Romancillo: Por mayo era (1950)

Adela (1951)

Never a progressive composer, Rodrigo was quite happy to explore the resources of the Spanish tradition and adapt them in his own deft way, rarely challenging his listeners with anything too original but just as rarely failing to disarm them. The Concierto de Aranjuez, which he wrote in 1939 but did not surpass in the remaining sixty years of his life, remains the defining achievement of his career. If there is a different Rodrigo to be found it is in his songs, many of which coincide with the popular image but some of which do not. The anonymous source of the romance Por mayo era (which was also the source of Ach im Maien wars in Wolf’s Spanisches Liederbuch) inspired in Rodrigo a setting which, unmistakably Spanish in the dissonant guitar-derived chords so firmly strummed in the piano part, is uncompromisingly severe in its harmonies and so rigorously economical as to exclude all but the most minimal hints of birdsong. Adela, one of the ten Canciones populares españolas, is more characteristic of the Rodrigo we know, a wistful folksong in a simple setting that preserves the pathos while excluding sentimentality.