| Share page | Visit Us On FB |
|
Music from the East. |
63 |
||
|
Such are the Seguidillas and Modinhas which in my young days the rising gentlewomen of England, whose Spanish was
Of the school of Stratford-atte-Bowe, used to drawl out on an ill-conducted guitar; believing the same national, patriotic and picturesque.
In continuation, attention may be called to some modern specimens of composition in the national style, where the antique semi-barbarous Spanish wildness is turned to account by a distinguished child of the soil—one thoroughly versed in the science of 'high composition' (as the French phrase it), Madame Viardot. But in her Spanish melodies, the intervals and phrases will be found more arresting by their strangeness, than charming by any beauty. They speak of the vocal usages of a land, with which those not pervaded by Oriental predilections can only be brought to sympathise, inasmuch as the palate may come to accept and enjoy peculiar meats by the persuasion of habit and the force of residence.
Capital, quaint, and altogether peculiar, is the rhythmical, or dance music of Spain; its characteristics owing, if not their origin, their suggestion to the national instrument, by aid of which the |
|||