Music in Spain since the 40s
Anna Cazurra’s work is within the Spanish music of the twentieth and early 21st century. This section will show in a synthesized way the Spanish musical situation since the second half of the twentieth century, specifically from the 40s and postwar music, until its evolution towards the music of the end of the 20th century and early 21st century.
During the years after the end of the Spanish Civil War, music is mainly in a propaganda and ideologizing context. In the 40s, the recently installed Franco regime sought that Spanish music was patriotic and folkloric with the objective of being used as a transmitter of its ideology. This music sought to follow the nationalist tradition and show an identity of Spanish music. The most commonly used musical genres were nationalism and neoclassicism, and the most prominent music was Manuel de Falla (exiled by the Civil War), that of Joaquín Turina or that of Joaquín RodrigThis era his work the "Aranjuez concert"). Atonal music and avant -garde music that was born and began to develop from the so -called generation of 31 with composers such as Ernesto Halffter or Salvador Bacarisse, which took as a reference the fault music that began to move away from their neoclassical style towards more trends moreInnovative and avant -garde, with an outstanding work: "Concerto Per Clavicembalo (or pianoforte)". Parallel to these composers there were four who moved away from the traditional, neoclassical and aesthetic currents of that moment. Their particularity is that each of these composers followed their own aesthetic lines. Two of these composers, Frederic Mompou and Xavier Montsalvatge are related to Catalan music life. Mompou opted for Catalan folklore and urban popular evocation among others, while Montsalvatge opted for American exotic rhythms and issues. The other two prominent composers are Joaquim Homs, who was interested in serialist currents, and Gerardo Gombau, who was interested in the current of neocasticism. Both Homs and Gombau are essential in the transition to the new decade and the music of this. Homs was the link between these two promotions of composers and musicians while with the ideology and aesthetics of Gombau the young people of the generation of 51 were identified, constituted in the year 1958.
With the death of Falla (1946 in Argentina) and Turina (1949), he highlighted in the year 1950His already written and new repertoires, also reincorporating the music of a prewar that moved away from tradition and approached the avant -garde of that moment. These facts added to the stylistic currents followed by the 4 composers mentioned above, coinciding with the search for the Francoism of departures from the period of autarchy and international recognition, supposed a change that allowed greater artistic compositional freedom, both in music and in the plastic arts. Even with these precedents, atonal music and dodecaphonism were not well received above all among musical critics. It will be the composers of the generation of 51 who will be responsible for filling the musical vacuum caused by war, repression and exile, in addition to the dissemination of and expansion of avant -garde techniques. The reference music for the composers of this decade was that of Béla Bartók, Igor Stravinsky and Paul Hindemith, which was incorporated into the repertoires of the concerts.
The nexus of this stage with the next fall on the fact that the National Music Awards from 1953 (catched by Cristobal Halffter for their “piano and orchestra concert”) opened to composers of the new generation, sinceUntil the previous year, the works of the award -winning composers were of above nationalist styles;and the readmission of Spain in the SIMC (International Society of Contemporary Music) by the hand of Óscar Esplà, which meant a greater diffusion of the music of the Spanish composers of the moment. Also, Joaquín Homs was a great diffuser of avant -garde music with his contemporary music audition cycles held since 1952 in the so -called “Club 49” association, in which he introduced styles such as the music of the Second School of Vienna, especially especiallyWith Webern, Cage music, or concrete and electroacoustic music. In this association they also gave known conferences and concerts composers of contemporary music of the moment like John Cage, Karlheinz Stockhausen or György Ligeti. These dissemination mechanisms were of great importance, since at the end of the 50s they meant an ease of approach to the international avant -garde repertoire for Spanish composers.
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