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The labels we use to classify artistic styles often hide worlds so rich and diverse that they sometimes mean very little. A good example is the use of the word “Baroque” for music composed in the 17th and 18th centuries, and the Spanish case is particularly revealing.
Paradoxically, it was the accession to the throne of the French Bourbon family that brought to Madrid, in 1701, the tidal wave then flooding musical Europe: the Italian style. Until then Spanish music had been governed by its own traditions and rules, with characteristic harmonies, instrumental writing that was at times not very idiomatic, highly syllabic vocal writing, and even a special notation for its unique rhythms between duple and triple – very flamenco rhythms, we would say today. These features are still recognisable in Durón’s Sosieguen, descansen and in the contemporary dances that will serve as our instrumental interludes.
The Italian cantatas from the National Library of Spain (All’assalto de pensieri and Pastorella che tra le selve), by contrast, will serve as examples of the arrival of what North was already calling “the fire and fury of the Italian style”. The arrival of the Bourbons also meant Durón’s rise to maestro de capilla (chapel master) – although, curiously, Durón ended his days in exile, exposed as an enthusiastic supporter of the Habsburg cause – and titles such as arietta ytaliana reveal his unmistakable efforts to adapt to the new times. Decades later, these would earn him the charge of Italianising from Father Feijoo in Música de los templos (Teatro crítico universal, 1726):
This is the music of these times, with which the Italians have presented us, by the hand of their devotee maestro Durón, who was the one who introduced foreign fashions into the music of Spain. It is true that since then these have been pushed so far that, were Durón to rise from the dead, he would no longer recognise them; but he can always be blamed for all these novelties, for having been the first to open the door to them.
Feijoo would probably have thrown up his hands in horror had he heard, in the years immediately after that text, the operas and zarzuelas of José de Nebra, who had already fully and masterfully embraced the fiery Italian style, with its secco recitatives full of daring modulations, its da capo arias, its specific instrumental writing and its demanding coloratura in the vocal lines… By skilfully combining these with forms and rhythms then popular, such as the fandango and the seguidilla, Nebra built a successful career in the effervescent world of Madrid stage music in the first half of the 18th century, without giving up the qualities that make him, in the opinion of many, the finest Spanish composer of his century.
