Six Songs

Verlaine

Cancioncilla del primer deseo

Canción de la barca triste

Nana para un niño que se llama Rafael

Definición

Poema

If Salvador Moreno is not a household name - even in Mexico where he was born or Spain where he spent most of his working life - it is partly because he did not have the ambition to achieve that sort of reputation. Although he was a serious musician (who should have got at least a mention in The New Grove) he was not a single-minded career composer. He was also a painter, specialising apparently in gouaches of flower subjects, a poet, and an art historian with a number of academic honours to his credit. He studied composition with José Rolón and Carlos Chavez at the Conservatorio Nacional de Música in Mexico City but left Mexico for Spain, initially to further his musical studies, and stayed there for as long as thirty years, leading an intensely creative life in an attic in Barcelona. While his other interests seem to have got in the way of his undertaking large-scale composition, he did complete a one-act opera, Severino, which was performed in Mexico and Barcelona in 1961 with a young Placido Domingo in the cast, as well as a variety of choral and instrumental music. He will be remembered, however, for his songs with piano, several of which were at one time prominent in the repertoire of no less a singer than Victoria de los Angeles.

As a poet himself, Moreno was scrupulous about respecting the natural rhythms and pitch inflections of the words. That, rather than any deliberate hispanicism, is the reason why his settings of Spanish verse sound so idiomatic, although he does make the occasional use of modal harmonies and national dance rhythms. The first in this group of six short songs - all of which were written in the 1950s and 1960s - sets Lorca’s Verlaine in the Dorian mode and accompanies the modest vocal line with a piano part restricted to little more than one note in each hand and to nothing more extravagantly atmospheric than a suggestion of habanera rhythm and a prolonged trill. The other Lorca setting, Cancioncilla del primer deseo is similarly economical, the piano offering scarcely a hint of nightingale symbolism and keeping its ironic distance in a stubbornly harmonised rhythmic ostinato.

Moreno’s interpretation of Canción de la barca triste by the Mexican poet Edmundo Baez is rather more indulgent in the rocking rhythm in the piano introduction, the discreetly splashy arpeggiated chords in the middle and the comparatively straightforward F minor harmonies. There are conventional gestures too in his tender treatment of the charming little lullaby Nana para un niño que se llama Rafael by the Barcelona poet (and fellow art historian) Rafael Santos Torroella. The most romantic song of all in this group was inspired by the nineteenth-century Mexican poet Josefa Murillo, whose Definición is sustained by one short lyrical phrase and harmonies which entertain doubts only as the sentiment turns to scepticism. Encouraged initially by an eloquent left hand under a characteristic right-hand ostinato, the setting of Poema by Rafael Solana, a Mexican of a later generation, finally releases its vocal line from its expressive modest on a sustained top A.

Verlaine

Cancioncilla del primer deseo

Canción de la barca triste

Nana para un niño que se llama Rafael

Definicion

Poema

If Salvador Moreno is not a household name - even in Mexico where he was born or Spain where he spent most of his working life - it is partly because he did not have the ambition to achieve that sort of reputation. Although he was a serious musician (who should have got at least a mention in The New Grove) he was not a single-minded career composer. He was also a painter, specialising apparently in gouaches of flower subjects, a poet, and an art historian with a number of academic honours to his credit. He studied composition with José Rolón and Carloz Chavez at the Conservatorio Nacional de Música in Mexico City but left Mexico for Spain, initially to further his musical studies, and stayed there for as long as thirty years, leading a creative life in an attic in Barcelona. While his other interests seem to have got in the way of his undertaking large-scale composition, he did complete a one-act opera, Severino, which was performed in Mexico and Barcelona in 1961 with a young Placido Domingo in the cast, as well as a variety of choral and instrumental music. He will be remembered, however, for his songs with piano, several of which were at one time prominent in the repertoire of no less a singer than Victoria de los Angeles.

As a poet himself, Moreno was scrupulous about respecting the natural rhythms and pitch inflections of the words. That, rather than any deliberate hispanicism, is the reason why his settings of Spanish verse sound so idiomatic, although he does make the occasional use of modal harmonies and national dance rhythms. The first in this group of six short songs - all of which were written in the 1950s and 1960s - sets Lorca’s cryptic portrait of Verlaine in the Dorian mode and accompanies the modest vocal line with a piano part restricted to little more than one note in each hand and to nothing more extravagantly atmospheric than a suggestion of habanera rhythm and a prolonged trill. The other Lorca setting, Cancioncilla del primer deseo is similarly economical, the piano offering scarcely a hint of nightingal symbolism and keeping its ironic distance in a stubbornly harmonised rhythmic ostinato.

Moreno’s interpretation of Canción de la barca triste by the Mexican poet Edmundo Baez is rather more indulgent in the rocking rhythm in the piano introduction, the discreetly splashy arpeggiated chords in the middle and the comparatively straightforward F minor harmonies. There are conventional gestures too in his tender treatment of the charming little lullaby Nana para un niño que se llama Rafael by the Barcelona poet (and fellow art historian) Rafael Santos Torroella. The most romantic setting of all in this group was inspired by the nineteenth-century Mexican poet Josefa Murillo, whose Definición is sustained by one short lyrical phrase and harmonies which entertain doubts only as the sentiment turns to scepticism at the end. Poema by Rafael Solana, a Mexican of a later generation, inspired a vocal line which, encouraged initially by an expressive left hand under a right-hand ostinato, finally sheds its modesty on a sustained top A.