No. 23

Rodrigo: Concierto de Aranjuez

Written in Paris in 1939, the Concierto de Aranjuez was a dream of an escape from the horrors of war, much like that other vision written during the First World War, The Lark Ascending. Both composers, however, refused to acknowledge the troubled spirit that gave rise to their escapist refuges, except obliquely.

Joaquin Rodrigo was living in Paris when he wrote his first guitar concerto because he was a refugee from the Civil War that, since 1936, had ravaged Spain. The forces of the democratic coalition were, by the end of 1939, completely destroyed. Generalissimo Ferdinand Franco was in complete, oppressive control of the country. When, in 1940, the Concierto de Aranjuez was given its premiere in Barcelona, Rodrigo let it be known that the concerto had been inspired by the gardens and fountains surrounding the Royal Palace at Aranjuez, built as a spring resort by King Philip II before he built the Armada and restored with spectacular gardens by King Ferdinand VI while Luigi Boccherini was composing at the court. Rodrigo wrote of his guitar concerto, that it was meant to evoke “the fragrance of magnolias, the singing of birds, and the gushing of fountains.” It was a canny description. Rodrigo was blind since a child, and in 1940, moving back to Franco’s Spain to get out of the way of WWII, he was unwilling to face the brutal realities that had engulfed first Spain and then, almost immediately, all of Europe.

Truth is the Concierto de Aranjuez did not become popular until a decade after the war. In their enthusiasm for the piece, some commentators tried to make of the beautiful, songful middle movement’s english horn melody a lament for the victims of the bombing of the Spanish village, Guernica in 1937 during the Civil War. It should be noted that the world’s most famous guitarist, Spanish born Andres Segovia never played the Concierto de Aranjuez, grumbling that the concerto wasn’t really for the guitar at all, but for the english horn instead. Yet behind that foolish posturing was the Spaniard’s real resentment of Rodrigo’s accommodation with Franco’s regime. Segovia, along with fellow Spaniards cellist Pablo Casals and artist Pablo Picasso refused to return to a Spain governed by the hated dictator.

Despite the politics, once recorded and available to listeners at home around the world, the Concierto de Aranjuez became the most famous Concerto written in the 20th Century. And that’s because it does what it was meant to do. The music creates its own refuge for the listener, a space of refinement, elegance, a sustaining peace and refreshment.

Top 40 Countdown

A few years ago the listeners to WNED Classical told us what they thought a TOP 40 list of Classical pieces should be. Six hundred and twenty-two different pieces were put forward, and over nine hundred listeners participated. The result, The WNED Classical Top 40, was both startling and comforting. There were a number of surprises, Stravinsky and Copland made the list; Mendelssohn and Schumann did not! It was comforting to know that the two most popular composers were Beethoven and J.S. Bach. The biggest surprise of all was the piece that crowned the list as No. 1.