Across Borders and Senses II
CW: Nazism; Civil War
A Political Symphony
Einav Grushka
When does art stop being art, and start acting as a political tool, or a form of social manipulation? A fascinating point of entry into this question is the discussion of the effects of exile and politics on Spanish music between 1936 and 1975, during Franco’s dictatorship. When we look at what affects artistic production, it is important not only to view the natural evolution of the arts, but also the changes they are forced to undergo. Contrastingly to the flourishing of French Impressionism due to the innovation of the Salon des Refusés against the Académie des Beaux Arts, as well as the intertwining of the different artistic forms, what we see in Francoist Spain is that the regime used art opportunistically as Fascist propaganda.
What comes to mind when you think about the arts during Franco’s regime? As a student of Spanish myself, the first things I would think of are the prohibition of Lorca’s works, his murder in 1936, and the censorship of images; famously, the retouching of photographs of Sara Montiel to hide her cleavage, the mere thought of which was considered outrageous. I doubt that the political manipulation of music would spring to mind. Despite this, I see it as an essential undercurrent, used to create a glimmering façade, ceremoniously displayed for all of Europe to see, and more importantly, to solidify Hispano-Germanic relations in war-stricken Europe.
Unlike France or Germany, It could hardly be said that Spain was at the forefront of musical production during the course of the 20th Century. This is not to say; however, that it didn’t have its own unique flare. At the start of the century, Spanish music was heavily imbued with a blend of nationalistic cultural influences, with roots all across the country, ranging from the Flamenco style and folk rhythms to the Galician Gaita (bagpipe) tradition and the Jotas (folkloric dance music) of Aragón. Manuel de Falla was considered one of the country’s most prominent composers at the time, producing works such as El amor brujo, inspired by a deep sense of pride in the Andalusian folk tradition. One of my all-time favourites, Noches en los jardines de España (Nights in the gardens of Spain) clearly highlights the passion for Flamenco music as well as typically Spanish rhythms through the piano’s imitation of the guitar timbre.
An oil painting depicting the Jota tradition.
Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida, Aragón (1914). Image Credit: Hispanic Society of America via Wikimedia Commons
It would be illusory; however, to believe that Spanish music was purely nationalistic before the civil war, as enriched by a French musical education, Spanish composers assimilated features of French Impressionism into their works. Ironically, the American Symphony stated that in order to truly be recognised as Spanish, Juaquín Turina had only to travel to Paris, highlighting the importance of foreign stimuli and the desire for composers to strive for modernism and progress. In his work, Sinfonia Sevillana, the cascading tonal waves are clearly impressionistic, whereas the use of syncopation and Moorish ornamentation has a uniquely Spanish flavour, culminating in a perfect harmony of both nationalistic and foreign styles. Composers Gerhard and Bautista attended the annual London Festival of Contemporary Music, and the fact that a large proportion of educational funding was devoted to this push for modernism in music is a testament to the open-minded artistic attitudes of Pre-Franco Spain.
Initially, the regime attempted to present de Falla as a “musician of the crusade”. However, a close friend of Lorca’s, and fearing that the artistic power of music had fallen into the wrong hands, de Falla was exiled to Argentina in 1939. Numerous musicians and critics followed in suit. With Franco left desperately needing to portray an image, or rather an illusion of a united Nuevo Estado, the music of Andalusia, and the Flamenco style were elected as symbols of Spanish identity, a nationalism that paradoxically only reflected the South. It comes as no surprise that the ever-prominent signifier of Spain is the image of elaborately dressed Flamenco dancers. As in Stalin’s USSR, modernist techniques pioneered by the New Viennese School, including Serialism (the ordering of the 12 notes of the chromatic scale to create a melodic and harmonic basis), and polytonality (the simultaneous use of two or more keys) were deemed radical and even scandalous, and as a result, were either censored, or heavily critiqued. Gerhard’s Serialist Concierto para orquesta, was indeed censured, highlighting that Modernism and Expressionism were placed firmly in the back pocket whilst the endeavour to mirror Germanic music became a major aspiration.
Oil painting of Manuel de Falla by José María López Mezquita (1928)
Image Credit: Hispanic Society of America
Under Hitler, music was firmly aimed at mimicking Nazi ideals, such as the policy of Gleichschaltung, or co-ordination, portraying the importance of conformism. Back in Spain, Turina was instructed to reorganise the Madrid Royal Conservatory in a manner emblematic of Berlin’s own. The accretion of Hispano-Germanic political relations led to the establishment of the Hispanic-German music festival in 1941, in which acts of political propaganda were displayed during intervals, and organised visits to the tomb of José Antonio Primo de Rivera, the founder of Spanish Fascism, took place. It wouldn’t be too rash, then, to assume that the musical sphere had been transformed into a political playground, with performances of the Berlin Philharmonic in 1943 even used to fund the División Azul, a group of Spanish volunteers that fought alongside the Germans during WWII.
Of course, some say that Spanish music was in great need of a boost from the Germanic musical scene, driven by Beethoven, Brahms and of course Hitler’s favourite, Wagner. However, how useful could it have been, when German music itself was politically tainted by the censorship, for example, of acclaimed Jewish composers such as Meyerbeer?
The comparison of the respective musical production of the exiled composers with those who remained begs the question; what happened to Spanish musical identity? Or rather, where did it go? Joaquín Rodrigo composed his acclaimed El Concierto de Aranjuez in Paris in 1939, inspired by the gardens of the Palacio Real de Aranjuez. The first movement is emblematic of Spanish nationalism, not only taking inspiration from Flamenco and Jota traditions, but also incorporating Moorish rhythms and ornamentation. The second movement, beginning with a tragic Adagio melody on the cor anglais is said to have been a lament for the bombing of Guernica, carrying across the composer’s own sense of suffering for his homeland. De Falla’s Atlántida, composed in exile, was aimed to nostalgically celebrate the cities of Barcelona, Cádiz, Granada and Seville through the use of Catalan hymns, and other national symbols. By contrast, Turina’s Fantasia cinematográfica, composed in 1945, at a time when due to the rise in Spanish tourism, Franco aimed to conversely equate the Spanish artistic sphere with that of the rest of the western world, seems to lack nationalistic influence, being replaced instead by hints of jazz. I would have to say that just as France, England, Germany, Russia and the US had their own styles of music, constructed with a unique national flair, so did Spain; however, this Spanish flair was not developed in Spain, but rather in the communities of Spanish exiles abroad.
To this day, Spain is tormented by the ghosts of the Civil War and Franco’s regime in which not only were up to 50,000 lives lost, but art itself was stripped of liberty and its ability to evolve naturally. It is ambiguous what effect Franco’s dictatorship really had on Spanish music, whether it elevated or debilitated it. Exiled Spanish composers did not lose the gems of their nationality, but rather their music adopted tones of nostalgia bruised with grief, sorrow, loss, and the incertitude of whether they would ever be able to return home. Some were welcomed back, to a society whose voices had been silenced by fear and profound trauma, but for others, like Manuel de Falla, who died in exile, home was but a distant dream across faraway borders, brought to life only through symphonies and song.
And so I come back to my original question: Can politics and art ever go hand in hand? And more so, if art is naturally a medium for soulful expression, can its corruption and manipulation ever be justified?