Joaquín Rodrigo

Joaquín Rodrigo was born on 22nd November 1901, the feast-day of Saint Cecilia, patron saint of music… and thus he happens to share a birthday with Benjamin Britten. His first name is pronounced something like 'Whakeen', incidentally, though the initial letter sounds more like the breathed-through 'ch' of 'loch' than the vanilla 'w' of 'wet'. He was born in Sagunto, an area of Spain just north of Valencia, on its east Mediterranean coast. He went completely blind aged 3, after a brush with diptheria. He studied music from age 8, and composition from 16 onwards. One of his first compositions, Juglares (“Jugglers”) was performed by the Valencia Orchestra in 1924: his compositions were all written in Braille. In 1927, he studied in Paris with Paul Dukas.

He married in 1933 (a marriage that was to last until his wife's death in 1997, 64 years later) and sat out the Spanish Civil War in both France and Germany, before returning to Spain permanently in 1939. In 1947, he took up the Manuel de Falla Chair of Music in the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters, at Madrid University, which had been created especially for him. Despite extensive tours of Europe and Latin America in subsequent years, he remained a resident of Madrid thereafter, dying there in July 1999, aged 97. He had been enobled by King Juan Carlos II in 1991, as Marqués de los Jardines de Aranjuez -an hereditary title now held by his surviving daughter.

Mention of Aranjuez, of course, brings us to the subject of the Concierto de Aranjuez, Rodrigo's most famous work, composed in 1939 in Paris for the guitarist Regino Sainz de la Maza (Aranjuez being a small town to the south of Madrid, and the eventual site of Rodrigo's grave). This work cemented both Rodrigo's reputation as the most prominent Spanish composer of the time and that of classical guitar as a serious musical form. As a result of this composition, indeed, Rodrigo and classical guitar tend to be thought of as a perfect pair (and indeed a guitar figures prominently in his coat of arms) …but in fact, Rodrigo played piano and never mastered the guitar at all! He was, nevertheless, able to write for it with great skill.

The New Groves (written in 1980, whilst Rodrigo was still very much alive) declares that, “The passage of time has not brought any appreciable change in Rodrigo's compositional style, moulded partly by French music (in particular by that of Dukas) and partly by the example of the Spanish nationalist composers. However, unlike Falla, Rodrigo has not attempted to enter deeply into the spirit of Spanish popular or art music. Rather, his aim has been to create a Spanish ambience, full of colour and agreeable tunes. […] In form, harmony, melody and rhythm his work might be broadly classified as neo-classical”. Translated, that means (speaking personally) that his music is never less than easily listened-to, charming and agreeable. It does not challenge, particularly, and doesn't exactly inspire either, but is always pleasant. It is certainly much more than elevator music, but little of it is (I would say) immensely memorable. If I had to pick one word to sum up his entire ouvre, that word would be “nice”, I'm afraid.

In addition to the stand-out Concierto de Aranjuez, his Fantasía para un gentilhombre is frequently performed and recorded. Less well-known, but equally charming, are his other concerto works, such as the Concerto en modo galante (cello), Concierto serenata (harp), Concertio de estío (violin) and Concierto Andaluz (four guitars). However, his output remained relatively small, with little new being produced from the 1970s onwards.