Doan NT: Albeniz (1860-1909)

Isaac Manuel Francisco Albéniz i Pascual (29 tháng 5 năm 1860 - 18 tháng 5 năm 1909) là dương cầm thủ người Tây Ban Nha đồng thời là nhà soạn nhac nổi tiếng với các tác phẩm mang âm hưởng nhạc dân gian dành cho dương cầm.

Sinh ra tại Camprodon, thuộc xứ Catalonia, Tây Ban Nha, Albéniz được xem là thần đồng bởi ông từng trình tấu ở độ tuổi lên 4. Lên 7 tuổi ông thi đậu vào Nhạc viện Paris nhưng lại bị từ chối cho vào học bởi ông làm vỡ một cánh cửa kính của nhạc viện trong lúc chơi với quả bóng của mình. Đến tuổi 15 ông đã đi biểu diễn quốc tế.

Năm 1876 ông học ở Brussel, trước đó ông có học một thời gian ngắn ở Nhạc viện Leipzig. Năm 1880 ông đến thọ giáo Franz Liszt tại Budapest nhưng lúc đó Liszt lại đang ở Weimar, Đức. Năm 1883 ông làm học trò của nhà soạn nhạc Felipe Pedrell, là người có công khuyến khích Albéniz viết các tác phẩm về Tây Ban Nha như Suite Española, Op. 47. Trong đó đoạn thứ 5 "Asturias" (Leyenda) là bài tập guitar cổ điển quen thuộc ngày nay, cũng như nhiều tác phẩm khác của Albéniz, mặc dù nguyên thủy nó được viết cho dương cầm. Người chuyển soạn các tác phẩm của Albéniz sang cho guitar cổ điển nổi tiếng nhất là Francisco Tárrega, Albéniz cũng từng công nhận ông thích các bản chuyển soạn của Tárrega.

Năm 1883 ông cưới một học trò của mình là Rosina Jordana và có với nhau 3 người con: Blanca (chết năm 1886), Laura (sau này là một họa sĩ) và Alfonso (chơi bóng cho Real Madrid đầu thập niên 1900 sau đó trở thành nhà ngoại giao). Năm 1900 Albéniz bắt đầu mắc bệnh viêm thận mạn tính.

Albéniz sống ở London và Paris trong thập niên 1890, chủ yếu viết các tác phẩm cho sân khấu. Từ 1900 ông trở lại viết nhạc cho dương cầm. Từ 1905 đến khi ông mất năm 1909 là giai đoạn ông viết tác phẩm nổi tiếng nhất của mình, tổ khúc Iberia (1908).

Các tác phẩm ông viết dành cho dàn nhạc gồm có Spanish Rhapsody (1887) và Catalonia (1899). Albéniz mất ngày 18 tháng 5 năm 1909 ở tuổi 48 tại Cambo-les-Bains được mai táng ở nghĩa trang Sudoest, Barcelona. Cécilia Sarkozy, vợ cũ của đương kim tổng thống Pháp Nicolas Sarkozy, là chắt của Isaac Albéniz. Người ta đã làm phim về Albéniz năm 1947 dựa vào cuộc đời thật của ông.

Isaac Manuel Francisco Albéniz y Pascual; 29 May 1860 – 18 May 1909) was a Spanish pianist and composer best known for his piano works based on folk music idioms. Many of his pieces such as Asturias (Leyenda), Granada, Sevilla, Cádiz, Córdoba, Cataluña, and the Tango in D are amongst the most important pieces for classical guitar. The personal papers of Isaac Albéniz are preserved, among other institutions, in the Biblioteca de Catalunya.

Life.

Born in Camprodon, province of Girona, to Ángel Albéniz (a customs official) and his wife, Dolors Pascual, Albéniz was a child prodigy who first performed at the age of four. At age seven, after apparently taking lessons from Antoine François Marmontel, he passed the entrance examination for piano at the Paris Conservatoire, but he was refused admission because he was believed to be too young. By the time he had reached 12, he had made many attempts to run away from home.

His concert career began at the age of nine when his father toured both Isaac and his sister, Clementina, throughout northern Spain. A popular myth is that at the age of 12 Albéniz stowed away in a ship bound for Buenos Aires. He then made his way via Cuba to the United States, giving concerts in New York and San Francisco and then travelled to Liverpool, London and Leipzig. By age 15, he had already given concerts worldwide. This over-dramatized story is not entirely false. Albéniz did travel the world as a performer, however he was accompanied by his father, who as a customs agent was required to travel frequently. This can be attested by comparing Isaac's concert dates with his father's travel itinerary.

In 1876, after a short stay at the Leipzig Conservatory, he went to study at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels after King Alfonso's personal secretary, Guillermo Morphy, obtained him a royal grant. Count Morphy thought highly of Albéniz who would later dedicate Sevilla to Morphy's wife when it premiered in Paris in January 1886.

In 1880 Albéniz went to Budapest to study with Franz Liszt, only to find out that Liszt was in Weimar, Germany.

In 1883 he met the teacher and composer Felip Pedrell who inspired him to write Spanish music such as the Chants d'Espagne. The first movement (Prelude) of that suite, later retitled after the composer's death as Asturias (Leyenda), is probably most famous today as part of the classical guitar repertoire, even though it was originally composed for piano. (Many of Albéniz's other compositions were also transcribed for guitar, notably by Francisco Tárrega.) At the 1888 Universal Exposition in Barcelona, the piano manufacturer Érard sponsored a series of 20 concerts featuring Albéniz's music.

The apex of Albéniz' concert career is considered to be 1889 to 1892 when he had concert tours throughout Europe. During the 1890s Albéniz lived in London and Paris. For London he wrote some musical comedies which brought him to the attention of the wealthy Francis Money-Coutts, 5th Baron Latymer. Money-Coutts commissioned and provided him with librettos for the opera Henry Clifford and for a projected trilogy of Arthurian operas. The first of these, Merlin (1898–1902) was thought to have been lost, but has recently been reconstructed and performed. Albéniz never completed Lancelot (only the first act is finished, as a vocal and piano score), and he never began Guinevere, the final part.

In 1900 he started to suffer from Bright's disease and returned to writing piano music. Between 1905 and 1908 he composed his final masterpiece, Iberia (1908), a suite of twelve piano "impressions". In 1883 the composer married his student Rosina Jordana. They had three children: Blanca (who died in 1886), Laura (a painter), and Alfonso (who played for Real Madrid in the early 1900s before embarking on a career as a diplomat). Two other children died in infancy. Albéniz died from his kidney disease on 18 May 1909 at age 48 in Cambo-les-Bains. Only a few weeks before his death, the government of France awarded Albéniz its highest honor, the Grand-Croix de la Légion d'honneur. He is buried at the Montjuïc Cemetery, Barcelona.

Early works

Albéniz's early works were mostly "salon style" music. Albéniz's first published composition, Marcha Militar, appeared in 1868 -a number of works written before this are now lost. He continued composing in traditional styles ranging from Rameau, Bach, Beethoven, Chopin and Liszt until the mid-1880s. He also wrote at least five zarzuelas, of which all but two are now lost.

Middle period - Spanish influences

During the late 1880s, the strong influence of Spanish style is evident in Albéniz's music. In 1883 Isaac Albéniz met the teacher and composer Felipe Pedrell. Pedrell was a leading figure in the development of nationalist Spanish music. Gilbert Chase, in his book The Music of Spain, describes Pedrell's influence on Albéniz: "What Albéniz derived from Pedrell was above all a spiritual orientation, the realization of the wonderful values inherent in Spanish music". Felipe Pedrell inspired Isaac Albéniz to write Spanish music such as the Suite española, Op. 47 noted for its delicate, intricate melody and abrupt dynamic changes.

In addition to the Spanish spirit infused in Albéniz's music, he incorporated other qualities as well. In Pola Baytleman's biography on Albéniz, she discerns four characteristics of the music from the middle period as follows:

"1. The dance rhythms of Spain, of which there are a wide variety. 2. The use of cante jondo, which means deep or profound singing. It is the most serious and moving variety of flamenco or Spanish gypsy song, often dealing with themes of death, anguish, or religion. 3. The use of exotic scales also associated with flamenco music. The Phrygian mode is the most prominent in Albéniz's music, although he also used the Aeolian and Mixolydian modes as well as the whole-tone scale. 4. The transfer of guitar idioms into piano writing".

Following his marriage Albéniz settled in Madrid and produced a subtantial quantity of music in a relatively short period. By 1886 he had written over 50 piano pieces. The Albéniz biographer, Walter A. Clark, says that pieces of this period received enthusiastic reception in the composer's many concerts. Chase describes music from this period,

"Taking the guitar as his instrumental model, and drawing his inspiration largely from the peculiar traits of Andalusian folk music – but without using actual folk themes – Albéniz achieves a stylization of Spanish traditional idioms that while thoroughly artistic, gives a captivating impression of spontaneous improvisation... Cordoba is the piece that best represents the style of Albéniz in this period, with its hauntingly beautiful melody, set against the acrid dissonances of the plucked accompaniment imitating the notes of the Moorish guslas. Here is the heady scent of jasmines amid the swaying palm trees, the dream fantasy of an Andalusian "Arabian Nights" in which Albéniz loved to let his imagination dwell.

Later period

While Albéniz's crowning achievement, Iberia, was written in the last years of his life in France, many of its preceding works are well-known and of great interest. The five pieces in Chants d'Espagne, (Songs of Spain, published in 1892) are a solid example of the compositional ideas he was exploring in the "middle period" of his life. The suite shows what Albéniz biographer Walter Aaron Clark describes as the "first flowering of his unique creative genius", and the beginnings of compositional exploration that became the hallmark of his later works. This period also includes his operatic works – Merlin, Henry Clifford, and Pepita Jiménez. His orchestral works of this period include Spanish Rhapsody (1887) and Catalonia (1899; dedicated to Ramon Casas, who painted his full-length portrait in 1894).

Albeniz on his own music

Perhaps the best source on the works is Albéniz himself. He is quoted as commenting on his earlier period works as,

"there are among them a few things that are not completely worthless. The music is a bit infantile, plain, spirited; but in the end, the people, our Spanish people, are something of all that. I believe that the people are right when they continue to be moved by Cordoba, Mallorca, by the copla of theSevillanas, by the Serenata, and Granada. In all of them I now note that there is less musical science, less of the grand idea, but more color, sunlight, flavor of olives. That music of youth, with its little sins and absurdities that almost point out the sentimental affectation ... appears to me like the carvings in the Alhambra, those peculiar arabesques that say nothing with their turns and shapes, but which are like the air, like the sun, like the blackbirds or like the nightingales of its gardens. They are more valuable than all else of Moorish Spain, which though we may not like it, is the true Spain."

Impact.

Albéniz's influence on the future of Spanish music was profound. His activities as conductor, performer and composer significantly raised the profile of Spanish music abroad and encouraged Spanish music and musicians in his own country.

Albéniz's works have become an important part of the repertoire of the classical guitar, many of which have been transcribed by Miguel Llobet and others. Asturias (Leyenda) in particular is heard most often on the guitar, as are Granada, Sevilla, Cadiz, Cataluña, Cordoba and the Tango in D. Gordon Crosskey and Cuban-born guitarist Manuel Barrueco have both made solo guitar arrangements of six of the eight-movement Suite espanola. Selections from Iberia have rarely been attempted on solo guitar but have been very effectively performed by guitar ensembles, such as the performance by John Williams and Julian Bream of Iberia's opening "Evocation." The Doors incorporated "Asturias" into their song "Spanish Caravan"; also, Iron Maiden's To Tame a Land uses the introduction of the piece for the song bridge; and more recently, a guitar version of Granada functions as something of a love theme in Woody Allen's 2008 film Vicky Cristina Barcelona. The 2008 horror film Mirrors incorporates the theme from Asturias into its score. In 1997 the Fundación Isaac Albéniz was founded in his name to promote Spanish music and musicians and to act as a research centre for Albéniz and Spanish music in general.

Asturias