let the negros
alone play, sing and dance their African dances.”
The first Spanish periodical ever specializing in jazz, Ritmo y Melodía,
also occupies an interesting position in the landscape of music criticism
in early Francoism. It was founded in 1944 by Araque, with contributions
from other Spanish pioneering jazzmen such as Alfredo Papó, and ceased
publication in 1950. In its first issues, Ritmo y Melodía did include informa-
tion about art music in Spain, as well as interviews with art music com-
posers and performers.76 But most prominently, it provided information
on the jazz scene and latest record releases in foreign countries, as well
as on the activities of Spanish hot clubs, associations of jazz enthusiasts
in the main Spanish cities who met regularly to listen to jazz recordings
imported from abroad or to actually play jazz themselves. Nevertheless, it

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would not be accurate to portray Ritmo y Melodía as a voice of dissent in a

milieu hostile to jazz music, as was the case in Germany,77 in the same way
as jazz itself in early Francoism cannot unequivocally be considered a music
of subversion.78 In the first place, as has been discussed before, in the mid-​
to-​late 1940s hostility against jazz was less widespread than it was in the
first half of the decade; and second, with a print run of seven thousand in
the years 1945–​46, Ritmo y Melodía was the most widely circulated music
magazine in Spain, followed by Ritmo (with a print run of six thousand) and
Música. Revista Quincenal (print run five thousand), which hardly makes
it a semiclandestine publication for a small minority. Moreover, contribu-
tors to Ritmo y Melodía did not often complain about widespread hostility
about jazz; an exception was Papó, in his response to an article published
elsewhere by the writer and journalist Wenceslao Fernández Flórez.79 Papó
argued that Fernández Flórez, who referred to jazz as “negroid music,”
had a simplistic and inaccurate understanding of the genre, and he asked
the journalist to listen to jazz without preconceived ideas based on racial
notions. However, he agreed with Fernández Flórez in arguing that the
government should ask for a minimum percentage of Spanish music to be
played on radio stations for the sake of protecting the livelihood of Spanish
musicians.80 Other contributors complained that art music critics attacked
jazz on the basis of inaccurate and illogical arguments, but they did not
explain who those critics might be.81
Nevertheless, more often than not, contributors to Ritmo y Melodía
agreed with detractors of jazz in regarding the great popularity of the
genre as a threat—​not because it would harm the purity of the Spanish
race, but rather because it would dilute the purity of jazz. Indeed, in the
same way that other publications used the word jazz loosely, contribu-
tors to Ritmo y Melodía typically chose “hot jazz” to refer to their object of
interest, presumably to differentiate themselves from other popular music
genres. Ritmo y Melodía contributors complained that Spaniards were not
genuinely interested in jazz and that its popularity was rather “a fash-
ion”82; that the “excesses” of swing dancing attracted toward jazz people
who did not really care about the music83; that the Spanish listeners were
“an amorphous audience, deprived of a personality—​we mean, of a jazz-
istic personality”84; or that jazz musicians, in an effort to be commercially
successful, were introducing alien elements into jazz.85 From September
1949 onward, however, Ritmo y Melodía softened some of these criticisms
and tried to broaden its readership: the magazine was redesigned to allo-
cate more than half of every issue to entertainment forms other than jazz,
including cinema, theater, musical theater, and dance music; in one of its
last issues before it eventually ceased publication in November 1950, critic

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Eugenio S. Mendo encouraged all jazz enthusiasts in Spain to publicly pre-

sent their music and others’ and thus definitely persuade those who judged
jazz on the basis of racial prejudices that were disseminated through music
that was not even jazz in the first place.86
At first sight, Mendo’s words do not paint a very different picture from
the racially based attacks on jazz during the Civil War and shortly thereaf-
ter; in the late 1940s and early 1950s traditional music was still regarded—​
and perhaps more so than in the early 1940s—​as an expression of national
values to be preserved and protected from foreign influence, thanks to the
popularity of the Coros y Danzas abroad. But, ultimately, before it ceased
publication, Ritmo y Melodía provided a means of expression for jazz enthu-
siasts in Spain. And perhaps out of the tensions generated by the way in
which other critics opposed traditional and jazz music, it was from the
ranks of Ritmo y Melodía that some criticism of traditional music research
politics emerged. In an article for Ritmo, Araque questioned whether such
opposition should exist in the same place, as, he claimed, it was perfectly
possible to enjoy both traditional music and jazz; he challenged the argu-
ment that, were it not for jazz and musical theater, traditional music would
flourish in every Spanish household, as it had in the past centuries.87 He
furthermore argued that compilations of traditional music were not as
“pure and clean” as its authors claimed, thus tacitly questioning the pre-
vailing notion of traditional music as a fossilized being rather than a living
one.88 Although Araque’s article did not amount to full-​fledged criticism of
the politics of traditional music of the Spanish government—​and indeed,
he did not explicitly name any of the individuals or institutions he was
arguing against—​it is illustrative of how individual critics and publications
could sometimes create a space to express dissent or disagreement with the
politics promoted by the government.

TRADITIONAL MUSIC IN ART MUSIC: JOAQUÍN RODRIGO

AS A MUSIC CRITIC

With traditional music being so frequently featured in various types of

publications and transformed into one of the pillars of national regen-
eration, it could be expected that most young and not-​so-​young Spanish
composers would make ample use of Spanish traditional music in their
compositions to ensure they would be performed and positively reviewed.
Some writers on music supported use of traditional music without show-
ing much subtlety, or discussing in detail what would be the best way to do
so; for example, the wind band conductor Sergio Valbuena Esgueva wrote

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that new compositions for this ensemble should be “built upon a solid
racial support” and always stay “within the Hispanic soul.”89 Victoriano
Echevarría regarded traditional music as an antidote against Stravinsky’s
and Schoenberg’s dehumanization, arguing that the only path for Spanish
music was “to find its foundation in the sincerest expression of our eter-
nal values, that is, in the essence of our popular music, focusing on the
spirit rather than on the literal use.”90 Similarly, it is true that Sopeña, for
all his hopes that traditional music would be the solution to the crisis of
Spanish contemporary music, did not devote much time to discussing what
distinguished sincere from nonsincere use of traditional music, apart from
repeatedly naming Falla as the model all Spanish composers should fol-
low. A significant number of works by Spanish composers, both newcom-
ers and the more established, were given their first performances by the
Madrid orchestras during the 1940s,91 and they were generally positively
reviewed in newspapers, although not always with much engagement with
the techniques composers used and how they treated traditional music.
Nevertheless, although these and similar approaches to use of folklore in
art music have sometimes led to the claim that the music of 1940s neocasti-
cismo (a Spanish version of neoclasicismo, based on Spain’s own eighteenth-​
century music) was scarcely innovative and was formulaic and based only
superficially on Falla’s legacy, without an attempt to create a musical lan-
guage of one’s own,92 a few music critics were in fact concerned with help-
ing composers find the best ways to integrate folklore into art music as a
truly regenerative force under the newly established regime.
As with other prominent topics in music criticism during the 1940s,
some of the debates that occupied music critics were hardly new; Spanish
musicians had been discussing them for years, or even decades. A  long-​
standing debate was whether the traditional music of some Spanish
regions was more suitable than that of others in providing the foundation
for a truly Spanish school of composition; specifically, should Andalusian
music, which had been repeatedly used by nineteenth-​century compos-
ers, Spanish and foreign, be embraced or avoided? Pedrell had advised
composers to avoid relying on Andalusian music only,93 but Albéniz and
Granados, although knowledgeable about a variety of Spanish traditional
and European art music traditions, eventually became best known for
their works based on Andalusian folklore.94 Falla’s shift from andalucismo
to castellanismo in the 1920s was widely commented on and magnified in
Spain,95 with composers of the Grupo de los Ocho choosing to embrace, at
least theoretically, the latter rather than the former for purportedly being
more suitable to realizing their modernist ideals and avoiding sentimental-
ism and clichés.96 In early Francoism, however, some critics had a more

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pragmatic outlook: Rodrigo A. de Santiago, who predominantly used in his

compositions for wind band and other ensembles traditional music from
his native Basque Country and Galicia, where he settled in 1947, neverthe-
less advised Spanish composers to use Andalusian music, because, among
the regions of Spain, he felt it was “the only one which can travel abroad
with possibilities of success.”97 He also complained that there was too much
“regionalism” in Spanish music—​that is, composers were using only the
music from their home region—​and this was thought to be breaking up the
unity of Spanish music.98 Castile, however, remained a serious contender,
after having received a strong push from the Falange as the embodiment
of traditional Spanish values; Sáinz de la Maza advised Spanish composers
to use predominantly Castilian folklore because “among all manifestations
of popular art, [Castilian] music is the one that keeps and preserves the
feeling of the race.”99
One of the critics to show sustained interest in use of traditional music
in Spanish art music was Joaquín Rodrigo. This is not surprising, given
that his success as a composer during the 1940s was partly based on his
use of well-​known Spanish sources, both high-​brow and low-​brow, inter-
spersed with well-​known Western art music models to which Rodrigo
added a Spanish twist100—​and sometimes even a Spanish twist closely
related to, or even celebratory of, the Franco regime.101 In the 1940s, criti-
cal success and recognition was a new experience for Rodrigo; he did not
have a work published until 1940, for one thing. Born in 1901 in Sagunto
and suffering from blindness since his early childhood, Rodrigo studied in
Paris under Paul Dukas from 1927 to 1932 and achieved some moderate
success in the French capital. On his return to Spain, he settled in Valencia,
where his works were generally well received by López-​Chavarri and other
prominent local critics. Nevertheless, in Madrid, with Salazar enthusiasti-
cally supporting Ernesto Halffter and the Grupo de los Ocho eliciting the
strongest reactions—​in one sense or another—​from music critics, Rodrigo
found himself practically being ignored, and Salazar even wrote about him
dismissively.102
Rodrigo and his wife were not in Spain when the Civil War started: Rodrigo
moved back to Paris in 1935 to study musicology at the Sorbonne, sup-
ported by a scholarship awarded by the Count of Romanones. At the
Sorbonne, Rodrigo specialized in early music and particularly the vihuelis-
tas, but he also developed an interest in traditional music.103 When the Civil
War started, he decided not to return to Spain and moved instead, with
his wife, to Freiburg, where they lived in a residence hall for the blind.104
Like Anglès, Rodrigo first returned to Spain in 1938 as a guest speaker
of the Cursos Internacionales de Verano de Santander, but the couple

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subsequently left for Paris again.105 They returned to Madrid permanently

in September 1939 after Antonio Tovar offered Rodrigo a job as music advi-
sor at Radio Nacional.106
The 1940s were a busy decade for Rodrigo:  apart from his successes
as a composer,107 he taught music and was in charge of organizing con-
certs at the Organización Nacional de Ciegos Españoles (Spanish National
Organization for the Blind), served a guest lecturer in composition at
the Conservatorio de Madrid, was appointed to the Manuel de Falla
Professorship in Music at the Universidad Central de Madrid in 1947, and
also started his career as a music critic. Like other music professionals who
took up staff music critic posts at the end of the Civil War, such as Conrado
del Campo and Sáinz de la Maza, Rodrigo did not have significant experi-
ence in writing music criticism; nevertheless, in 1940 he was offered, and
accepted, a position as staff music critic at Pueblo. As an employee of Radio
Nacional, he also regularly contributed to the station’s newsletter, Radio
Nacional, and occasionally to other publications such as Vértice and Música.
Revista Quincenal. Rodrigo lost his job at Pueblo in summer 1946, allegedly
after his colleague, Emiliano Aguado, a member of the Falange Liberal,
maneuvered to have him fired so that the post could go to Aguado’s wife,
Dolores Palá Berdejo.108 After his dismissal from Pueblo, Rodrigo went on to
write a weekly music column (“La semana musical”) for the sports newspa-
per Marca, a post he held until 1949.
Most critics writing in the early Franco era regularly called for more
Spanish contemporary music to be included in concert programs in Spain,
especially orchestral concerts. Even by those standards, however, Rodrigo’s
protectionism of Spanish music may sometimes appear to border on chau-
vinism. Indeed, instead of simply asking for an increase in the amount of
Spanish works performed in Madrid, on several occasions he went as far as
to calculate how much music of various nations was performed in Madrid
during October 1944, concluding that only 24 percent of it was Spanish.
Rodrigo deemed this unacceptable, claiming that the minimum of Spanish
music should be 33  percent.109 During the following months, he single-​
handedly continued his campaign in favor of Spanish music, including in
his concert reviews a breakdown of percentages by composer nationality,
to illustrate a concern other critics had voiced, that Spanish music was
insufficiently present in Madrid’s concert life.110 Similarly, when a Spanish
work was included in a concert program together with non-​Spanish works,
Rodrigo would typically devote much more space to the former than to the
latter.111
Nevertheless, it would be inaccurate to consider Rodrigo’s protection-
ism of Spanish music as predominantly chauvinistic, or as an example of

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an isolating brand of nationalism in line with the autarquía promoted by

the Francoist government during the early-​to-​mid-​1940s. His defense of
Spanish music, in reality, was often accompanied by a concern for his fellow
composers’ working conditions, including low royalty payments and the
obligation to fund the orchestral parts themselves; the solutions Rodrigo
suggested typically included financial support from the government and
protectionism, notably forcing orchestras to play a minimum amount of
Spanish music.112 As with other similar measures suggested by critics,
however, there is no evidence that Rodrigo’s ideas were ever given serious
consideration by the Comisaría de Música or otherwise. As well, he often
encouraged fellow composers to look outside Spain to the mainstream
Austro-​Germanic canon. Composers, he argued, should write more works
in the genres underrepresented in Spanish music, such as the piano sonata
or the string quartet113; he himself set an example by writing a Concierto
heroico for piano.
What is perhaps more relevant, Rodrigo’s concert reviews show engage-
ment with the music of his contemporaries well above the norm for music
critics of the time, exhibiting a distinct concern for performance practice and
for discussion of the musical language. Although it would not be accurate
to claim that Rodrigo, unlike Sopeña, formulated something approaching a
full-​blown theory of what new music, or Spanish new music, should sound
like, he certainly left telling commentaries in his daily music reviews for
Pueblo, showing his concern for renovating Spanish music and for reflecting
on the role traditional music should play in it. It is not that Rodrigo, as the
most successful young Spanish composer in early Francoism, determined an
official line in music criticism regarding the use of traditional music; but his
nuanced discussions of the use of folklore in Spanish art music are interest-
ing because they certainly go beyond the level of detail and engagement that
was the norm among his contemporaries. Indeed, although sometimes his
articles are simply founded, without much critical elaboration, on some of
the tropes about traditional music so ubiquitous in music criticism of early
Francoism, such as the touted exceptional wealth of Spanish traditional
music, superior to that of any other country,114 Rodrigo’s writings were also
in some ways a continuation of the debates and opinions on traditional
music that had informed Spanish art music since the late nineteenth cen-
tury, from Pedrell and Falla to the Grupo de los Ocho.
More precisely, Rodrigo’s positions on Spanish nationalism can be read
as an extension of the castellanismo versus andalucismo debate that so
profoundly affected Spanish music (and elsewhere), and particularly the
Grupo de los Ocho, after Falla turned his back on Andalusian folklore in
the 1920s.115 In the 1920s and 1930s, Falla’s castellanismo was perceived

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in Spain and abroad not only (and not predominantly) as a celebration

of the essence of Spain, consonant with appreciation on the part of the
Generation of ’98 for Castile: much of the popularity of castellanismo came
from the notion that those values of purity attached to Castile fitted well
within neoclassicism. When positively reviewing del Campo’s symphonic
poem Evocación de Castilla on the occasion of its first performance in
1943, Rodrigo was not necessarily following, say, Sáinz de la Maza’s focus
on Castile as the essence of Spain and the embodiment of the values that
should shape the Nuevo Estado; he seemed more drawn to the neoclassi-
cal values of simplicity and spirituality (“spiritual,” “austerity,” “broad and
large horizon”).116 The same can be said of Rodrigo’s review of the perfor-
mance of Falla’s Retablo sponsored by the Comisaría de Música in 1941,
which was discussed in Chapter 2. Rodrigo himself coined the word neo-
casticismo after neoclasicismo (neoclassicism), but replacing classical with
castizo—​that is, the intrinsically Spanish—​because, he claimed, Spanish
musicians had not had a proper classical era in the same way French and
German composers did.117
As the Grupo de los Ocho, and then Sopeña, had done, Rodrigo expressed
his preference for Falla’s Retablo over “picturesque Andalusia, which is the
least interesting Andalusia.”118 Though not dismissive of andalucismo per
se, Rodrigo found it more difficult to give positive reviews to those compos-
ers who chose to take inspiration from Andalusian rather than Castilian
folklore. In the same way Falla had warned against literally quoting tradi-
tional melodies without making an effort to capture the spirit of the people
and translating it into original music,119 Rodrigo valued above all the skill
of the composer in reflecting the “fragrance,”120 all the while adapting it
to his own particular style, without using clichés; he was quite aware of
the centurylong popularity of Andalusian music as a marker of exoticism
and Spanishness, which, he argued, put pressure on Spanish composers “to
be staunch nationalists.”121 Thus, Rodrigo’s review of Bonifacio Gil’s En una
aldea extremeña was reasonably positive, for Gil had “avoided excessively
populist themes.”122 Nevertheless, he wrote on Emilio Lehmberg’s Suite
andaluza that “this way of understanding Andalusian music, which is just
the usual one, does not need a large symphonic orchestra”123 and labeled
José Muñoz Molleda’s use of Andalusian folklore in the Suite de danza as
“gracious and authentic, but not very personal, andalucismo.”124
Rodrigo was aware that his reluctance around andalucismo connected
him to the Grupo de los Ocho and similar composers, to whom he referred
as “my generation” (“My generation was European, we were … against
nationalism—​we did not like andalucismo—​but we lovingly had to go
back to it”).125 On the occasion of Adolfo Salazar’s death in 1958, Rodrigo

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again claimed that he belonged to the same generation as the Grupo de los
Ocho—​that is, those composers who had come of age and started their careers
between the 1910s and the 1930s and for whom Rodrigo chose the term “gen-
eration of ’25”—​and as such he felt deeply moved by Salazar’s death.126
Whereas it is true that Rodrigo was never part of the Grupo de los Ocho
environment, the successive critical interpretations of Rodrigo’s music and
his significance, first with Sopeña (as discussed in Chapter  2) and then
less sympathetically with Tomás Marco,127 have tended to separate or even
oppose the Grupo de los Ocho and Rodrigo. In the case of Marco, this oppo-
sition is established by Marco defining neocasticismo as neoclassicism with-
out the avant-​garde elements,128 thus effectively portraying the 1940s—​the
era of neocasticismo—​as a period of artistic stagnation preceded by the
Edad de Plata and followed by the Generation of ’51, with Rodrigo being
the most representative symbol of such stagnation. Rodrigo’s critical writ-
ings, however, show how some of the same concerns that had preoccupied
Falla, Salazar, and the Grupo de los Ocho survived in 1940s criticism, with-
out being totally superseded by ideas of traditional music promoted by the
regime through the Sección Femenina and the IEM.

NOTES

1. Música natural (natural music) is, according to Pedrell, music that is not subjected
to a historical context or to artifice, but is rather born spontaneously to express
emotion between individuals and between generations. Música natural, according
to Pedrell, should also be the inspiration for música artificial (artificial music). See
Felipe Pedrell, Cancionero musical popular español (Valls: E. Castells, 1922), I.9–​11
and II.83–​86.
2. Higinio Anglès, “España en la historia de la música universal.” Arbor, vol. 11,
no. 30 (1948), 9–​10.
3. Ibid., 10.
4. Robert Stevenson, “Tributo a Higinio Anglès,” Revista musical chilena, vol. 24,
no. 112 (1970), 7.
5. Letter from Higinio Anglès to José Subirá, Nov. 6, 1943.
6. Josep Martí i Pérez, “Folk Music Studies and Ethnomusicology in Spain,” Yearbook
for Traditional Music, no. 29 (1997), 113–​114.
7. Gerardo Diego, Joaquín Rodrigo, and Federico Sopeña, Diez años de música en
España (Madrid: Espasa Calpe, 1949), 171.
8. María Asunción Lizarazu de Mesa, “En torno al folklore musical y su utilización.
El caso de las Misiones Pedagógicas y la Sección Femenina,” Anuario Musical,
no. 51 (1996), 234–​235.
9. Beatriz Martínez del Fresno, “Mujeres, tierra y nación. Las danzas de la Sección
Femenina en el mapa politico de la España franquista (1939–​1952),” in Discursos
y prácticas musicales nacionalistas (1900–​1970), ed. Pilar Ramos López (Logroño:
Universidad de La Rioja, 2012), 233–​235.

[ 124 ]  Music Criticism and Music Critics in Early Francoist Spain

  125

10. Such publications include Cancionero de la Sección Femenina de F.E.T. y de las J.O.N.S.
(1943); Breves notas sobre algunas de las danzas populares españolas (1947); Spanish
Songs and Folk Dances (1952, for distribution abroad); Música. Teoría de Solfeo y
Canciones (1958); Villancicos y canciones religiosas de Navidad (1958); Canciones
populares para escolares (1959); Canciones infantiles (1964); 1000 canciones (1966);
Cancionero popular español (1968); Audiciones musicales para niños (1974).
11. The most distinctive dance of Catalonia, a region in northeastern Spain.
12. A wind instrument typical of the Basque Country.
13. Referring to flamenco.
14. Cited in Anonymous, Cancionero (Madrid: Departamento de Publicaciones de la
Delegación Nacional del Frente de Juventudes, 1943), 5.
15. Beatriz Busto Miramontes, “El poder en el folklore: los cuerpos en NO-​DO (1943–​
1948),” Trans. Revista Transcultural de Música, no. 16 (2012), 14–​16; Isabel Ferrer
Senabre, “Cant i quotidianitat: visibilitat i gènere durant el primer franquisme,” Trans.
Revista Transcultural de Música, no. 15 (2011), 7–​18; Aurora Morcillo, True Catholic
Womanhood Gender Ideology in Franco’s Spain (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University
Press, 2000); Kathleen Richmond, Women and Spanish Fascism: The Women’s Section
of the Falange 1934–​1959 (London and New York: Routledge, 2003), 14.
16. Eva Moreda Rodríguez, “‘La mujer que no canta no es … ¡ni mujer espa-
ñola!’:  Folklore and Gender in the Earlier Franco Regime,” Bulletin of Hispanic
Studies, vol. 89, no. 6 (2012), 635–​638.
17. Ibid., 639–​641.
18. The first one was a collection of seguidillas published by J.  A. Iza Zamácola in
1799, followed by Iztueta’s collection of Basque dances in 1826. In the follow-
ing decades, Serafín Estébanez Calderón, Manuel Murguía, Marià Aguiló, and of
special importance Manuel Milà i Fontanals and Antonio Machado y Álvarez pub-
lished collections focusing mainly on the texts. Toward the end of the century,
José de Manterola, Francisco Rodríguez Marín, Pau Bertran y Bros, F. P. Briz, José
Inzenga, Eduardo Ocón, R. M. de Azkue, and Casto Sampedro Folgar published
new collections in which music became more important.
19. Francesc Cortés i Mir, “El nacionalisme en el context català entre 1875 i 1936,”
Recerca musicològica, no. 14–​15, 27–​45; Emilio Rey García, “La etnomusicología en
España. Pasado, presente y futuro,” Revista de musicología, no. 20, 877–​886.
20. Susana Asensio Llamas, “Eduardo Martínez Torner y la Junta para Ampliación de
Estudios en España,” Arbor, vol. 187, no. 851 (2011), 857–​874.
21. Francisco Canés Garrido, “Las misiones pedagógicas:  educación y tiempo libre
en la Segunda República,” Revista Complutense de Educación, vol. 4 no. 1 (1993),
150–​152.
22. Julián Bautista, “Lo típico y la producción sinfónica,” Música, no. 3 (1938), 23–​27;
María Palacios, La renovación musical en Madrid durante la dictadura de Primo de
Rivera. El Grupo de los Ocho (1923–​1931) (Madrid: Sociedad Española de Musicología,
2008), 15–​16; Elena Torres Clemente, “El ‘nacionalismo de las esencias’: ¿una cat-
egoría estética o ética?” in Discursos y prácticas musicales nacionalistas (1900–​1970),
ed. Pilar Ramos López (Logroño: Universidad de La Rioja, 2012), 38–​44; Julian
White, “Promoting and Diffusing Catalan Musical Heritage: Roberto Gerhard
and Catalan Folk Music,” in The Roberto Gerhard Research Companion, ed. Monty
Adkins and Michael Russ (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013), 49–​77; Thomas Schmitt, “Con
las guitarras abiertas. El neopopularismo como reacción y progreso en las canciones
españolas de los años 30 del siglo XX,” Anuario Musical, no. 66 (2011), 275–​282.
23. Antonio Álvarez Pérez, Enciclopedia (Miñón: Valladolid, 1971), 1005.

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24. R. Ortega León, “El primero de abril, Día de la Canción,” Pueblo, Mar. 24, 1943,
3. Teruel, Ebro, and Brunete are the names of well-​known victories of the Franco
army during the Civil War.
25. Turina, quoted in Joaquín Rodrigo, “El Día de la Canción ha de ser el preludio
alegre de una gran labor anual,” Pueblo, Mar. 21, 1942, 7.
26. Adelaida, “Orientación general de la enseñanza de la música en los distintos gra-
dos de la escuela primaria,” Radio Nacional, 52 (1939), 13.
27. Fernando Rodríguez del Río, “El Frente de Juventudes y sus competiciones artís-
ticas,” Ritmo, no. 166 (1943), 9.
28. Ibid., 9.
29. Julieta Mateo Box, “España por el arte,” Revista Literaria Musical, no. 53 (1951), 11–​12.
30. Eduardo López-​Chavarri, “Nuestros músicos,” Radio Nacional, no. 48 (1939), 10–​11.
Dividing nations into “rich” and “poor” according to the wealth of their traditional
music was common practice in late-​nineteenth-​century studies of folklore, mir-
roring Darwinist ideas; folklorists thought that wealth (or lack thereof) was a
sign of the potential and strength of the nation in question. See Joaquina Labajo
Valdés, “Política y usos del folklore en el siglo XX español,” Revista de Musicología,
no. 16 (1993), 1995–​96.
31. López-​Chavarri, “Nuestros musicos,” 11.
32. Josep Martí i Pérez, “Folk Music Studies,” 115–​116.
33. Josep Martí i Pérez, “Felip Pedrell i l’etnomusicologia,” Recerca musicològica,
no. 11–​12 (1991), 211–​229.
34. José María Franco, “Música,” Ya, Jan. 11, 1944, 7.
35. María Dolores Pérez Camarero, “Una escuela de instructoras de música en la
Ciudad Lineal,” Arriba, Mar. 10, 1946, 7.
36. Mateo Box, “España por el arte,” 11.
37. Richards, A Time of Silence, 104.
38. López-​Chavarri, “Nuestros músicos,” 10–​11.
39. Javier del Valle, “Páginas folklóricas,” Revista literaria musical, no 31 (1946), 4.
40. Santiago Riopérez y Milá, “Empresas nobles de nuestra España,” Revista Literaria
Musical, 49 (1950), 21–​23.
41. Cuplés were a cabaret-​style song genre that developed in Spain from the late nine-
teenth century onward; they were normally sung by women (or men in drag) to a
male audience, and were often filled with sexual innuendo.
42. Regino Sáinz de la Maza, “La masa coral de Educación y Descanso de Lugo inicia el
primer concurso folklórico,” ABC, Mar. 2, 1943, 17.
43. Pedro Echevarría Bravo, “España canta a través de sus juventudes y sus bandas de
música”, Boletín del Colegio de Directores de Bandas de Música Civiles, no. 40 (1946), 13.
44. Eduardo S. Morell, “La cultura musical en algunos pueblos,” Boletín del Colegio de
Directores de Bandas de Música Civiles, no. 34 (1946), 14–​15.
45. Rafael Benedito, quoted in L. V., “La Coral de Madrid celebra hoy su XXV aniversa-
rio,” Arriba, Jan. 21, 1945, 6.
46. For example, Anonymous, “Editorial,” Revista Literaria Musical, no. 27 (1945), 3;
Cristóbal de Castro, “Coros y Danzas de las regiones españolas,” Revista Literaria
Musical, no. 30 (1946), 7.
47. For example, in 1950, after a Coros y Danzas tour to the United States, its
unwaged members gave the Instituto de Moneda y Timbre $15,000 as a gift. See
Anonymous, “Éxito de los Coros y Danzas como productores de divisas,” El Alcázar,
Oct. 10, 1950, 5.

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48. Santiago Riopérez y Milá, Untitled article, Revista Literaria Musical, no.  41

(1949), 5–​6.
49. Tablado is the name given to the typical stage for flamenco performances.
50. Dámaso Torres, “El gusto y su fabricación,” Boletín del Colegio de Directores de
Bandas de Música Civiles, no. 90 (1951), 8.
51. Víctor García Ruiz and Gregorio Torres Nebra, Historia y antología del teatro espa-
ñol de posguerra, vol. 1 (Madrid: Fundamentos, 2003), 128.
52. José Rivera Centeno, “Triste paradoja. Dos facetas de nuestro Folklore,” Ritmo,
no. 229 (1950), 8.
53. Ibid., 8.
54. Iván Iglesias, “(Re)construyendo la identidad musical española:  el jazz y el dis-
curso cultural del Franquismo durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial,” Historia
Actual Online, no. 23 (2010), 121–​122.
55. Ibid., 120.
56. José Luis Rodríguez Jiménez, “El antisemitismo en el Franquismo y en la

Transición,” in El antisemitismo en España, ed. Gonzalo Álvarez Chillida and
Ricardo Izquierdo Benito (Cuenca:  Ediciones de la Universidad de Castilla-​La
Mancha, 2007), 245–​247.
57. Sebastián Méndez, “Música negroide o extranjera,” Boletín del Colegio de Directores
de Bandas de Música Civiles, 31 (1945), 7.
58. Anonymous, “Consternación en Bélgica,” ABC, 24 May, 1951, 16.
59. Francisco Padín, “A propósito de una campaña a favor de la Música española,”
Ritmo, no. 147 (1941), 15.
60. Padín, “Nuevamente en favor de la buena música,” Ritmo, no. 157 (1942), 8.
61. Padín, “La música de jazz y sus estragos,” Ritmo, no. 170 (1943), 7–​8.
62. Joaquín Rodrigo, “Música negra y música blanca,” El Español, Jan. 29, 1944, 6.
63. Quoted in Eduardo López-​Chavarri, “Sigue la matanza de los grandes maestros,”
Ritmo, no. 153 (1942), 4.
64. Ibid., 4.
65. Nemesio Otaño, “La música en las emisoras de radio,” 3.
66. In this, I dissent from Iglesias, “(Re)construyendo la identidad musical española,”
125–​126, who regards racial discourse as the most important determinant in the
reception of jazz in Spain during the years 1939–​1945.
67. Rodrigo A. de Santiago, “Los concursos nacionales de música,” Boletín del Colegio
de Directores de Bandas de Música Civiles, no. 36 (1946), 7.
68. Anonymous, “Doctrinales,” Revista Literaria Musical, no. 36 (1947). 5.
69. Literally, Performers’ National Trade Union. The Sindicato Nacional del

Espectáculo was a subsection of the Sindicato Vertical (Vertical Trade Union),
the only trade union allowed to exist during the regime. It was controlled by the
Falange, and it included both employees and their employers.
70. Anonymous, “El sindicato nacional del espectáculo y sus recientes disposiciones,”
Ritmo, no. 159 (1942), 3.
71. A  rather popular suggestion was to ban jazz from radio stations, as suggested
by Otaño, “La música en las emisoras de radio,” 3; José Antonio Antequera, “La
música clásica y la radiodifusión,” Radio Nacional, no. 119 (1941), 5. Other critics
proposed that jazz should not be banned completely, but instead all radio stations
should be required to play a minimum percentage of Spanish music to prevent
jazz from becoming hegemonic; see, for example, Francisco Casares, “Música ‘de
diario’,” ABC, Oct. 2, 1941, 16.

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72. For example, Antonio Fernández-​ Cid, “Música,” Arriba, Apr. 10, 1948, 7;
Anonymous [as Bill el repórter], “Aaron Copland el notable compositor nor-
teamericano triunfa en Europa con su tercera sinfonía,” Revista Literaria Musical,
no. 40 (1948), 19–​20.
73. Luis Araque, “El jazz como filosofía musical,” Ritmo, no. 205 (1947), 18.
74. P. C. Hernández, “El jazz, música popular,” Ritmo, no. 204 (1947), 7–​8.
75. Luis A. Gaztambide, “El mundo musical invertido,” Ritmo, no. 218 (1949), 4.
76. See, for example, Anonymous, “Entrevista con Carlos Suriñach Wrokona,” Ritmo
y Melodía, no. 12 (1945), 6; Anonymous, “Joaquín Rodrigo no cree en el hot,”
Ritmo y Melodía, no. 13 (1945), 5; Anonymous, “Conversación con Juan Manén
sobre el jazz,” Ritmo y Melodía, no. 8 (1945), 5.
77. See Michael H. Kater, “Forbidden Fruit? Jazz in the Third Reich,” American
Historical Review, no. 94 (1994), 11–​43.
78. Iván Iglesias, “Hechicero de las pasiones del alma: El jazz y la subversión de la
biopolítica franquista (1939–​1959),” Trans. Revista Transcultural de Música, no. 17
(2013), 3.
79. Alfredo Papó, “Wenceslao Fernández Flórez y la música demente,” Ritmo y
Melodía, no. 30 (1948), 5.
80. Ibid., 5.
81. José M. Fonollosa, “Sobre el concierto de Willie Smith ‘The Lion’ en Barcelona,”
Ritmo y Melodía, no. 42 (1950), 4; Enrique Sanz de Madrid, “Verdadero valor del
jazz,” Ritmo y Melodía, no. 32 (1949), 9.
82. Anonymous [as El predicador en el desierto], “El jazz, tema de moda,” Ritmo y
Melodía, no. 9 (1945), 10.
83. Anonymous [as El predicador en el desierto], “La locura del swing,” Ritmo y
Melodía, no. 18 (1946), 7; Alfredo Papó, “Notas sueltas,” Ritmo y Melodía, no. 23
(1947), 7.
84. Anonymous [as El predicador en el desierto], “¿Existe un público español de
jazz?” Ritmo y Melodía, no. 20 (1947), 9.
85. Giancarlo Testoni, “El riff,” Ritmo y Melodía, no. 26 (1948), 9; Anonymous, “Dos
farsantes:  James y Cugat; y una decepción:  ‘Casa de locos’,” Ritmo y Melodía,
no. 20 (1948), 10.
86. Eugenio S. Mendo, “Unificación del jazz,” Ritmo y Melodía, no. 47 (1950), 5.
87. Luis Araque, “¡Dejemos en paz al folklore!,” Ritmo, no. 213 (1948), 14.
88. Ibid., 14.
89. Sergio Valbuena Esgueva, “Orientaciones,” Boletín del Colegio de Directores de
Bandas de Música Civiles, no. 38 (1946), 4–​5.
90. Victoriano Echevarría, “Aspectos:  tema con variaciones,” Boletín del Colegio de
Directores de Bandas de Música Civiles, no. 29 (1945), 11.
91. These include Suite Fantasi, Victoriano Echevarría; Evocaciones Castellanas, Benito
García de la Parra; Diez Melodías Vascas, Jesús Guridi; Aires Viejos de Danza,
Joaquín Rodrigo (1941); Castilla, Jesús Arámbarri; La Gacela de Almoctámid, Julio
Gómez; Credos populares, Jaime Menéndez; Postales Madrileñas, José Muñoz
Molleda (1942); Piano Concerto (inspired by Castilian folklore) and Paisajes castel-
lanos, Conrado del Campo; Suite de Danza, Muñoz Molleda (1943); En la pradera,
del Campo; Balada de Roncesvalles, Joaquín Gasca; Peñamariana, Guridi (1944);
cello concerto (inspired by Castilian folklore), del Campo; Balada de Roncesvalles,
Gasca; En una aldea extremeña, Bonifacio Gil; Sinfonía Pirenaica, Guridi; Suite
Vasca, Pablo Sorozábal; Tonades d’amor, Pedro Sosa (1946); Cinco Canciones, Jesús
García Leoz; Don Quijote velando las armas, Gerardo Gombau; Concierto Vasco,

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  129

Rodrigo A. de Santiago (1947); guitar concerto, Manuel Palau; Passacaglia, Carlos
Suriñach (1948); Concierto Vasco, Francisco Escudero (1949); Fantasía Castellana,
Antonio Iglesias (1951).
92. Tomás Marco, Spanish Music in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge and
London: Harvard University Press, 1993), 129–​130; Marco, “Los años cuarenta,”
in España en la música de Occidente, ed. Emilio Casares Rodicio, Ismael Fernández
de la Cuesta, and José López Calo, vol. 2 (Madrid: Instituto Nacional de las Artes
Escénicas y de la Música, 1987), 400–​401.
93. Felipe Pedrell, Por nuestra música (Barcelona: Heinrich, 1891), 42–​43.
94. Walter Aaron Clark, Enrique Granados:  Poet of the Piano (New  York:  Oxford
University Press, 2005), 9; Clark, Isaac Albéniz:  Portrait of a Romantic
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 67.
95. Carol A. Hess, Manuel de Falla and Modernism in Spain, 1898–​1936 (Chicago: Chicago
University Press, 2001), 180 and 270–​272.
96. Palacios, La renovación musical en Madrid, 263.
97. Rodrigo A. de Santiago, “El nacionalismo como antecedente de lo universal,”
Boletín del Colegio de Directores de Bandas de Música Civiles, no. 83 (1951), 6.
98. Ibid., 7.
99. Regino Sáinz de la Maza, “Canción de Castilla,” Vértice, no. 67 (1943), 39.
100. Rodrigo, however, seemed more interested in high-​brow Spanish musical culture
than low-​brow: works by him based on Spanish art rather than traditional music
include Zarabanda lejana y villancico (1927–​1930), Concierto de Aranjuez (1939),
Concierto en modo galante (1949), Soleriana (1953). It was mostly in his vocal and
solo guitar music that he more decidedly took inspiration in Spanish traditional
music, including arrangements of Valencian folk songs for choir.
101. Namely, in his 1943 Concerto heroico for piano; see Eva Moreda Rodríguez,
“Musical Commemorations in Post-​Civil War Spain: Joaquín Rodrigo’s Concierto
Heroico,” in Twentieth-​ Century Music and Politics:  Essays in Memory of Neil
Edmunds, ed. Pauline Fairclough (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), 177–​190.
102. Javier Suárez-​Pajares, “Joaquín Rodrigo en la vida musical y la cultura española
de los años cuarenta. Ficciones, realidades, verdades y mentiras de un tiempo
extraño,” in Joaquín Rodrigo y la música española de los años cuarenta, ed. Javier
Suárez-​Pajares (Valladolid: Glares, 2005), 31; Suárez-​Pajares, “Adolfo Salazar: luz
y sombras,” in Música y cultura en la Edad de Plata 1915–​1939, ed. María Nagore,
Leticia Sánchez de Andrés, and Elena Torres (Madrid: ICCMU, 2009), 211.
103. Victoria Kamhi de Rodrigo, Hand in Hand with Joaquín Rodrigo:  My Life at the
Maestro’s Side, transl. Ellen Wilkerson (Pittsburgh:  Latin American Literary
Review Press, 1992), 87.
104. Ibid., 92–​93.
105. Ibid., 103–​148.
106. Ibid., 109.
107. Rodrigo had four instrumental concertos premiered by the Orquesta Nacional
in the period 1939–​1951 (Concierto de Aranjuez, Concierto de estío, Concierto hero-
ico, Concierto en modo galante)—​certainly more than any other living Spanish
composer—​as well as several solo and chamber works.
108. Letter from Joaquín Rodrigo to Rafael Rodríguez Albert, June 10, 1946, unpub-
lished [BNE, M. RALBERT/​64/​2/​20].
109. Joaquín Rodrigo, “Estadísticas y comentarios,” Pueblo, Nov. 1, 1944, 7.
110. For example, Rodrigo, “Agrupación Nacional de Música de Cámara,” Pueblo,
Jan. 19, 1945, 7; Rodrigo, “José Cubiles en el Español. Música española en el

R e v i e w i n g T r a di t i o n a l   M u s i c   [ 129 ]
130

programa: 23 por 100,” Pueblo, Nov. 14, 1944, 7; Rodrigo, “Orquesta Sinfónica en
el Monumental; director, Enrique Jordá. Música española en el programa: cero,”
Pueblo, Nov. 20, 1944, 6.
111. For example, Rodrigo, “Rosa Mas en la A.D.C.M. Interpretación de El poema de
una sanluqueña,” Pueblo, Nov. 1, 1941, 7.
112. For example, Rodrigo, “El dinero de los músicos sinfónicos,” Pueblo, May 14, 1942,
7; Rodrigo, “Concierto de música española de la Vicesecretaría de Educación
Popular,” Pueblo, Oct. 13, 1944, 7.
113. Rodrigo, “Conferencia de Sainz de la Maza,” Pueblo, Dec. 30, 1942, 7; Rodrigo,
“Concurso de música de cámara,” Pueblo, Jan. 26, 1943, 7.
114. Rodrigo, “Segundo concurso nacional de folklore,” Pueblo, Oct. 18, 1943, 7.
115. Hess, Manuel de Falla, 180.
116. Joaquín Rodrigo, “Cuarto concierto de la Orquesta Nacional,” Pueblo, Nov. 13,
1943, 7.
117. Antonio Iglesias, Escritos de Joaquín Rodrigo (Madrid: Alpuerto, 1999), 52.
118. Ibid., 23.
119. Falla’s words were:  “Some consider that one of the means to ‘nationalize’ our
music is the strict use of popular material in a melodic way. In a general sense,
I  am afraid I  do not agree, although in particular cases I  think that procedure
cannot be bettered. In popular song I  think the spirit is more important than
the letter. Rhythm, tonality and melodic intervals, which determine undulations
and cadences are the essential constituents of these songs… . Inspiration, there-
fore, is to be found directly in the people, and those who do not see it so will
only achieve a more or less ingenious imitation of what they originally set out
to do.” Originally published in 1917, reprinted in Manuel de Falla, On Music and
Musicians, ed. by Federico Sopeña, trans. by David Urman and J. M. Thomson
(London: Boyars, 1979), 31–​32.
120. Joaquín Rodrigo, “Clausura del ciclo de conferencias,” Pueblo, Jan. 5, 1943, 7;
Rodrigo, “Orquesta Sinfónica con Enrique Jordá, estreno de 10 canciones popu-
lares vascas de Jesús Guridi. La pianista Ginette Doyen,” Pueblo, Dec. 24, 1941, 7.
121. Quoted in Iglesias, Escritos de Joaquín Rodrigo, 23.
122. Joaquín Rodrigo, “Estreno de En una aldea extremeña,” Pueblo, Sep. 25, 1944, 7.
123. Rodrigo, “La Orquesta Sinfónica, en el Monumental,” Pueblo, Mar. 19, 1945, 7.
124. Rodrigo, “Conrado del Campo y la Orquesta Clásica, Orquesta Sinfónica con
Jordá,” Pueblo, Dec. 20, 1943, 6.
125. Rodrigo, quoted in Julián Navarro, “Rincón indiscreto,” El español, June 16, 1956,
reprinted in Iglesias, Escritos de Joaquín Rodrigo, 41.
126. Rodrigo, “Lo que fue para nosotros,” Arriba, Oct. 7, 1958, 29.
127. Marco, Spanish Music, 129–​130.
128. Ibid., 130.

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  131

Conclusion

I t is a long-​held assumption that music criticism in the period preceding

the Spanish Civil War—​that is, circa 1918 to 1936—​was dominated by
a single, quasi-​hegemonic figure: Adolfo Salazar. Rather paradoxically, the
beginnings of the Salazar legend can be traced back to Francoism, and even
more precisely to the time around Salazar’s death:  in their obituaries of
Salazar, a number of the most prominent figures of Spanish musical life
praised him as a tireless champion of new music, a very effective mediator
between young composers and audiences, an administrator fully commit-
ted to improving Spanish musical life, and an excellent writer.1 Present-​day
writers often invoke similar notions to confirm Salazar’s hegemony.2 This
is not to say that the legend has gone completely unchallenged: as early as
1958, on the occasion of Salazar’s death, Julio Gómez called into question
the idyllic picture other critics painted in their obituaries and refused to call
Salazar “the best Spanish critic of all times,” arguing that he had excellent
writing skills but his judgment was not always reliable or impartial; nor was
it unanimously embraced even by those who were, in principle, support-
ers of new music.3 More recently, a few scholars have called into question
the claim that Salazar’s role was hegemonic in disseminating and regulat-
ing new music in Spain.4 Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that Salazar
is still, to a significant extent, the visible face of Spanish music criticism
1918–​1936; studies of music criticism of that era, even when discussing
the writings of other critics, still see in Salazar an important focus,5 and he
has been practically the only critic of the period to have some of his corre-
spondence, as well as an anthology of his writings, published in book form,
which further confirms his status as not simply a critic writing for the pre-
sent, but someone whose opinions deserve to be preserved through time.6
132

Setting aside appraisals of Salazar’s writing and stature, however,

there are enough elements in his biography and career to make it rela-
tively easy to turn him into a myth: his thus-​far unknown dedication to
music criticism, his excellent writing skills, and his polemic style. His
political commitment and subsequent exile turned him into a symbol of
the frustrated Edad de Plata. It would be difficult, however, to turn one
single critic of the period 1939–​1951 into the embodiment of the period’s
Zeitgeist, in the same way Salazar was for the Second Republic. What best
captures the Zeitgeist of early Francoism, anyway? Is it the Falange, with
its hegemony in the early days of the regime and its desire to transform
Spain and bring about the Nuevo Estado? The Falange was certainly highly
visible, especially in the context of European fascisms, but it was just
one of several factions under the Francoist government, and it quickly
started to lose influence to groups that shared the Falange’s worship of
the Spanish past, but perhaps not so much the wish to transform it into
a source of renovation for the future. It would not be accurate to describe
early Francoism simply as the practical implementation of Falange ide-
als, and by the same token it would not be accurate to portray Sopeña as
the hegemonic critic of early Francoism, no matter how much he tried to
mimic Salazar’s career or how influential he is still nowadays in topics of
Spanish contemporary music. In a way, Sopeña was an anomaly rather
than the norm, with his interest in and curiosity for new music:  even
when he dismissed a particular composer or work, his criticism was based
on reflection and built up to a comprehensive frame for understanding
and writing about new music.
It is perhaps this lack of interest for the new that makes it equally dif-
ficult for any other critics to rise to the status of hegemonic; after all,
there was supposed to be something new about the Nuevo Estado. Joaquín
Turina, Nemesio Otaño, and Higinio Anglès all could have some claim to
having a hegemonic role in music criticism, by simultaneously being critics
and holding prominent administrative positions in music administration
under the Franco regime. And yet their critical writings, individually con-
sidered, failed to capture particular aspects of the musical life and climate
of the 1940s: Turina mostly wrote daily music reviews that were reactions
to particular events rather than an attempt at building an overarching doc-
trine of what Spanish music should be, as Sopeña had done. Otaño and
Anglès, through their engagement with Spanish early music, provided a
crucial link between musicological research and public dissemination—​but
they both practically limited themselves to writing about early music and
did not show an interest in writing daily concert reviews, let alone in sys-
tematically engaging with contemporary music.

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  133

What this demonstrates, however, is the protean nature of the Franco

regime, and how it embraced conservatism and nationalism—​also in music
and music criticism—​as broad labels that could accommodate a range of
positions, even, in the case of Julio Gómez, a mild form of dissent with
prevailing early music policies or, as with Joaquín Rodrigo, a continuation
of ideas supposedly expelled from Spain during the Civil War. Indeed, the
early Franco regime in a way catalyzed forms of musical nationalism that
had been developing from the late nineteenth century onward. The gen-
eration born in the 1910s—​including Sopeña and other critic-​composers
discussed in this book, such as Montsalvatge and Suriñach—​was the last
to come of age in an environment in which music nationalism was pretty
much the hegemonic option. Not that nationalism and debates around it
totally disappeared without a trace from Spanish music after 1951: Rodrigo,
Rodolfo Halffter, Ernesto Halffter, and other composers who can be loosely
described as nationalist lived until the late twentieth century, and in any
case, the Generation of ’51 and the Spanish avant-​garde were not com-
pletely oblivious to the category of the national.7 Nevertheless, after the
1950s—​probably with some delay, with respect to the rest of Europe—​
the time of musical nationalism in Spain had certainly gone by, despite
Sopeña’s hopes for Spanish music. It is therefore the period 1939–​1951 that
last saw some of the main actors of Spanish music engaging with the ques-
tions of national identity and tradition that had preoccupied their prede-
cessors for at least the preceding five decades, contributing to an ongoing
debate under the pressures of press deadlines, censorship, and the need to
adapt their opinions, and sometimes looking for spaces of dissent within
the requirements of the new regime.

NOTES

1. Joaquín Rodrigo, “Lo que fue para nosotros,” Arriba, Oct. 7, 1958, 29; Enrique
Franco, “Crítica creadora,” Arriba, Oct. 7, 1958, 29; Cristóbal Halffter, “Guía de la
música española,” Arriba, Oct. 7, 1958, 29; Ramón Barce, “Adolfo Salazar. La obra
y el hombre,” Índice, no. 20 (1958), 23.
2. Emilio Casares Rodicio, “Música y músicos de la Generación del 27,” in La música
en la Generación del 27. Homenaje a Lorca 1915–​1939, ed. Emilio Casares Rodicio
(Madrid: Ministerio de Cultura/​INAEM, 1986), 22; Casares Rodicio, “La música
española hasta 1939, o la restauración musical,” in España en la música de Occidente,
ed. Emilio Casares Rodicio, Ismael Fernández de la Cuesta, and José López Calo,
vol. 2 (Madrid: Instituto Nacional de las Artes Escénicas y de la Música, 1987), 315;
Consuelo Carredano, “Danzas de conquista: herencia y celebración de Adolfo
Salazar,” in Música y cultura en la Edad de Plata 1915–​1939, ed. María Nagore,
Leticia Sánchez de Andrés, and Elena Torres (Madrid: ICCMU, 2009), 195.

Conclusion  [ 133 ]
134

3. Julio Gómez, “Comentarios del presente y del pasado,” Harmonía, October–​

December (1958), 5.
4. María Palacios, “El Grupo de los Ocho bajo el prisma de Adolfo Salazar,” in Música
y cultura en la Edad de Plata 1915–​1939, ed. María Nagore, Leticia Sánchez de
Andrés, and Elena Torres (Madrid:  ICCMU, 2009), 282; Javier Suárez-​Pajares,
“Adolfo Salazar: luz y sombras,” in Música y cultura en la Edad de Plata 1915–​1939,
ed. María Nagore, Leticia Sánchez de Andrés, and Elena Torres (Madrid: ICCMU,
2009), 201–​208.
5. Teresa Cascudo and María Palacios, “Introducción,” in Los señores de la crítica.
Periodismo musical e ideología del modernismo en Madrid (1900–​1950), ed. Teresa
Cascudo and María Palacios (Sevilla: Doble J, 2011), xii–​xiii.
6. Consuelo Carredano (ed.), Adolfo Salazar. Epistolario 1912–​1958 (Madrid: Fundación
Scherzo/​Publicaciones de la Residencia de Estudiantes, 2008); Adolfo Salazar,
Textos de crítica musical en el periódico El Sol, ed. José María García Laborda and
Josefa Ruiz Vicente (Sevilla: Doble J, 2009).
7. José Luis García del Busto, “Manuel de Falla y los compositores de la Generación
del 51:  Ruptura/​presencia,” in Manuel de Falla:  Latinité et universalité, ed. Louis
Jambou (Paris: Presses de l’Université de Paris-​Sorbonne, 1999), 509–​513.

[ 134 ]  Music Criticism and Music Critics in Early Francoist Spain

  135

APPENDIX I

Publications, 1939–​1951

NEWSPAPERS
ABC

Began: 1905
Ended:  still published today. At the beginning of the Civil War, the
Republican government confiscated its offices and nationalized the news-
paper. In turn, the nationalist side started its own ABC (under the name
ABC Sevilla) in Seville. At the end of the war, ABC and ABC Sevilla merged.
Print run:  16,000 subscribers according to Anuario de la Prensa 1945–​46
(subscriptions typically amounted to 10–​30 percent of the total print run
of a newspaper). It was mainly distributed in Madrid, Barcelona, Zaragoza,
Valencia, Málaga, and Alicante.
Founder/​publisher:  initially founded by Torcuato Luca de Tena. The pri-
vate company Prensa Española, owned by the Luca de Tena family, regained
control of the newspaper after the Civil War.
Contents: from its foundation, ABC was well known for conservative, mon-
archist content, which it continued throughout the Franco regime. A music
column was published almost daily, featuring reviews of recent concerts
and musical events.
Staff: guitarist and composer Regino Sáinz de la Maza accepted the posi-
tion of staff music critic in April 1939; he held the post until 1952. He was
occasionally replaced—​for example, in the case of conflict of interest—​by
other arts critics such as Jacinto Miquelarena.
136

El Alcázar

Began: 1936
Ended: 1988
Print run: 3,500 subscribers (Anuario de la Prensa 1945–​46). It was circu-
lated mainly in Madrid and Toledo.
Founder/​publisher: initially founded in 1936 in Toledo during the siege of
the Alcázar, it then became the “diary of the front of Madrid” under the con-
trol of the Falange. After the war, it was initially run by the Hermandad del
Alcázar de Toledo (Veterans of the Battle of the Alcázar of Toledo); in 1945,
after the newspaper incurred financial hardship, its staff created a co-​op to
prevent it from disappearing. In 1949, the Hermandad leased the newspa-
per out to Prensa y Ediciones, a private company with links to the Opus Dei.
Contents: El Alcázar was at the time mainly influenced by falangist ideology.
A music column was published almost daily, focusing on concert life in Madrid.
Staff: the composer and conductor Conrado del Campo was the staff music
critic at El Alcázar from 1939 until his death in 1953.

Arriba

Began: 1939
Ended: 1979
Print run: 90,880 (Anuario de la Prensa 1943–​44). It was circulated mainly
in Madrid, the capitals of the Spanish provinces, and other larger towns.
Founder/​publisher: Arriba was founded by José Antonio Primo de Rivera in
1935, and suspended by the government of the Republic the following year.
Just before the Civil War came to an end, the Falange refounded Arriba
through the company Prensa del Movimiento.
Contents: as the flagship publication of the Falange, Arriba can be regarded
as the official newspaper of the regime, in that other newspapers were
encouraged by the censorship apparatus to follow its editorial line, some-
times even explicitly. In regard to music, it focused mainly on daily musical
life of Madrid, but it also included more extended articles on historical or
aesthetic matters than other newspapers.
Staff: Federico Sopeña, who was at the beginning of his career and served
as secretary of the Comisaría de Música, was the staff music critic from
1939 to 1943; he then left his post to take up a place at the Vitoria semi-
nary. He was replaced by Antonio Fernández-​Cid but continued writing
occasional pieces of criticism.

[ 136 ] Appendix I
  137

Hoja Oficial del Lunes (Madrid)

Began: 1930
Ended: 1982
Print run: unknown
Founder/​publisher: as with other newspapers of the same name published
in various Spanish cities, Hoja Oficial del Lunes was the only newspaper to
be published on Mondays, since the others were not allowed to have their
staff work on Sundays. All papers with the title Hoja Oficial del Lunes were
published by professional societies of journalists (Asociación de la Prensa)
of the relevant provinces.
Contents:  it followed mostly the official line of the regime. Most issues
included a section on concert reviews.
Staff:  concert reviews were normally penned by Víctor Ruiz Albéniz
(under the pseudonym Acorde), a former military soldier in Morocco
and the president of the Asociación de la Prensa of Madrid from 1939
to 1944.

Informaciones

Began: 1922
Ended: 1983
Print run: no numbers are given by Anuario de la Prensa. It was mainly cir-
culated in the cities of Madrid, Córdoba, Cáceres, Badajoz, Málaga, Sevilla,
Salamanca, Jaén, Ciudad Real, Guadalajara, Valladolid, Zamora, Burgos,
and Palencia (Anuario de la prensa, 1945–​46).
Founder/​publisher: founded by Leopoldo Romeo, from 1925 it fell under
the control of the banker Juan March. In the pre–​Civil War years it devel-
oped significant connections with German companies to overcome its
financial problems.
Contents: during the Second World War, Informaciones was one of the main
supporters of the Axis. Music information was mostly limited to reviews of
concerts in Madrid.
Staff:  Antonio de las Heras was in charge of musical criticism through
the 1940s. Víctor Ruiz Albéniz, under the pseudonym Chispero, regularly
wrote a short satirical column, which often featured comments about
zarzuela.

Appendix I  [ 137 ]
138

Pueblo

Began: 1940
Ended: 1984
Print run: 86,880 (Anuario de la Prensa 1943–​44)
Founder/​publisher:  Pueblo was the official organ of the falangist trade
unions (Organización Sindical); as such, it was part of the line-​up of news-
papers and other media of Prensa del Movimiento.
Contents: Pueblo followed falangist ideals. It included a daily music section,
focusing on concert reviews in Madrid.
Staff:  the composer Joaquín Rodrigo was in charge of musical criticism
until 1946; after that, he was replaced by Dolores Palá Berdejo.

La Vanguardia Española

Began: 1881 (as La Vanguardia)

Ended:  still published today (again, under the name of La Vanguardia,
which was reintroduced after the Franco era)
Founder/​publisher: it was founded by the Godó family and was confiscated
by the Catalonian government during the Civil War, after which it went
back to the Godós. It is the only daily newspaper discussed in this book that
is published in Barcelona.
Contents: although before the Civil War La Vanguardia had a liberal tradi-
tion, during the 1940s it was closely controlled by the regime; the Dirección
General de Prensa appointed Luis de Galinsoaga (a self-​proclaimed anti-​
Catalanist) as its editor.
Staff: Urbano F. Zanni was in charge of writing daily reviews of concerts and
news of the musical life of Barcelona. However, the most noteworthy con-
tributions of the newspaper to musical criticism were extended articles and
series of articles by the composers Xavier Montsalvatge and José Forns.

Ya

Began: 1935 (interrupted during the Civil War)

Ended: 1998
Print run: no numbers from Anuario de la Prensa. It was circulated mainly
in Madrid, Valencia, Sevilla, Bilbao, and Barcelona (Anuario de la Prensa
1945–​46).

[ 138 ] Appendix I
  139

Founder/​publisher: founded and managed by the private company Editorial

Católica
Contents: Ya can be classified as a conservative-​Catholic newspaper; in this
regard, it took over from El Debate, also owned by Editorial Católica, which
was never published again after the Civil War. It included a daily column on
music focusing mostly on concert reviews in Madrid.
Staff: Joaquín Turina worked briefly as staff music critic during the sum-
mer of 1939; he was then replaced by the composer and conductor José
María Franco, with rather frequent contributions by another composer,
Ángel Martín Pompey.

MUSIC PERIODICALS
Anuario Musical

Began: 1946
Ended: still published today
Frequency: annual
Founder/​
publisher:  it was published by the Instituto Español de
Musicología; Higinio Anglès was founding editor.
Contents: Anuario Musical was the only academic periodical specializing in
musicology published during the first decade of the Franco regime. Most of
the submissions were consonant with the research trends that character-
ized the activity of the Instituto during these years: historical musicology
focused on Spanish topics (mainly sixteenth and seventeenth centuries),
with a specific interest in sources and a positivistic approach, and second-
arily, folk music research.
Staff: pieces were written by the Instituto staff and collaborators. This includes,
apart from Anglès, the German scholars Marius Schneider and Walter Spanke,
and Spanish researchers such as José Antonio de Donostia, José Subirá,
Miguel Querol, José María Madurell, and Nicolás A. Solar Quintes.

Boletín del Colegio de Directores de Bandas de Música Civiles

Began: first published in 1935; it ceased publication in 1936 owing to the

Civil War. Publication was then resumed in 1945.
Ended: 1950
Frequency: monthly

Appendix I  [ 139 ]
140

Print run: 400 (Anuario de la Prensa 1945–​46)

Founder/​publisher: the Committee of the Colegio de Directores de Bandas
de Música Civiles (association of civil wind band conductors)
Contents:  Boletín acted as a newsletter for the members of the Colegio; it
included information on the latest activities of the association and focused on
problems specific to wind bands (working conditions of wind band conductors,
legislation, etc.), with occasional articles on historical topics (mainly biogra-
phies of composers) or discussions of contemporary composition trends.
Staff:  Victoriano Echevarría and Rodrigo A.  de Santiago, both of them
composers and wind band composers, were among the most prolific con-
tributors to the Boletín; wind band conductors from all over Spain were also
regularly invited to contribute articles and commentaries.

Harmonía

Began: 1916
Ended:  1959 (publication was interrupted from 1936 to 1939 because of
the Civil War)
Frequency: quarterly
Print run: 350 (Anuario de la Prensa 1943–​44) to 400 (Anuario 1945–​46).
Founder/​
publisher:  founded by composer and wind band conductor
Mariano San Miguel
Contents: Harmonía was addressed to wind band conductors, and it came
with the score of an arrangement or an original piece for wind band and
a catalogue of recently published music for wind band. Extended articles
focused mainly on Western art music (primarily biographies of composers)
and on contemporary problems in the musical life of Spain, such as con-
temporary Spanish composition, music education, opportunities for young
composers, problems specific to wind bands, etc.
Staff: in the years 1939–​1951, its main contributors were Ángel Andrada,
Julio Gómez, Ángel Arias Macein, Victoriano Echevarría, and José Subirá.

Música. Revista Quincenal Ilustrada

Began: 1944
Ended: 1946
Frequency: bimonthly

[ 140 ] Appendix I
  141

Print run: 5,000 (Anuario de la prensa 1945–​46)

Founder/​publisher: the journalist Rodrigo Royo Masiá was its founder and
editor.
Contents: Música focused mostly on contemporary music, both Spanish and
international, including concert reviews (Madrid, and from February 1946
also Barcelona) and informal interviews with some of the main Spanish
performers and composers.
Staff: most of the collaborators of Música were music critics active elsewhere,
such as Federico Sopeña, Antonio Fernández-​Cid, and Regino Sáinz de la
Maza. It also invited occasional contributions from other intellectuals inter-
ested in music, such as Gerardo Diego and Eugenio D’Ors. In February 1946,
the periodical opened an office in Barcelona; its main contributors there were
Federico Mompou, Xavier Montsalvatge, and Carlos Suriñach Wrokona.

Revista Literaria Musical

Began: 1945
Ended: 1967
Frequency: initially monthly, quarterly from August 1945, bimonthly from
January 1950
Print run: 1,000 (Anuario de la Prensa 1945–​46).
Founder/​
publisher:  Unión de Compositores y Escritores (Union of
Composers and Writers)
Contents: as the title indicates, Revista Literaria Musical focused on both
musical and literary topics. It featured information on musical events in
Spain and abroad, historical topics mainly for a nonspecialist readership,
and interviews with Spanish composers and conductors.
Staff: most of the collaborators were members of the Unión de Compositores
y Escritores and did not have significant writing careers elsewhere. It most
prolific contributors were Manuel Chausa, Santiago Riopérez y Milá, and
Javier del Valle. The section about musical life abroad was covered by a
number of foreign correspondents.

Ritmo y Melodía

Began: 1944
Ended: 1950

Appendix I  [ 141 ]
142

Frequency: monthly
Print run: 7,000 (Anuario de la Prensa 1945–​46). It was circulated mainly in
Madrid, Barcelona, and Valencia.
Founder/​publisher: its founding editor was Luis Araque, a medical doctor
and amateur jazzman.
Contents: Ritmo y Melodía was the only Spanish periodical of the time focus-
ing primarily on jazz. It included information about the jazz scene in Spain
and abroad, reviews of recordings, and articles about the specific issues con-
cerning jazz in Spain, alongside articles focusing on other forms of urban
popular music and occasionally art music. In September 1949 it was rede-
signed to include other forms of entertainment such as theater and cinema.
Staff: most of the collaborators were part of at least one of the “Hot Clubs”
active in some of the largest Spanish cities, such as Araque and Alfredo Papó.

Ritmo

Began: 1929; interrupted 1936–​1940 because of the Civil War

Ended: still published today
Frequency: nine or ten issues per year
Print run: 6,000 (Anuario de la Prensa 1943–​44 and 1945–​46)
Founder/​publisher: it was founded by Rogelio Villar, a composer and critic,
in 1929. Contents: Ritmo focused on topics of both Spanish and non-​
Spanish music history, with a particular focus on Spanish early music, con-
cert reviews in Madrid and other Spanish cities, and contemporary trends
in music composition.
Staff: after Rogelio Villar died in 1937, Nemesio Otaño was appointed the
editor of Ritmo in 1940; he was then replaced by Fernando Rodríguez del
Río, who had collaborated in the foundation of the periodical back in 1929.
Ritmo boasted a large number of collaborators, some of whom were active
as performers, composers, or critics in other publications (Eduardo López-
Chavarri, Julio Gómez, Federico Sopeña, Antonio Massana, Bonifacio Gil,
Noberto Almandoz, José Subirá, etc.), whereas others left very few records
of their activity outside this newspaper.

Tesoro sacro-​m usical

Began: 1917 (interrupted temporarily during the Civil War)

[ 142 ] Appendix I
  143

Ended: 1978
Frequency: monthly
Print run: 750 (Anuario de la Prensa 1943–​44) to 1,000 (Anuario 1945–​46)
Founder/​publisher:  Congregación de Misioneros del Corazón de María
(Association of Missionaries of the Heart of Mary)
Contents: Tesoro sacro-​musical focused almost exclusively on sacred music,
including historical topics (mainly early music), information about music
in cathedrals and monasteries of Spain, and translations of articles on
sacred music published elsewhere.
Staff: most of its contributors were church musicians or members of the
Catholic Church and were not active as composers, performers, or critics
elsewhere.

OTHER PERIODICALS
Arbor

Began: 1944
Ended: still published today
Frequency: bimonthly
Founder/​publisher: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas
Contents:  the periodical was subtitled Ciencia, pensamiento y cultura
(Science, thought, and culture) and aimed to present a panorama of the
various scientific and humanistic disciplines under the umbrella of the
Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas. It usually consisted
four to six academic articles, followed by a column (Crónica) providing
information about recent events and developments in Spanish science
and culture. Although music was initially underrepresented in Arbor, it
became more prominent from 1947 onward, with about four extended
articles per year; similarly, Crónica started to include more information
about musical life in Spain and abroad. The articles focused on the his-
tory of Spanish music, contemporary trends in European music, and the
philosophy of music.
Staff: two of the main contributors on musical topics were Higinio Anglès
(who worked at the Consejo as head of the Instituto Español de Musicología)
and Federico Sopeña.

Appendix I  [ 143 ]
144

Destino

Began: 1939
Ended: 1985
Frequency: weekly
Print run: 13,000 (Anuario de la Prensa 1943–​44 and 1945–​46), distributed
mainly in Barcelona, Palma de Mallorca, and Valencia
Founder/​publisher:  founded by Ignacio Agustí Peypoch, who was then
director of Publicaciones y Revistas
Contents: Destino focused on politics and culture, and during the Second
World War it was more pro-​Allies than most other publications under the
regime. It usually included a small section (less than one full page) on
music, mainly focusing on reviews of recent concerts in Barcelona.
Staff:  the Catalan composer Xavier Montsalvatge was in charge of the
music section through the 1940s.

Dígame

Began: 1940
Ended: 1971
Frequency: weekly
Print run: 53,000 (Anuario de la Prensa 1943–​44); 40,500 (Anuario 1945–​46);
it was circulated mainly in Madrid, Barcelona, and Valencia.
Founder/​publisher: Editorial Católica (see Ya)
Contents: Dígame included some lighthearted articles on political topics,
but focused mostly on middle-​and working-​class leisure activities, such as
cinema, bullfighting, football, etc., and included some political articles as
well. Almost all issues included a short review of recent concerts in Madrid.
Staff: the composer Joaquín Turina was in charge of music criticism until
his death in 1949. He was then replaced by José Forns.

El Español

Began: 1942
Ended: 1947 (but was published again from 1953 to 1962)
Frequency: weekly

[ 144 ] Appendix I
  145

Print run:  31,421 (Anuario de la Prensa 1943–​44) to 45,000 (Anuario

1945–​46)
Founder/​publisher: it was published by the Delegación Nacional de Prensa
(Press National Delegation), controlled by the Falange.
Contents: El Español focused mainly on political issues; during the Second
World War, it was overtly pro-​Axis. It did not have a specific music sec-
tion, but occasionally included articles on music focusing on a range of
topics: musical life (mainly the visits of German conductors or ensembles
before the end of the war), music history both in Spain and abroad, and
concert reviews.
Staff: El Español did not have a staff music critic. Some of its occasional con-
tributors were critics and musicologists active elsewhere, such as Federico
Sopeña, Ángel Sagardía, Joaquín Rodrigo, José Forns, and Tomás Andrade
de Silva.

Escorial

Began: 1940
Ended: 1950
Frequency: monthly
Print run:  6,500 (Anuario de la Prensa 1943–​44) down to 1,800 (Anuario
1945–​46)
Founder/​publisher: members of the Falange Liberal, including Pedro Laín
Entralgo and Dionisio Ridruejo, founded Escorial in 1940. It was published
by the Delegación Nacional de Prensa y Propaganda (Press and Propaganda
National Delegation), then controlled by the Falange.
Contents:  Escorial aimed to help shape the Nuevo Estado by promoting
discussion and debate in the arts and humanities. In comparison with
other humanities, music played a rather ancillary role, with about three
or four articles per year, most of them addressing issues of contemporary
music life.
Staff: some of the leading critics writing for other newspapers and peri-
odicals, such as Federico Sopeña and Joaquín Rodrigo, also contributed to
Escorial. During the Second World War years, the periodical invited contri-
butions from German music critics, such as Karl Holl and Heinz Drewes.

Appendix I  [ 145 ]
146

La estafeta literaria

Began: 1944
Ended: 1946
Frequency: bimonthly
Print run:  20,000 (Anuario de la Prensa 1943–​44) to 25,000 (Anuario
1945–​46)
Founder/​publisher: Delegación Nacional de Prensa
Contents: a publication about cultural life, targeted toward a general read-
ership. It usually included one or two pages about music in each issue,
mainly focusing on contemporary issues of Spanish musical life (concerts,
new composition trends, etc.).
Staff: Antonio Fernández-​Cid was usually responsible for the information
about music.

Radio Nacional

Began: 1938
Ended: 1945
Frequency: weekly
Print run: 45,800 (Anuario de la Prensa 1943–​44)
Founder/​publisher: Delegación Nacional de Prensa
Contents: Radio Nacional was the newsletter of the Spanish state-​funded
radio station, Radio Nacional. It included several articles on current top-
ics aimed at a nonspecialized readership. Music articles typically focused
on the role of radio in dissemination of music, contemporary composition
and music life (Spanish and international), and historical topics (mostly
biographies of famous composers and performers).
Staff: Radio Nacional received contributions from a number of music crit-
ics active elsewhere, such as Otaño, Eduardo López-​Chavarri, Rodrigo, and
Forns.

Revista de ideas estéticas

Began: 1943
Ended: 1979

[ 146 ] Appendix I
  147

Frequency: quarterly
Founder/​publisher: Instituto Diego Velázquez, which was a section of the
Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas
Contents:  an academic publication about aesthetics. One or two articles
per year dealt with music aesthetics issues.
Staff: contributors on musical aesthetics included Federico Sopeña, Carlos
Bosch, and Juan José Mantecón.

Vértice

Began: 1937
Ended: 1944
Frequency: monthly
Print run: 14,630 (Anuario de la Prensa 1943–​44)
Founder/​publisher: Delegación Nacional de Prensa
Contents:  Vértice was founded as a high-​end illustrated magazine with
propaganda aims. It included historical and cultural articles consonant
with the main focuses of the Falange at the time (creation of national con-
science, fostering friendship with Italy and Germany). Most of its issues
(but not all) included an article on music, focusing mainly on historical
topics (predominantly Spanish early music).
Staff:  several well-​known names can be found on articles contributed to
Vértice, such as Federico Sopeña, Regino Sáinz de la Maza, Víctor Espinós,
and Antonio de las Heras.

Appendix I  [ 147 ]
148
  149

APPENDIX II

Music Critics

HIGINIO ANGLÈS
(Maspujols, Tarragona, 1888–​R ome, 1969)

A priest and musicologist, Anglès had already established his reputation on

the international musicological scene before the Franco regime; he became
vice president of the International Musicological Society in 1933. A strong
supporter of Catalan language and culture before the Civil War, he had to
downplay his Catalan nationalist past during the war and first years of the
Franco regime, and was eventually appointed first director of the Instituto
Español de Musicología (IEM) on its foundation 1943. As such, he was the
main editor of the Monumentos de la música española collection, focusing
on Spanish medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque music. In 1947 he moved
to Rome as director of the Pontificio Istituto di Musica Sacra, but he kept
his appointment at the IEM. As a contributor to the music press, he wrote
mainly for academic publications: he was the editor of Anuario Musical and
contributed regularly to Arbor. Contributions to nonacademic periodicals
include occasional articles for Ritmo or Radio Nacional, in which Anglès
wrote mainly about Spanish early music.

LUIS ARAQUE
(Zaragoza, 1914 –​M adrid, 1971)

Jazz performer, composer, and medical doctor. As a music critic, he focused

on defending and disseminating jazz. He was a founder and one of the main
contributors to the periodical Ritmo y Melodía, specialized in jazz music,
and from 1947 onward also wrote regularly for Ritmo.
150

CONRADO DEL CAMPO
(Madrid, 1878–​M adrid, 1953)

Composer, conductor, and teacher. Throughout the 1940s, he was professor

of composition at the Real Conservatorio of Madrid and conductor of the
Radio Nacional orchestra, and his works were premiered and performed
regularly. As a music critic, he was employed by El Alcázar to write daily
reviews of concert life in Madrid.

VICTORIANO ECHEVARRÍA
(Palencia, 1898–​M adrid, 1965)

Composer and conductor. He was one of the main contributors to the

Boletín del Colegio de Directores de Bandas de Música Civiles, in which he
analyzed a number of historical and contemporary issues affecting music,
especially those related to wind bands.

VÍCTOR ESPINÓS
(Alcoy, Alicante, 1875–​M adrid, 1948)

Medical doctor. Although during the 1940s his career as a music critic was
largely limited to occasional lecture recitals in collaboration with well-​
known performers and composers and occasional articles for selected
publications, he was still an influential and highly regarded figure in the
domain of musical criticism.

ANTONIO FERNÁNDEZ-​C ID
(Ourense, 1916–​B ilbao, 1995)

Fernández-​Cid started his career in the early 1940s; he was one of the few
to work primarily as a music critic and not be significantly involved in
composition, performance, or music administration. He replaced Federico
Sopeña as staff music critic at Arriba in 1943 and also wrote for La estafeta
literaria from 1944 to 1946, besides contributing to other publications
such as Música. Revista quincenal, Ritmo, and Radio Nacional. He focused
on a variety of contemporary issues around musical and historical topics

[ 150 ] Appendix II
  151

and had a particular interest in zarzuela, for which he advocated extremely

protectionist measures.

JOSÉ FORNS
(Madrid, 1898–​G eneva, 1952)

Composer, musicologist, and teacher. He was particularly influential in

the domains of music history and aesthetics:  his books Estética aplicada
a la música and Historia de la música, originally published in the 1920s,
were reprinted several times during the 1940s and widely used as texts
in conservatories. As a staff music critic, he replaced Turina at the weekly
newspaper Dígame in 1949. At the beginning of the decade, he also wrote
regularly for Radio Nacional, dealing with contemporary composers, par-
ticularly those coming from Germany and Italy, and from the mid-​1940s
he also contributed to La Vanguardia with a series of articles on particular
musical topics (German opera, British music, modernism, etc.).

JOSÉ MARÍA FRANCO
(Irún, Guipúzcoa, 1894 –​M adrid, 1971)

Composer, conductor, and teacher. During the 1940s, he was very active as
a conductor in Madrid, performing frequently with the Orquesta Sinfónica
de Madrid, Orquesta Clásica, Orquesta Nacional de España, Orquesta de
Educación y Descanso, and others. He was also the staff music critic at the
newspaper Ya, sharing this role with Ángel Martín Pompey and writing
daily reviews of concerts taking place in Madrid.

JULIO GÓMEZ
(Madrid, 1886–​M adrid, 1973)

Composer, musicologist, and, at the Real Conservatorio, music librarian

and teacher. His main contribution to musical journalism was as an edi-
tor and writer at the periodical Harmonía, which specialized in wind band
music; he also wrote occasionally for other periodicals such as Ritmo. He
focused mainly on critical analysis of several aspects of musical life (music
education, contemporary composition, public policies, etc.), as well as on
nineteenth-​century Spanish music.

Appendix II  [ 151 ]
152

ANTONIO DE LAS HERAS
(birth and death dates unknown)

During the 1940s, he was the staff music critic of the newspaper
Informaciones, covering daily the musical life of Madrid. In 1943 he replaced
Federico Sopeña as secretary of the Comisaría de Música. At the Comisaría,
he was involved in several activities of musical propaganda, such as promo-
tional trips and talks about Spanish music history.

EDUARDO LÓPEZ-​C HAVARRI

(Valencia, 1881–​Valencia, 1970)

Composer and teacher. The bulk of his critical work during the 1940s
remains outside of the scope of this study:  he wrote mainly for the
Valencian newspaper Las Provincias, which he had been doing since 1898.
However, he made occasional contributions to some of the main Madrid
periodicals, such as Ritmo. Moreover, he continued being an influential and
well-​respected figure as a researcher of Spanish folklore (he collaborated
with the Sección Femenina in composing and editing educational material)
and as one of the most active supporters of Wagner in Spain.

ÁNGEL MARTÍN POMPEY
(Montejo de la Sierra, Madrid, 1902–​M adrid, 2001)

Composer and teacher. During the 1940s, he was remarkably active as a com-
poser in Madrid, with several premières of his works by some of the most
relevant orchestras. In the field of musical journalism, during the 1940s he
shared the position of staff music critic at the newspaper Ya with José María
Franco, and in 1947 he started to write a column of concert reviews for Ritmo.

XAVIER MONTSALVATGE
(Girona, 1912–​B arcelona, 2002)

Composer. As a music critic, during the 1940s he contributed weekly to the

magazine Destino covering the main events in Barcelona; as such, he also
devoted some attention to discussing and promoting the works of contem-
porary Catalan composers. In the late 1940s, he started to write extended
articles on musical topics for La Vanguardia.

[ 152 ] Appendix II
  153

NEMESIO OTAÑO
(Azkoitia, Guipúzcoa, 1880–​S an Sebastián, 1956)

Priest, composer, teacher, and musicologist. During the Civil War, he

contributed to the war effort on the Francoist side by giving public talks
about music and organizing musical events, and also served as director
of Radio Nacional; after the end of the conflict he enjoyed an influential
position in musical life, first at the Comisaría de Música and then at the
Conservatorio de Madrid. As a music journalist, he contributed to Falange
publications such as Radio Nacional and Vértice; his most significant con-
tribution, however, was as the editor of Ritmo from 1940 to 1943. In his
writings, he dealt mainly with historical topics, particularly religious and
military music.

DOLORES PALÁ BERDEJO

(Calanda, Teruel, 1922–​M adrid 1981)

She replaced Joaquín Rodrigo as staff music critic of Pueblo in 1946 and
held that post until 1952.

JOAQUÍN RODRIGO
(Sagunto, Valencia, 1901–​M adrid, 1999)

Composer. During the 1940s, his career as a composer was especially

fruitful, beginning with the premiere of the Concierto de Aranjuez in
1940. He taught at the ONCE (Spanish National Organization for the
Blind) and the Conservatorio de Madrid and was also remarkably active
as a critic: he wrote almost daily for the newspaper Pueblo from 1940 to
1946, after which he was replaced by Dolores Palá Berdejo. He then went
on to write weekly music reviews for the sports newspaper Marca. He
also contributed to a number of musical and cultural periodicals, notably
Escorial, Radio Nacional, El Español, Vértice, Ritmo, and Música. Revista
quincenal. In his writings, he addressed a number of musical topics, both
historical (focusing on Spanish sixteenth-​and seventeenth-​ century
music) and contemporary. In this regard, he was particularly keen on
discussing and suggesting policies that could improve promotion of
Spanish contemporary music, and especially the working and living con-
ditions of composers.

Appendix II  [ 153 ]
154

VÍCTOR RUIZ ALBÉNIZ

(Mayagüez, Puerto Rico, 1885–​M adrid, 1954)

After having served as a military doctor and war journalist during the
African wars of the earlier twentieth century, during the 1940s he worked
mainly as a journalist and propagandist of the regime, serving as president
of the Asociación de la Prensa. The nephew of composer Isaac Albéniz, he
showed a keen interest in music and wrote occasional music criticism in
the newspaper Informaciones under the pseudonyms Acorde and Chispero.

REGINO SÁINZ DE LA MAZA

(Burgos, 1896–​M adrid, 1981)

Guitarist and professor of guitar at the Conservatorio de Madrid. He sup-

ported Franco’s military uprising from the very beginning and was engaged
in musical propaganda activities during the Civil War. In April 1939 he
became staff music critic for ABC and held the post until 1952. He also
occasionally wrote articles for Música, Radio Nacional, and Vértice, focusing
mainly on Spanish early music.

RODRIGO ALFREDO DE SANTIAGO

(Barakaldo, Bizkaia, 1907–​A Coruña, 1985)

Composer and wind band conductor. As a critic, he wrote mainly for

Harmonía and Boletín del Colegio de Directores de Banda de Música Civiles,
which both focused on wind band music. His contributions dealt predomi-
nantly with contemporary issues of musical life at large (education, com-
position, administration, public policies, etc.), and in particular the effects
and implications of those issues for wind bands.

FEDERICO SOPEÑA
(Valladolid, 1917–​M adrid, 1991)

He started his career in 1939 as staff music critic for Arriba and was
appointed secretary of the Comisaría de Música in 1940. He also con-
tributed to Radio Nacional, Escorial, and Vértice. A member of the Falange

[ 154 ] Appendix II
  155

Liberal, he left Madrid and music criticism in 1943 to take a place at the
Vitoria seminary; after being ordained as a priest, he went back to Madrid
and contributed to some of the most significant publications of the time,
including Arbor, El Español, and Música. Revista quincenal. He maintained
his influential position throughout the Franco regime and beyond, holding
offices at the Conservatorio de Madrid and the Comisaría de Música.

JOAQUÍN TURINA
(Sevilla, 1882–​M adrid, 1949)

Composer and teacher. During the 1940s, he was professor of composition

at the Conservatorio de Madrid and director of the Comisaría de Música.
Before the Civil War he was staff music critic for the newspaper El Debate;
after the conflict, he wrote briefly for Ya in the summer of 1939, but his
most noteworthy contribution as a critic was at the weekly newspaper
Dígame, where he reviewed the musical life of Madrid.

Appendix II  [ 155 ]
156
  157

REFERENCES

Anonymous. “Schönberg.” Ritmo, no. 69 (1933), 7–​9.

—​—​—​. “Música.” Arriba España, Jan. 19, 1937, 4.
—​—​—​. “Música.” Heraldo de Aragón, Jan. 30, 1937.
—​—​—​. “Música.” Heraldo de Aragón, Feb. 18, 1937.
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INDEX

Agrupación Nacional de Música de Castell, Ángel María, 16, 26

Cámara, 19, 30, 32 censorship, 23–╉4
Albéniz, Isaac, 87, 94, 119, 154 Círculo Manuel de Falla, 6
Almandoz, Norberto, 22, 78, 142 Civil War, 5, 8, 17–╉9, 22–╉4, 30–╉1, 40,
Anglès, Higinio, 4–╉5, 10–╉1, 22, 28, 48, 44, 60–╉1, 75, 77, 84–╉5, 92–╉3,
76, 83–╉90, 92–╉3, 103, 120, 132, 139, 104, 107–8, 112–╉4, 120, 133, 135,
142, 149 138–40, 142, 153–╉5
anti-╉Semitism, 55, 60–╉1, 112–╉4 Comisaría de Música, 18–╉9, 21, 25–╉7, 43,
Arámbarri, Jesús, 43, 128n91 47–╉50, 78, 122, 136, 152–╉5
Araque, Luis, 5, 116, 118, 142, 149–╉50 Consejo Superior de Investigaciones
Asociación Católica de Propagandistas, Científicas, 4, 57, 85–╉6, 143, 147
7–╉8, 47, 57 See also Instituto Español de Musicología
avant-╉garde, 2, 6, 12n10, 16–╉7, 36, 48, Conservatorio de Madrid see Real
54–╉5, 59–╉63, 65, 133 Conservatorio de Música de Madrid
See also Generación del 51, Grupo de de Contreras y López de Ayala, Juan
los Ocho, Schoenberg, Stravinsy see Marquis of Lozoya
Coros y Danzas, 11, 104, 106, 111–╉2, 118
Bacarisse, Salvador, 11n3, 15–╉6, 30, See also Sección Femenina
40n86, 42n110, 61 CSIC see Consejo Superior de
Bach, Johann Sebastian, 64, 81 Investigaciones Científicas
Bal y Gay, Jesús, 8, 15, 36, 85, 107 Cubiles, José, 19, 20, 29–╉30, 32, 44
Barce, Ramón, 6
Bartók, Bela, 58–╉9 de las Heras, Antonio, 3, 5, 16, 19, 21,
Bautista, Julián, 11n3, 15–╉6, 30 37n7, 62–╉3, 137, 147, 152
van Beethoven, Ludwig, 18, 29, 51, 62–╉4 Debussy, Claude, 1, 16, 60, 113
Berliner Philharmoniker, 31–╉2 Delegación Nacional de Prensa
Brahms, Johannes, 32, 51 y Propaganda, 23, 44, 79
Bretón, Tomás, 87, 91–╉2, 95, 101n114 Diego, Gerardo, 19, 27, 40n71, 141
See also zarzuela D’Ors, Eugenio, 18, 26, 141
Britten, Benjamin, 61 Dukas, Paul, 60, 120
Bruckner, Anton, 21, 81 Durán, Gustavo, 15, 17
Dvořák, Antonin, 59
Calés, Francisco, 20
del Campo, Conrado, 5–╉6, 18, 20, 22, Echevarría, Victoriano, 87, 119, 128n91,
6–╉2, 121, 123, 136, 150 140, 150
Casal Chapí, Enrique, 15, 40n86 Espinós, Víctor, 147, 150
Casals, Pau, 15, 77 Esplá, Óscar, 15, 107
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Falange Española y de las J.O.N.S., 2, 7, Halffter, Cristóbal, 6, 65

23, 29, 44, 64, 79, 136, 138, 147 Halffter, Ernesto, 2, 16–​7, 20, 38n35, 43,
Falange Liberal, 45–​8, 57, 67n13, 121, 49–​51, 59, 61–​2, 77, 120, 133
145, 154–​5 Halffter, Rodolfo, 11n3, 15, 17, 30, 36,
de Falla, Manuel, 1, 11, 15–​6, 19–​20, 22, 42n110, 133
36–​7n2, 44, 49–​50, 53, 60–​1, 64, Hispanidad, 10, 28, 34–​6, 75–​90, 106
94, 119, 121, 125, 130e
and andalucismo, 52–​3, 119, 122–​3 IEM see Instituto Español de Musicología
and castellanismo, 52–​3, 119, 122–​3 Instituto Español de Musicología, 10, 57,
El amor brujo, 43 83, 85–​7, 89–​91, 103–​4, 109, 124,
El retablo de maese Pedro, 20, 43, 52–​3, 139, 143, 149
56, 59, 62, 123
El sombrero de tres picos, 43, 52 Junta Nacional de Música, 22–​3, 26
Noches en los jardines de España,
30, 43, 48 von Karajan, Herbert, 31
fascism, 2, 8, 55–​6, 66, 132
See also Falange Española y de las Laín Entralgo, Pedro, 44–​5, 70n94, 145
J.O.N.S., Nazi regime Lehmberg, Emilio, 123
Fernández Arbós, Enrique, 16, 19, 29–​30 Ley de Prensa, 23
Fernández-​Cid, Antonio, 5, 25, 27, Liszt, Franz, 59
40n73, 57, 88, 136, 141, 146, 150–​1 Lopes-​Graça, Fernando, 62
Fleta, Miguel, 30–​1 López-​Chavarri, Eduardo, 22, 87, 108–​9,
Forns, José, 63, 67n21, 138, 144–​6, 151 110, 114, 116, 120, 141, 146, 152
Franco, Enrique, 6
Franco, José María, 5, 18, 19–​20, 25, Maeztu, Ramiro de, 34–​5
109, 139, 151–​2 Mahler, Gustav, 21
Mantecón, Juan José, 11n3, 17, 147
García Ascot, Rosa, 11n3, 36 Marqués de Lozoya, 18–​9, 83, 89
García de la Parra, Benito, 60, 68n50 Martín Pompey, Ángel, 22, 60,
García Leoz, Jesús, 60, 68n50, 128n91 129, 151–​2
García Lorca, Federico, 1, 36, 107 Martínez Torner, Eduardo, 8, 15, 40n86,
García Morente, Manuel, 35 76, 90, 107
Generación del 14, 22 Mayer-​Serra, Otto, 15
Generación del 51, 2, 6, 12n8, 124, 133 Menéndez Aleyxandre, Arturo, 27
Generación del 27, 1–​2, 11n4 Messiaen, Olivier, 59, 65
Generación del 98, 22, 123 Montsalvatge, Xavier, 5, 22, 63–​4,
Gerhard, Roberto, 15, 30, 63, 85, 107 68n50, 133, 138, 141, 144, 152
Gil, Bonifacio, 123, 128n91, 142 Moreno Bascuñana, José, 21
Giménez Caballero, Ernesto, 8, 10, 34, Moreno Gans, José, 21, 60
54–​9, 61, 65, 75, 89, 112 Muñoz Molleda, José, 60, 68n50,
Gómez, Julio, 4, 5, 10–​11, 20, 22, 26, 28, 123, 128n91
46, 48, 60, 76, 90–​5, 110n42, 131,
133, 140–​1, 151 Nazi regime, 2–​3, 8, 28, 30–​2, 67n21,
Granados, Enrique, 87, 94, 119 81, 104, 113
Grieg, Edvard, 59
Grupo de los Ocho, 1–​2, 6, 11n3, 15–​7, Orquesta Filarmónica de Madrid, 16, 19,
43, 48, 52–​3, 61–​2, 91–​2, 107, 31, 63–​4, 92, 100n99, 119
119–​20, 122–​4 Orquesta Nacional de España, 18–​9,
Guridi, Jesús, 61, 128n91 23, 25, 27, 30, 32, 43, 48–​9, 63–​4,

[ 176 ] Index
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67n21, 71n115, 92, 100n99, 119, Rodríguez del Río, Fernando, 78,
129n107, 151 108, 142
Orquesta Sinfónica de Madrid, 18–​20, Ruiz Albéniz, Víctor, 5, 88, 137, 154
25, 29, 36, 100n99, 63–​4, 92,
119, 151 Sagardía, Ángel, 50, 145
Ortega y Gasset, José, 16, 22, 54, 56 Sáinz de la Maza, Regino, 4, 6, 7–​10, 22,
Otaño, Nemesio, 4, 10–​11, 19, 20, 22, 27–​36, 43, 44, 48–​9, 62, 64, 66n1,
26–​8, 31, 48, 75–​85, 92–​3, 95, 76, 79, 111, 120–​1, 135, 141, 147
103–​4, 114–​5, 132, 146, 153 Salazar, Adolfo, 1, 10, 15–​7, 20, 26, 43–​4,
46, 48, 50–​1, 58, 62–​3, 65, 91–​2,
de Pablo, Luis, 6 123–​4, 131–​2
Pahissa, Jaume, 15, 36, 50, 68n40 Sánchez Mazas, Rafael, 61
Palá Berdejo, Dolores, 121, 138, 153 de Santiago, Rodrigo A., 5, 115, 120,
Papó, Alfredo, 116–​7, 142 129n91, 140, 154
Pedrell, Felipe, 10, 49, 83, 86–​7, Scarlatti, Domenico, 49,
9–​5, 98n45, 101n114, 106, 119, Schoenberg, Arnold, 60, 63, 119
122, 124n1 Sección Femenina 11, 104–​6, 108, 110–​1,
Pérez Casas, Bartolomé, 16, 19, 37n7, 46 124, 152
Pittaluga, Gustavo, 11n3, 15–​6, 36 See also Coros y Danzas
Prados y López, Manuel, 24–​6 Segovia, Andrés, 15, 33, 67n27
Primo de Rivera, José Antonio, 42n112, Shostakovich, Dimitri, 60
45, 55, 75–​6, 104, 136 Sibelius, Jean, 59
Primo de Rivera, Pilar, 104–​5, 108 Smetana, Bedřich, 59
propagandistas see Asociación Católica de Sopeña, Federico, 3–​4, 6–​7, 10, 21, 23,
Propagandistas 27–​8, 43–​65, 67, 80–​1, 87, 119, 133,
136, 141–​2, 145, 147, 150, 152, 154–​5
Quinteto Nacional see Agrupación Sorozábal, Pablo, 16, 128n91
Nacional de Música de Cámara Strauss, Richard, 32, 60
Stravinsky, 51, 53–​4, 58, 60, 63–​4, 119
Radio Nacional de España, 44, 121, Subirá, José, 16, 26, 46, 48, 92,
146, 153 139, 140–​1
Orchestra of, 150 Suriñach, Carlos, 68n50, 71n113,
Sextet of, 31 129n91, 133, 141
Ravel, Maurice, 60, 113
Real Conservatorio de Música de Toldrà, Eduardo, 21
Madrid, 6–​7, 10, 15, 37n4, 43, 47, Tovar, Antonio, 44–​6, 121
57, 62–​3, 65, 78, 85, 90–​2, 121, Turina, Joaquín, 3, 5, 6, 9, 15–​28, 33,
150–​1, 153–​5 43–​4, 50–​1, 60–​1, 64, 67, 92, 108,
Reger, Max, 21 132, 139, 144, 155
Remacha, Fernando, 11n3, 61
Ridruejo, Dionisio, 44–​7, 145 Vaughan Williams, Ralph, 71
Rodrigo, Joaquín, 3–​4, 6–​7, 11, 20, 22, 24, de Victoria, Tomás Luis, 53, 75–​6,
32, 44, 50–​3, 60–​1, 67n21, 113–​4, 80–​3, 95
118–​24, 133, 138, 145–​6, 153 Villar, Rogelio, 16, 26, 78, 142
Concierto de Aranjuez, 43, 48–​9, 52, 56,
64, 129n100, 129n107 Wagner, Richard, 18, 63, 81, 152
Concierto heroico, 122, 129n107
Rodríguez Aragón, Lola, 21, 32 zarzuela, 87–​8, 94–​5, 109

Index  [ 177 ]
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