Article published in Classical Guitar Magazine, v. 18, n. 18, London, 1997.

Republished on
the Sirs Renaissance Database CD-ROM, Boca Raton, Florida, 1998.
ISAAC ALBNIZ AN ESSAY ON THE MAN, HIS MUSIC, AND HIS
RELATIONSHIP TO THE GUITAR

Daniel Wolff

Life
Isaac Albniz, one of the most important Spanish composers, regarded as the founder of the
Modern Spanish School, was born in Camprodon, Spain, in 1860, and died in Cambo-les-Bains,
France, in 1909. A precocious piano virtuoso, he had his first lessons with his elder sister
Clementine and appeared in public recitals playing duets with her as early as age four.
In 1866, after studies with Narciso Oliveros in Barcelona, his mother took him to Paris to
study with Antoine Francois Marmontel, a teacher at the Paris Conservatoire who also counted
Bizet and Debussy among his students. After a few months under his private guidance Albniz
was accepted as a student at the Conservatoire, but he spoiled the opportunity by breaking one
of its large mirrors while playing with a ball (we must not forget that he was only a six year old
child). His mother then took him back to Spain and shortly after he went on a concert tour
around Catalonia with his father, in which he would use the same kind of tricks as the young
Mozart, such as covering the keyboard so that he had to play without looking at the keys.
The Albniz family then moved to Madrid, and Isaac started attending the conservatory
under Mendizabal. By this time he was a prolific reader of Jules Verne's tales, and through them
felt the enticements of adventure up to the point when, in 1870, he ran away from home to travel
around Spain on his own, playing wherever he could. He went through all sorts of incidents
over this time, being once even robbed by highway bandits. Upon reaching Cadiz, the local
governor threatened to arrest Albniz and have him sent back to his parents. Albnizs solution
was to hide himself on the steamship Espaa, bound for Puerto Rico. He expected to entertain
the passengers by playing the piano in exchange for his ticket, but was forced to land in Buenos
Ayres, the first port on call.
In Argentina Albniz experienced hunger for the first time, and had to spend a while
sleeping on the streets. But shortly after he was playing at cafes and cabarets, being able to save

enough money to start traveling north to Central America. By the time he was thirteen he
reached Cuba where, by coincidence, his father had just been transferred as collector of taxes.
The elder Albniz's first reaction after knowing that his son was to arrive in Cuba for a series
of performances was to force him to settle down and put an end to his nomadic life. But when
he met Albniz and saw that he was now a mature and experienced man, although still in his
teens, he decided to let him follow his own way, which was now to go to the United States.
America did not welcome Albniz as well as he expected, and in 1874 he returned to
Europe, this time willing to seriously develop his skills as a musician. He attended the Leipzig
Conservatory under Jadassohn and Reinecke, and later studied with Louis Brassin (piano) and
Auguste Gevaert (composition) at the Brussels Conservatory. In 1880 Albniz met Franz Liszt
and became his student, having traveled with him from Weimar to Rome. The same year he
started touring Europe and South America as a mature virtuoso.
The year 1883 marked the end of Albniz's Bohemian life style. He married Rosina Jordana
and settled in Barcelona, dedicating himself entirely to his family and his music. Little by little
he gave up his concert career, concentrating on teaching and composing. At about the same
time Albniz met the Spanish musicologist Felipe Pedrell, who made a strong impact on his
compositional style by directing him towards the creation of music based on Spanish roots.
By the end of the decade Albniz decided to leave Spain and, after spending some time in
Paris studying with Dukas and D'Indy, settled in London in 1890, where he agreed to set to
music the libretti of British banker Francis Money-Counts in exchange of financial support.
This gave light to operatic works such as Pepita Jimenez, Merlin and Henry Clifford. Returning
to Paris in 1893 Albniz established a close relationship with the French impressionist
composers, being in 1896 appointed assistant piano teacher at the Schola Cantorum.
In 1898 Albniz left Paris and lived in Barcelona and later in Nice, finally settling in Camboles-Bains, where he died two months later. After his death he was awarded the Grand Cross of
the Legion d'Honneur by the French Government.

Musical Style

Albniz's style, although basically Spanish oriented, is still considerably eclectic and
embodied with a popular flavor. This is doubtlessly connected to his early experience playing
at cabarets, as well as to the extensive traveling in which he was involved during his youth,
when he had the chance to listen to music from several countries and diverse cultural
backgrounds. Even though such influences, along with others that appeared latter on his life,
are clearly present in his music, Albniz was able to create his own personal style and his
relationship with Liszt might also have contributed to this process. As pointed out by
Livermore: "The Hungarian, though moving in the Germanic circles of Schumann and Wagner,
had managed to create his own climate by the side of theirs, and this Albniz needed to do in
Paris, where his own unique musical experience required a similar independence of expression
if its opening success was to mature unspoilt."[1]
In order to acquire such an independence of expression Albniz turned to the musical
sources of his native Spain, being first attracted by the Spanish anonymous songs. Those were
collected by church organists in times gone, and organized in cancioneros by Felipe Pedrell
during the second half of the nineteenth century. The teachings of Pedrell influenced other
major Spanish composers such as Falla and Granados, and they all used specimens of Spanish
anonymous songs in re-creating the native idiom through their own compositions.
It must be observed that the late nineteenth century saw the growth of Nationalism,
especially in countries like Spain, whose musical tradition was overshadowed by a powerful
Germanic preponderance. Nationalism sought vivid emotional expression, achieved by the
introduction into music of a greater variety of rhythmic, melodic and harmonic phraseology,
mostly derived from folk music. Albniz was the first exponent of Nationalism in Spanish
music, being therefore regarded as the founder of the Modern Spanish School, as stressed by
Baker: "Almost all of the works of Albniz are written for piano, and all without exception are
inspired by Spanish folklore. He thus established the modern school of Spanish piano literature,
derived from original rhythms and melodic patterns, rather than imitating the imitations of
national Spanish music by French and Russian composers."[2] A link may therefore be
established from Albniz all the way back to Scarlatti, whose hundreds of keyboard sonatas
were permeated by Spanish musical elements. But Albniz was also interested in

"accomplishing a spiritual transfiguration of the [Spain's] landscape, to transform it into creative

abstract material,"[3] and so he adopted pictorial programs for his piano suites, much on the same
way as Mendelssohn on his Scottish and Italian Symphonies.
However, it should be noticed that the Spanish musical idiom, which served as a source for
most Spanish composers, is itself a convergence of diverse influences easily observed on three
major events in Spain's history, namely the adoption by the Spanish church of Byzantine
liturgical music, the Muslim invasion (responsible for the inclusion of Moorish elements on all
levels of music making) and the immigration of numerous bands of Gypsies, the later
acknowledged as the major step towards the creation of a style nowadays regarded as the core
of Spanish music: the flamenco.
Comprised basically of dance movements such as the polo, the fandango and
the seguidillas, on which Albniz based most of his piano pieces, the flamenco is the modern
successor of the cante jondo, through which it may be better understood. The cante jondo, a
misspelling for canto hondo (in Spanish: deep chant), refers to a group of Andalucian folksongs of Gypsy origin, characterized by two major aspects: "the compass which rarely surpasses
a sixth; and the often obsessive repetition of the same note, frequently embellished by an
appogiatura from above or below."[4] In flamenco dance movements thecante jondo section
functions as a cadenza, primarily due to its monodic and ametrical character. Albniz used this
feature in El Albaicn, from the Suite Ibria, and in Asturias (from the Suite Espaola)
expanded it to the whole first part of the slow section (see example 1).

Example 1: Albniz, Asturias

Example 1.b demonstrates also the presence of Arabic turns of phrase, a Moorish legacy
connected with "an important Spanish artistic movement at the end of the nineteenth century
and beginning of the twentieth known as alhambrismo, referring to the palace of Alhambra in
Granada."[5] Moorish melodic elements were frequently found in Albnizs music, who used to
proudly state: "I am a Moor!"
In regard to the instrumental accompaniment, in flamenco music it is usually provided by
the guitar, and one of its distinctive features, which Albniz employed frequently in his music,
is the use of minor second grids to accomplish rhythmic accents. Although the inclusion of such
dissonant intervals over triadic chords led to the improvement of Albniz's tonal gamut, it is
however not sufficient to completely understand his harmonic idiom. A frequent resource found
in his pieces in the major mode is to modulate to triads of the parallel minor scale, as in Sevilla,
from the Suite Espaola. Here, after an opening in G major, the theme reappears in E flat major
and the entire slow section is in C minor. It is interesting to observe that the tonic notes of these
three keys put together form a C minor chord, which is the key of the slow section, a common
device in the nineteenth century's quest for a higher level of tonal relationships.
Further harmonic achievements are found in Albniz's late works, especially after his
studies in Paris. Typical impressionistic harmonic devices such as the use of modal harmonies
and the whole-tone scale, as well as uncertain tonal centers, are frequently found in his Suite
Ibria, which he referred to as a set of "twelve impressions". It should be mentioned that several
scholars are of the opinion that Albniz was not really influenced by the impressionist
composers, but rather helped to create the so called "impressionist style", as put by Marco:
"Although the language of Ibria is directly related to the music of Claude Debussy and
Maurice Ravel, it cannot be considered simply as a consequence of the French school. Its genius
lies in its extraordinary technical complexity; years later Olivier Messiaen declared that it was
his immediate antecedent."[6]
In terms of form Albniz wrote mostly short pieces, the so called character pieces of the
Romantic period. Most of them were based on flamenco dance movements over which he
superimposed traditional formal structures such as ABA. It is interesting to observe that the B
section, which traditionally serves as a relief to the rather busy texture of the A section, often

assumes the form of a cante jondo, which in flamenco music also works as textural and
rhythmic break. But Albniz was also aware of the needs for achieving a greater formal
structure, something he accomplished by placing his pieces together in the form of suites, such
as the Suite Ibria, the Suite Espaola and Cantos de Espaa.
Little has to be said about Albniz's orchestration since, like Chopin, almost all his pieces
are written for solo piano. He did orchestrate Catalonia with help from Dukas but most of his
orchestral scores, almost all of which are to be found in his operas, show a distinctive pianistic
approach. Writing about the opera Pepita Jimenez, Chase states that "the score reveals that
Albniz thought primarily in terms of the piano rather than the orchestra, a medium he never
thoroughly mastered" (italics mine).[7] The famous orchestral version of certain movements of
the Suite Ibria was done not by Albniz but by his countryman Fernando Arbs, and part of
the suite was also later orchestrated by Leopold Stokowski.
Finally, it should be mentioned that Albniz's style changed considerably over the years.
His early pieces carried no marked Spanish character, being rather miniatures written in the
facile salon style (waltzes, mazurkas, barcaroles, etc.) so common in the late nineteenth
century. French influences can be seen only in 1889, starting with La Vega, but the major step
towards maturity can be traced back to 1883, the year he met Pedrell. "What Albniz derived
from Pedrell was above all a spiritual orientation, the realization of the wonderful values
inherent in Spanish music."[8]

Albniz and the Guitar

"Throughout the veins of Spanish music, a profound rhythmic beat seems to
be diffused by a strange, phantasmagoric, colossal and multiform instrument an instrument idealized in the fiery imaginations of Albniz, Granados, Falla
and Turina. It is an imaginary instrument which might be said to possess the
wings of the harp, the heart of the grand piano and the soul of the guitar"
(italics mine).[9]
This statement by Joaqun Rodrigo demonstrates the high place the guitar holds in Spanish
music, even if only on an unconscious level. That is to say, when trying to capture the Spanish
musical idiom, Spanish composers pay tribute to the guitar's characteristic sonorities even

though they are writing for another instrument. Such is the case with Albniz, as observed by
Chase: "Taking the guitar as his instrumental model, and drawing his inspiration largely from
the peculiar traits of Andalusian folk music - but without using actual folk themes - Albniz
achieves a stylization of Spanish traditional idioms that, while thoroughly artistic, gives a
captivating impression of spontaneous improvisation."[10]
The story tells that Francisco Trrega, regarded as the founder of the modern guitar school,
performed his guitar transcriptions of Albniz's pieces for the composer, who on the occasion
manifested his preference for the guitar version rather than the original piano score. Following
Trrega several guitar virtuosos, among them Andrs Segvia and Miguel Llobet, proceeded to
transcribe Albniz's pieces for the guitar, the resulting output being nowadays a highlight in the
instrument's mainstream repertoire. Thus Segvia wrote in 1947: What artist or what critic, no
matter how severe he may be, can condemn the transcriptions of the works by Albniz for the
guitar? They are true restitution to the instrument which furnished the original inspiration.[11]
In order to better understand the guitaristic aspect of Albniz's music, we may refer to a
comparison with Domenico Scarlatti, whose sonatas are also often performed on the guitar. It
has already been mentioned the existence of a link between Albniz and Scarlatti, who he took
as his keyboard master in line, but how deep does this connection run? First of all they both
wrote mostly for solo keyboard and had a large output of miniature pieces. But what is most
important is that the two of them made frequent use of Spanish folk music elements in their
works. The minor second grids that Albniz used to provide rhythmic accents were not
unknown to Scarlatti, as can be seen in example 2. Here, the effect of the tone clusters resembles
that of the rasgueados (a guitaristic effect, originally from flamenco music, consisting of the
strong strumming of chords in a way to produce rhythmic accents, working almost as a
percussive effect), demonstrating that even when writing for the keyboard, Scarlatti had the
guitar in mind.

Example 2: Scarlatti, Sonata K175/L429, mm.25-28

But unlike Scarlatti who, being primarily Italian, used elements from Spanish folk music
only occasionally to enlarge his sources of inspiration, Albniz turned to it completely in order
to develop his own personal style. This makes transcriptions of his piano music for guitar not
only possible but desirable, since the instrument is not only the one most used
in flamenco music, but is actually highly associated with Spanish music as a whole. This
becomes quite clear by comparing certain passages of Albniz's works transcribed for the guitar
with the original piano version.
The above mentioned rasgueados, for example, are often used in continuous motion in
order to produce a full chord tremolo effect. Being impossible to reproduce it at the piano,
Albniz opted inCordoba, from Cantos de Espaa, to replace it by a left-hand octave tremolo
on the bass, the remaining chord tones being played by the right-hand in quarter-notes (see
example 3).

Example 3: Albniz, Cordoba, mm.136-37

Asturias, from the Suite Espaola, serves as a good example of the campanella effect,
which is obtained by a repeated pedal note on an open string while a melody is played on one
or more of the remaining strings. In this particular case the melody is played on the forth and
fifth strings against a pedal note B played on the second open string (a transposition from the
original key G minor to E minor is required). The result is a clear separation between the moving
melody and the pedal note which the piano can not completely achieve, especially when the
pedal and the melody note are the same, as in the first and third beats of the first measure in
example 4. The circles indicate the pedal notes played on the open second string.

Example 4: Albniz, Asturias, m.1

As for typical guitaristic accompaniment figures Albniz music is so full of them that an
example may not be necessary here. I shall only mention the Suite Ibria, which is permeated
throughout its twelve movements notably in El Albaicn, Triana and El Puerto by such
figures.
But there are also several pieces by Albniz that cannot be played on the guitar, since the
instrument is not capable of handling as many notes as the piano due to limited register and
mechanical possibilities. In some cases a transcription for two guitars will be preferred, but in
others no trancription will not be possible at all. Nevertheless, the fact that a certain piece is not
playable on the guitar does not exclude the possibility that it was the instrument Albniz had in
mind while composing. He was after all writing for the piano and therefore had to suit his music

to that instrument's technical characteristics, even if from the bottom of his heart, the guitar was
his true source of inspiration.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Arnold, Denis, ed. The New Oxford Companion to Music. S.v. "Albniz, Isaac." East Kilbride:
Thomson Litho Ltd.,1984.
______________. The New Oxford Companion to Music. S.v. "Nationalism in Music." East
Kilbride: Thomson Litho Ltd.,1984.
Baker, Theodore. Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians. 7th ed. by Nicholas
Slominsky. S.v. "Albniz, Isaac." New York: Schirmer,1984.
Cavaterra, Jeremy. "The Underrated Masters: Spanish and Latin American Composers, Vol. I
- Isaac Albniz." MSM Notes (September 1994): 6-7.
______________. "The Underrated Masters: Spanish and Latin American Composers, Vol. II
- Manuel de Falla." MSM Notes (October 1994): 4-5.
Chase, Gilbert. The Music of Spain. New York: Norton,1941.
Jacket notes. Concierto de Aranjuez. Renata Tarrago, guitar. Orquesta de Conciertos de
Madrid. Odon Alonso, conductor. Columbia ML5345, s.d.
Livermore, Ann. A Short History of Spanish Music. New York: Vienna House,1972.
Marco, Tomas. Spanish Music in the Twentieth Century. Trans. Cola Franzen.
Cambridge,MA: Harvard University Press,1893.
______________. "Albniz, Isaac." The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Ed.
Stanley Sadie. 20 vols. London: Macmillan,1980. I:202-03.
Segvia, Andrs. A Note on Transcriptions. Guitar Review 1, no. 3 (1947): 3.
Thompson, Oscar, ed. The International Cyclopedia of Music and Musicians. S.v. "Albniz,
Isaac." New York: Dod, Mead and Company,1985.
2001 Copyright by Daniel Wolff. All rights reserved.

Ann Livermore, A Short History of Spanisch Music (New York: Vienna House,1972), 180.
[2]
Theodore Baker, Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians, 7th ed. by Nicolas Slonimsky, s.v.
"Albniz, Isaac" (New York: Schirmer,1984).
[3]
Tomas Marco, Spanish Music in the Twentieth Century, trans. Cola Franzen (Cambridge,MA:
Harvard University Press,1993), 8.
[1]

[4]
Jeremy Cavaterra, "The Underrated Masters: Spanish and Latin American Composers, Vol. IIManuel de Falla," MSM Notes (October 1994):4.
[5]
Marco, Spanish Music, 46.
[6]
Ibid., 6.
[7]
Gilbert Chase, The Music of Spain (New York: Norton,1941), 154.
[8]
Ibid., 153.
[9]
Jacket notes to Concierto de Aranjuez, Renata Tarrago, guitar, Orquesta de Conciertos de Madrid,
Odon Alonso, conductor, Columbia ML5345, s.d.
[10]
Chase, The Music of Spain, 155.
[11]
Andrs Segvia, A Note on Transcriptions, Guitar Review 1, no. 3 (1947): 3.