Grove Koger
This article originally appeared in the August/September 2006 issue of Boise Journal. I’m reprinting it this year on July 27, the first day of Boise’s Feast of San Inazio, an annual event honoring the patron saint of the Basques—whom the rest of us know as Saint Ignatius of Loyola.
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Basques call their homeland Euskal Herria, the Basque Country—a mountainous region perched on the westernmost shoulders of the Pyrenees and washed by the waters of the stormy Bay of Biscay. And while it straddles the Franco-Spanish border, its sons and daughters hail from far more than just two nations, having been forced into exile by politics and economics and, I suspect, a certain wanderlust.
Until recently, Basques maintained their culture almost exclusively through their spoken language and their folkways—live musical performances, patterns of day-to-day living, and so on. But thanks to CDs, Basque folk music and pop have become much more readily available, and now recordings of the region’s classical, or art, music are showcasing another vital facet of their culture.
The recordings have appeared on the Swiss label Claves and the budget label Naxos, with Claves using the Basque National Orchestra under Arturo Tamayo and Naxos relying the Bilbao Symphony Orchestra under Juan José Mena. The Naxos entries form part of a larger “Spanish Classics” series, a designation the must grate on the sensibilities of Basque listeners. But so be it. More remarkable to me is the fact that few of these works sound “Spanish,” reflecting the fact that the Moors and the Romani (Gypsies), whose influence permeates what we think of as Spanish music, had little or no impact on Basque culture.
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José Gonzalo de Zulaica y Arregui (1886-1956) played a key role in preserving the melodies of his native land and passing them on to his fellow composers. On entering the Capuchin order, he adopted the Basque name of his birthplace, the city of San Sebastian, becoming Padre José Antonion Donostia. His two musical passions were Gregorian chant and Basque music, and his most important composition in the latter category are his 21 beguiling, deceptively simple Basque Preludes. Played by Jordi Masó, they appear along with several other Basque-inspired pieces on Naxos 8.557228.
The most prominent Basque composer is Jesús Guridi (1886-1961), whose Ten Basque Melodies seems to be the most frequently performed pieces of classical Basque music. They encompass within their brief span an entire world of human experience. Their titles—”Amorosa,” “Religiosa,” “Elegíaca,” and so on—suggest their range, and an exuberant “Festiva” concludes the set with a splashy exclamation point. The Ten Basque Melodies appear on Naxos 8.557110 along with several other works, including a tribute Guridi paid early in his career to the Spanish national hero. An Adventure of Don Quixote, the liner notes assure us, utilizes both Basque and Spanish folk-melodies, and is written in a lush, impressionistic style typical of the composer’s student days.
Guridi’s masterpiece maybe his Sinfonía pirenaica, released on Naxos 8.55761. This expansive work suggests the grandeur of the Pyrenees, but is far from solemn about its subject. Folk-like motifs skip through its three movements, much like agile Pyrenean chamois making their way among the mountains’ crags, and what sounds like a gale makes a striking appearance toward the end of the first movement.
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Maruice Ravel admired the early works of Grancisco Escudero (1912 or 1913-2002), and something of the more famous composer’s spirit lives on hi Escudero’s works, especially his Basque Concerto with Marta Zabaleta on piano. Ravel himself was half-Basque, and based much of his own Concerto in G Major on Basque themes. Escudero’s orchestration is as transparent as Ravel’s and his melodies almost as haunting. Of all the works that call themselves Basque, this effervescent but bittersweet work from 1946 has become my favorite. You can enjoy it (with Marta Zabaleta on piano) and several more works, most of them more recent but less clearly nationalistic, on Claves 50-2110/1.
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There’s no requirement the works by Basque composers sound “Basque,” and Andres Isasi (1890-1940) may be a case in point. Isasi was born in Bilbao but studied in Berlin, and although he returned home in 1914, his music doesn’t seem to have created much excitement there. His Second Symphony (Naxos 8.557584) premiered in 1931 in Hungary, of all places—a reminder of the cosmopolitan nature of the classical music world, then and now. If you’re familiar with the flowing, melodious symphonies of César Franck and Ernest Chausson, you’ll recognize the tradition that Isasi was working in. This is a big, generous work that needs no explication to be enjoyed.
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Although Jesús Arámbarri (1902-1960) made his main contribution to the musical life the Basque Country as conductor of the Bilbao Symphony Orchestra, he also composed from time to time. He cuts a less distinct figure than his colleagues, but all the works collected on Naxos 8.557275 are highly accomplished. His Eight Basque Songs (sung here by soprano Itxaro Mentxaka) complement Guridi’s orchestral Ten Basque Melodies, while his moving tribute to poet Juan Carlos de Gortázar (In Memoriam) incorporates the haunting Gregorian chant for the dead, the Dies irae. Arámbarri’s Spanish Fantasy is the only conventionally “exotic” piece on these recordings, and while it can’t compare with similar works from figures such as Ravel, it’s still a lot of fun.
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The painting reproduced on the Guridi album at the top of this post is by a 19th century member of the “French school” and is titled Waterfall near the Pont d’Espagne by Moonlight. The site is in the French Pyrenees, and the pont, or bridge, once linked France and Spain.
World Enough 