Fantasy on Flamenco Rhythms

If the idea of a Swiss composer like Frank Martin writing a Fantasy on Flamenco Themes seems incongruous it is really no less likely than, say, a Russian composer like Glinka writing a Jota aragonesa or a German composer like Schumann writing a Fandango. In fact, Martin had a deep affection for Spanish music, an affection unshaken even by Segovia’s failure to play or even acknowledge the Four Short Pieces he dedicated to him in 1933. It was unfortunate perhaps that they were written in the short period when Martin was interested in twelve-note technique, although (at least in the piano version, called Guitar) the combination of serialism and the Spanish idiom works very well. The Fantasy on Flamenco Rhythms was written forty years later for the composer’s daughter, Teresa, who - unlikely though it might seem again - was a dancer in a Majorcan flamenco group. On its first performance the Fantasy was accompanied by Teresa’s choreography.

Martin’s Fantasy is not Spanish picture-postcard music. As the title suggests, it is primarily a study in rhythm and it is not much concerned with the other aspects of Flamenco. Although he does not entirely avoid characteristic Flamenco melody, the harmonic idiom is not so much Spanish as Martin’s own. Similarly, the piano writing, though it owes much to guitar figuration, is nearer to that of Bartok than that of Albeniz. The work is divided into three main sections, the opening Slow Rumba - with attractive hints of the blues in the melodic line - leading to a compulsively articulated and elaborately developed Quick Rumba (or Rumba flamenca). The second section is inspired by rhythms associated with the Soleares which, according to the composer, implies solitude, “a solitude which is at the same time nostalgia, revolt and reconciliation with destiny.” In the Petenera, “a kind of epic poem relating the tragic destiny of a woman abandoned by her lover,” the rhythmic interest recedes at last in favour of melody, the line drawn in octaves with little accompaniment and with characteristic Flamenco decoration.