Spanish Sounds Plucked From History

Imagine vivid theater pieces mixing music and crisp spoken dialogue from major playwrights. The band is driven by fiercely strummed guitars, and the musical influences come from all over--a mix of Latin American, some classical, a little North African, a little Afro-Caribbean.

Sounds postmodern, right? And if somebody like Shakespeare wrote the librettos and Baroque composers set them in this fashion, we’d surely know all about it in our own age of musical eclecticism.

But that’s not exactly the case. The world music influences, the mix of spoken word and singing, the guitar-based sound are all characteristics of 17th century Spanish theater music, particularly zarzuela, a form that hasn’t gotten much coverage in music writing, scholarly or general. The hegemony of central Europe in the Romantic era casts an oppressive shadow even today.

This is changing quickly, though, as a leading edge of current academic research focuses on Hispanic musical sources, particularly from the colonial New World.

“Spain [in the late 1600s] was really concerned about retaining its fracturing empire,” says Richard Savino, professor of music at Cal State Sacramento, “and worked hard to maintain an image of dignity and calm, like you see in the paintings of Velazquez. The reality, though, was crisis and calamity, and where better to reflect this than in the theater? The greatest Spanish playwrights--Lope de Vega, Calderon--wrote the librettos. This is a fascinating element. Of course it is a shame that the great music theater pieces of the time are so little known, but it is also a marvelous opportunity for us, a chance today to rediscover wonderful things.”

Next weekend, Savino leads the Los Angeles Baroque Orchestra in “ Zarzuela!,” a program celebrating the riches of centuries-old Hispanic music theater. It features selections from Sebastian Duron’s 1680 zarzuela “Salir el Amor al Mundo” (Love Flows Out Into the World), a version of the Apollo/Diana myth with a libretto by Jose de Canizares, plus other dramatic pieces and dances from the New World.

Although Spanish composers wrote operas, the zarzuela was the native form of Spanish music theater. The term comes from the royal palace of that name, with its hedge of brambles or zarzas, where theater works mixing music and spoken dialogue were produced in the 17th century.

“What separates zarzuela at this time from the operatic traditions of Italy is spoken dialogue,” Savino says, talking by phone from a recording session in Virginia. “Even in opera, the Spanish did not appreciate recitative.”

In fact, where Italian opera told stories via sung dialogue--recitative--punctuated by arias to express details of plot, emotion and character, Spanish music theater had another model. “They used villancico [a type of quasi-dramatic motet in the vernacular],” explains Savino. “There the estribillo or refrain creates a setting and the coplas, verses, describe the situation in greater detail, replacing Italian recitative and aria.”

But all the forms were fluid. “The significance of ‘Salir el Amor,’ ” Savino continues, “is that it is a [Spanish] work in which attempts to incorporate Italianate style are most successful. One finds in it seguidillas, [a common Spanish dance with an associated verse form], but in two places Duron employs a recitative within the coplas-estribillo form. It is quite dramatic--the whole piece is.”

All the Spanish music theater forms were quite popular in the provinces of New Spain, and the L.A. Baroque program will also include works created in the Jesuit missions in Argentina. In the New World, zarzuelas, operas and villancicos--even sacred music--picked up indigenous songs and dances, which then made it back to the Old World. Many had little life outside of Spain, but a few spread to other traditions as well. The sarabande, for example--a staple of Baroque instrumental suites, and in Bach often the spiritual and emotional core--originated in Central America and came first to Spain as a very wild sung dance that was banned for extravagant obscenity in 1583.

“We will also have a lot of dance music on the program,” Savino says. “Spanish theater music was so dependent on dance rhythms. That sometimes makes it difficult for musicians not trained in the tradition, but we will feature wonderful singers, sopranos Kristin Gould and Virginia Sublett.”

Growing up as a rock guitarist, Savino has always felt an affinity for songs and dances improvised over a recurring chord pattern or bass line. In college he switched to the classical instrument, and has become one of the leading practitioners on period plucked strings of all sorts. He is widely recorded on Harmonia Mundi and Koch.

Savino has worked before with L.A. Baroque and its founder-director, Gregory Maldonado. Thanks in part to a touring grant from the California Arts Council, Savino is the ensemble’s artist-in-residence for its 15th season. He will also be featured in a pair of chamber music concerts in May, and will be the group’s featured soloist at the John Anson Ford Amphitheatre in September.

As a guitarist and lutenist, Savino comes at Baroque theater music through the continuo, the term now used to describe the accompanying bass and chordal instruments in such pieces. During the Baroque era, composers wrote a bass line--basso continuo--from which the accompaniment was intended to be improvised on keyboards or plucked strings.

“Count Basie,” Savino says immediately, when asked how he would describe continuo playing. “Count Basie, the way he accompanied Sinatra. That’s the ideal accompaniment--being sensitive to nuances of the voice and text, and working creatively with dance rhythms.”

This weekend, two players will join him in realizing the continuo accompaniment on plucked strings, while the rest of the orchestra members play from their written parts. Savino has given them some instructions about articulation and dynamics, but otherwise they will create the accompaniment together from a written bass line with harmonies--chords--indicated only via a numeric shorthand.

“A lot of people look at early music practices as having a lot of constraints. I see it just the opposite, as a liberating experience,” Savino says. “As soon as you look at a treatise, you’re looking at the wrong thing. I would rather look at the music and just go for the appropriate effect.”

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” ZARZUELA!,” Los Angeles Baroque Orchestra, Miles Memorial Playhouse, 1130 Lincoln Blvd., Santa Monica. Dates: Saturday, 8 p.m.; next Sunday, 4 p.m. Prices: $5-$25. Phone: (310) 458-0425.

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Related Recording

* A new release of early opera music from New Spain is reviewed. Page 56