El mirar de la maja (Tonadillas No.8)

Though no less devoted to developing Spanish music than contemporaries like Albéniz, Falla and Turina, Granados was drawn more to the culture of Castile than to that of Andalusia and did not entirely share their interest in the primitive element in Spanish folksong. Besides, Granados had another great artistic passion in his life. He was fascinated by Francisco Goya, several of whose paintings he possessed and whose work inspired much of his music, including of course the Goyescas piano pieces and the Goyescas opera that is based on them.

The Tonadillas - or, to give them their full title, Tonadillas escritas en estilo antiguo, with its significant reference to their “old style” - are another kind of tribute to Goya. Written between 1910 and 1911 to words by F.Periquet, they are a poetic evocation of Madrid a hundred years earlier, the Madrid of Goya, who is actually referred to in the first song in the set, La Maja de Goya: “There is not a woman, or maja, or lady who does not miss Goya now.” All eleven Tonadillas are more or less impassioned comments on love from a maja (or woman of Madrid), most of them laments of some sort, some of them cheerful, but none more vivid in characterisation than El mirar de la maja. Neither the simple guitar-style accompaniment nor the repeating sequence of harmonies can deny the voluptuous impression given by the generously curving vocal line.