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drplaceboIt's Forgotten Masterpiece Friday!
Spain has never been known for its orchestral music; after the death of Juan Arriaga in 1826, there was very lttle Spanish orchestral music of note until the 20th century. So I was pleasantly surprised earlier this year to come across some of the work of Manuel Manrique de Lara (1863-1929), a primarily orchestral composer from Cartagena, Spain.
There is little or no English-language biographical material on Manrique de Lara (not even a Wikipedia entry!); the only substantial biography appears in a newsletter of the Wagner Association of Barcelona. No surprise there: as a music critic, he was instrumental in bringing Wagner to the attention of the Spanish public. He was trained mainly as an ethnomusicologist, and spent much of the early part of his career studying North African music, but as a composer his main influences were Wagner, Richard Strauss, and to a lesser extent Debussy and Dukas. His idiom was arguably more Straussian than Wagnerian: he only produced one opera, and his "Wagnerian" cycle on the subject of El Cid was in fact a cycle of symphonic poems. Most of Manrique de Lara's compositions were programmatic, much like Richard Strauss's orchestral works; he composed only one symphony that was titled as a symphony, but a number of multi-movement orchestral works in quasi-symphonic form.
La Orestiada, composed in 1890, was one of these works. More than half an hour long and in three movements, it is probably best described as an extended symphonic poem. The three movements are titled after the ancient Greek trilogy of tragedies by Aeschylus, the Oresteia, and follow the narrative arcs of the respective plays. In Wagnerian style, Manrique de Lara makes extensive use of leitmotifs. Especially note the Clytaemnestra motif, an upward leap followed by a step down, clearly heard at 9:26 and appearing throughout (e.g. the later part of the second movement, and finally at 28:14 when the ghost of Clytaemnestra returns and wakes the Furies).
Movements:
I. Agamenón (Agamemnon)
II. Las Coéforas (The Libation Bearers) - 13:19
III. Las Euménidas (The Eumenides) - 25:14
Spain has never been known for its orchestral music; after the death of Juan Arriaga in 1826, there was very lttle Spanish orchestral music of note until the 20th century. So I was pleasantly surprised earlier this year to come across some of the work of Manuel Manrique de Lara (1863-1929), a primarily orchestral composer from Cartagena, Spain.
There is little or no English-language biographical material on Manrique de Lara (not even a Wikipedia entry!); the only substantial biography appears in a newsletter of the Wagner Association of Barcelona. No surprise there: as a music critic, he was instrumental in bringing Wagner to the attention of the Spanish public. He was trained mainly as an ethnomusicologist, and spent much of the early part of his career studying North African music, but as a composer his main influences were Wagner, Richard Strauss, and to a lesser extent Debussy and Dukas. His idiom was arguably more Straussian than Wagnerian: he only produced one opera, and his "Wagnerian" cycle on the subject of El Cid was in fact a cycle of symphonic poems. Most of Manrique de Lara's compositions were programmatic, much like Richard Strauss's orchestral works; he composed only one symphony that was titled as a symphony, but a number of multi-movement orchestral works in quasi-symphonic form.
La Orestiada, composed in 1890, was one of these works. More than half an hour long and in three movements, it is probably best described as an extended symphonic poem. The three movements are titled after the ancient Greek trilogy of tragedies by Aeschylus, the Oresteia, and follow the narrative arcs of the respective plays. In Wagnerian style, Manrique de Lara makes extensive use of leitmotifs. Especially note the Clytaemnestra motif, an upward leap followed by a step down, clearly heard at 9:26 and appearing throughout (e.g. the later part of the second movement, and finally at 28:14 when the ghost of Clytaemnestra returns and wakes the Furies).
Movements:
I. Agamenón (Agamemnon)
II. Las Coéforas (The Libation Bearers) - 13:19
III. Las Euménidas (The Eumenides) - 25:14