Spain – Music
The Iberian peninsula has had a history of receiving different musical influences from around the Mediterranean Sea and across Europe. In the two centuries before the Christian era, Roman rule brought with it the music and ideas of Ancient Greece; early Christians, who had their own differing versions of church music arrived during the height of the Roman Empire; the Visigoths, a Romanized Germanic people, who took control of the peninsula following the fall of the Roman Empire; the Moors and Jews in the Middle Ages. Hence, there have been more than two thousand years of internal and external influences and developments that have produced a large number of unique musical traditions.
The Moors of Al-Andalus were usually relatively tolerant of Christianity and Judaism, especially during the first three centuries of their long presence in the Iberian peninsula, during which Christian and Jewish music continued to flourish. Music notation was developed in Spain as early as the 8th century (the so-called Visigothic neumes) to notate the chant and other sacred music of the Christian church, but this obscure notation has not yet been deciphered by scholars, and exists only in small fragments. In the early Renaissance, Mateo Flecha el Viejo and the Castilian dramatist Juan del Encina ranked among the main composers in the post-Ars Nova period. Renaissance song books included the Cancionero de Palacio, the Cancionero de Medinaceli, the Cancionero de Upsala (kept in Carolina Rediviva library), the Cancionero de la Colombina, and the later Cancionero de la Sablonara. The organist Antonio de Cabezón stands out for his keyboard compositions and mastery. An early 16th-century polyphonic vocal style developed in Spain was closely related to that of the Franco-Flemish composers.
By the end of the 17th century the “classical” musical culture of Spain was in decline, and was to remain that way until the 19th century. Classicism in Spain, when it arrived, was inspired by Italian models, as in the works of Antonio Soler. Some outstanding Italian composers such as Domenico Scarlatti and Luigi Boccherini were appointed to the Madrid royal court. The short-lived Juan Crisóstomo Arriaga is credited as the main beginner of Romantic sinfonism in Spain. Musical creativity mainly moved into areas of popular music until the nationalist revival of the late Romantic era. Spanish composers of this period included Felipe Pedrell, Isaac Albéniz, Enrique Granados, Joaquín Turina, Manuel de Falla, Jesús Guridi, Ernesto Halffter, Federico Mompou, Salvador Bacarisse, and Joaquín Rodrigo.
20th century
Isaac Manuel Francisco Albéniz y Pascual (29 May 1860 – 18 May 1909) was a Spanish Catalan virtuoso pianist, composer, and conductor. He is one of the foremost composers of the Post-Romantic era who also had a significant influence on his contemporaries and younger composers. He is best known for his piano works based on Spanish folk music idioms. Transcriptions of many of his pieces, such as Asturias (Leyenda), Granada, Sevilla, Cadiz, Córdoba, Cataluña, Mallorca, and Tango in D, are important pieces for classical guitar, though he never composed for the guitar. The personal papers of Albéniz are preserved in, among other institutions, the Library of Catalonia.
From the English pop-refrain words “yeah-yeah”, ye-yé was a French-coined term which Spanish language appropriated to refer to uptempo, “spirit lifting” pop music. It mainly consisted of fusions of American rock from the early 1960s (such as twist) and British beat music.
Los Canarios: Free Yourself –> https://youtu.be/DykCDlhEAe4
Folk music
An inventory of Spanish folk music in the 20th can be found at https://web.archive.org/web/20041206034039/http://www.interacesso.pt/web/wencesmc/
Flamenco
Flamenco (Spanish pronunciation: [flaˈmeŋko]), in its strictest sense, is an art form based on the various folkloric music traditions of southern Spain, developed within the gitano subculture of the region of Andalusia, but also having a historical presence in Extremadura and Murcia. The oldest record of flamenco music dates to 1774 in the book Las Cartas Marruecas by José Cadalso.
80s and 90s
In the years following the death of Francisco Franco, a growing underground punk rock music scene began to form in Madrid.[1] Inspired by the growth of punk rock in the United Kingdom, a number of punk and synthpop bands, such as Tos and Aviador Dro,[1] formed in the late 1970s. However, this new counterculture clashed heavily with the Spanish national government, which mandated an evening curfew for women, criminalized homosexuality, and arrested people with unorthodox appearances for violating a law regarding “dangerousness and social rehabilitation”.
La Movida Madrileña gained notoriety following a large punk concert at the Technical University of Madrid on February 9, 1980. Although Francoist elements continued to oppose the increasing liberalization of the city, the government under socialist mayor Enrique Tierno Galván had a more open approach regarding the movement, and subsidized various artistic endeavours. A number of influential foreign artists, such as the Ramones and Andy Warhol, visited Madrid during this time. The central component was an aesthetic influenced by punk rock and synth-pop music, as well as visual schools such as dada and futurism.
21st century
The 21th century marks a continuation of previous trends but merging, of course, latin styles.
