Art Song Composers of Spain: An Encyclopedia (review)

As compared with German lieder or French mélodies, Spanish art song, also called canción lírica, has received scant attention from performers, teachers, and scholars. Suzanne Draayer has done much to remedy this situation, publishing articles on Joaquín Rodrigo's vocal music as well as regularly performing his and other Spanish composers' works. Additionally, Draayer has edited several volumes of nineteenth-century Spanish art song for high and low voice, entitled Canciones de España: Songs of Nineteenth-Century Spain (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2003–2007). Her latest endeavor, Art Song Composers of Spain: An Encyclopedia, dovetails nicely with her work as an editor, and the two projects complement each other well. In this work, Draayer presents extensive information on the composers of the canción lírica, tracing the genre and its creators from 1775 until the mid-twentieth century.

Draayer begins the book with an introduction to nineteenth-century Spanish history, detailing the political and cultural climate in which the canción developed. Though brief, the introduction covers the main events that shaped Spain from the liberation of the colonies in the 1800s to the Spanish Civil War and Francisco Franco's ensuing dictatorship. This review helps refresh those familiar with Spain's history and serves as a starting point for those who haven't any prior knowledge of the subject. She then summarizes important Spanish literary figures and visual artists during the same period. Unfortunately, Draayer does not explore the connections among the arts, especially the relationship between poets and composers. Next, Draayer discusses the characteristics of Spanish dances such as the bolero, seguidilla, polo, and tirana, which often influenced a composer's rhythmic and melodic writing. The introduction concludes with a discussion of Spaniards who went abroad, such as Fernando Sor and Manuel García, and their contribution to the dissemination of Spanish music.

Introduction aside, Draayer devotes the majority of the book to essays on individual art song composers, dividing the composers by generation, grouping those born from 1775 to 1800 in one school, and the rest in successive twenty-five year increments. She further parses each generation into major composers and minor composers. The idea of major and minor composers has been problematized by musicology, and her approach carries with it the danger of instilling her personal opinion on this largely unexplored area of music history. Each entry begins with a biographical sketch; these contain much detail, on par with The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, and are written in a language that would be accessible to the enthusiast as well as the scholar. Her discussion of the music often includes score examples, which works especially well when discussing guitar techniques, such as rasgueado and punteado, that have been translated into the piano accompaniment. Draayer concludes each entry with a works list, categorizing compositions by genre. She additionally includes discographies, though unfortunately many composers in this volume have yet to be recorded. In the same vein, Draayer's appendix, "A Selected Guide to European Spanish Song," offers a list of the published collections of Spanish art song, including the ISBN, which facilitates purchase of the music by an interested performer or teacher.

Draayer's biographies rely on her own scholarship, especially in Rodrigo's entry. She also draws from important works by Celsa Alonso, such as his La canción lírica española en el siglo XIX (Madrid: Ediciones del ICCMU, 1998) and entries in the Diccionario de la música española e hispano-americana (Madrid: Sociedad General de Autores y Editores, 1999–2002). The entries on better known composers, such as Felipe Pedrell, Isaac Albéniz, Enrique Granados, and Manuel de Falla, cite a variety of sources as more scholarship exists on them. For composers such as Vicente Costa, Conrado del Campo, or Oscar Esplá, little scholarship exists save a few sources in Spanish. By publishing in English, Draayer has opened up access...