"The Romance of King Rodrigo"

"The Romance of King Rodrigo"

Julián Bautista and the Pamplona Chamber Choir. An incomplete story.

This concert focuses on Julián Bautista's "El Romance del Rey Rodrigo" (The Romance of King Rodrigo), a seminal work in the history of 20th-century Spanish choral music, and its relationship with the Pamplona Chamber Choir, which inspired and promoted its creation.

Program

Fernando Remacha

Seven Basque Songs*

Romance del pescador (The Fisherman's Romance) - Manuel de Falla/Fernando Remacha*

Games based on poems by Federico García Lorca*

Jota verse *

Salvador Bacarisse

Clear, serene eyes *

The Infanta of France **

Rodolfo Halffter

Three Epitaphs

- To Don Quixote's grave

- To Dulcinea's grave

- To Dulcinea's grave

Julian Bautista

The Romance of King Rodrigo***

Antonio José

The Miller

(*) Work written and premiered for and by the Pamplona Chamber Choir.

(**) Work premiered by the Pamplona Chamber Choir

(***) Work written for the Pamplona Chamber Choir but not premiered by the group (premiere in Navarre).

The program focuses on Bautista's "El Romance del Rey Rodrigo" as a major work in the history of 20th-century Spanish choral music and its relationship with the Pamplona Chamber Choir, which encouraged and promoted its creation but never performed it.  The reasons why Luis Morondo refused to premiere it are unknown, but there is sufficient information about the choir's commission of a work from Bautista and Remacha's mediation in the matter. This process lasted several years, during which Bautista matured the work and changed the text and structure. The result is a magnum opus, a true masterpiece, as unknown as it is considered by the few scholars who know it to be the best a cappella choral work of 20th-century Spanish music.

The concert contains other elements of interest: the relationships between Falla, Bautista, Remacha, Halffter, Bacarisse, José, and Lorca, both during the years of "La Residencia" and during the war, as well as through the Chamber Choir itself, already in exile.

A final interpretation of our proposal would have to do with the relentless search for identity by these "exiled" authors through great Spanish literature and the relationship between poetry and music, so cherished during the years of the Republic.
 

Artistic credits

Soloists:
Mariasun Montoya and Marta Huarte, sopranos
Ana Olaso, mezzo-soprano
David Echeverría, tenor
José Antonio Hoyos, baritone
 

Director: David Gálvez