ballet music from Le Cid

Castillane

Andalouse

Aragonaise

Navarraise

Massenet’s opera Le Cid (which was first performed in Paris in 1885) is about Spaniards engaged in the Spanish national pastime of defending their honour. The displaced person in this case was the composer himself. When he was composing the ballet music, instead of absorbing local colour in Spain, Massenet was staying in Marseille with a “magical view” of the old port from the window of his hotel. No that this stopped him writing dances that the Parisian audience, which was just beginning to develop a taste for Spanish music at the time, could accept as authentic. His method was to examine the characteristics of Spanish folk music, probably from printed sources, and then incorporate the distinctive features of a different region in each of his own dances.

So the fiesta in the main square of Burgos includes dances not just from Castile, where the opera is set, but from all over Spain as well. It begins at home, however, with a Castillane, a lively seguidilla with a cheerful tune on woodwind coloured by castanets and accompanied by a guitar-style pizzicato in the strings. The Andalouse, which comes from the southern region of Andalusia, is an elegant example of the Parisians’ favourite Spanish dance, the habanera - the langorous melody on woodwind, the distinctive tango-like rhythm on cellos. Another Parisian favourite was the jota, a vigorous example of which Massenet offers in his Aragonaise from the northern region of Aragon. Most energetic of all, the climax of the ballet scene, is the Navarraise. A different kind of jota from the region between Aragon and the Basque country, it repeats the same rhythmic pattern over and over again with mounting orchestral excitement and ever more dramatic colouring.