Spanish Music of the Golden Age

Spanish Music of the Golden Age, 1600-1700
Suite III

I.- Hachas (anonymous)
II.- Folias (Guerau)
III.-El Villano (anonymous)
IV.- Matachin (Guerau)

-Francisco Guerau (1649-1717/22)

Performers: The Extempore String Ensemble
William Thorp: violin, guitar
Rosemary Thorndycraft: bass viol, harp
Sally Owen: spinet, tenor viol, tambourine
Robin Jeffrey: guitar, theorbo
George Weigand (director): bandurrias, lutes, vandola, harp


About the suite:
The Hachas was torch dance, described in a loa of 1636: "Enter the whole company two with hands joined, dancing to the sound of instrumends and bearing torches; making a reverence, they sing."

The Folia is one of the oldest remembered European musical themes, or primary material, generally melodic, of a composition, on record.
By the later seventeenth century the folia, zarabanda and chacona had become slower, more graceful and less energetic than earlier versions and the chacona had overtaken the zarabanda as the most popular dance in Spain.

The Villano was a solo dance for a man in the character of a villano or rustic. Holding his sombrero (wide-brimmed hat) in both hands, he would execute a series of spectacular high kicks, leaps and mid-air spings.

Matachines were comedia character -one of several clown stereotypes well known throughout Europe. The theatre dance was often performed with the matachines capering in outlandish costumes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9b-s5JGrOw

[ Spanish Golden Age] (Spanish: Siglo de Oro, Golden Century) is a period of flourishing in arts and literature in Spain, coinciding with the political rise and decline of the Spanish Habsburg dynasty. El Siglo de Oro does not imply precise dates and is usually considered to have lasted longer than an actual century. It begins no earlier than 1492, with the end of the Reconquista (Reconquest), the sea voyages of Christopher Columbus to the New World, and the publication of Antonio de Nebrija's Gramática de la lengua castellana (Grammar of the Castilian Language). Politically, it ends no later than 1659, with the Treaty of the Pyrenees, ratified between France and Habsburg Spain. The last great writer of the period, Pedro Calderon de la Barca, died in 1681, and his death usually is considered the end of El Siglo de Oro in the arts and literature.

The Habsburgs, both in Spain and Austria, were great patrons of art in their countries. El Escorial, the great royal monastery built by King Philip II of Spain, invited the attention of some of Europe's greatest architects and painters. Diego Velázquez, regarded as one of the most influential painters of European history and a greatly respected artist in his own time, cultivated a relationship with King Philip IV and his chief minister, the Count-Duke of Olivares, leaving us several portraits that demonstrate his style and skill. El Greco, another respected artist from the period, infused Spanish art with the styles of the Italian renaissance and helped create a uniquely Spanish style of painting. Some of Spain's greatest music is regarded as having been written in the period. Such composers as Tomás Luis de Victoria, Francisco Guerrero, Luis de Milán and Alonso Lobo helped to shape Renaissance music and the styles of counterpoint and polychoral music, and their influence lasted far into the Baroque period which resulted in a revolution of music. Spanish literature blossomed as well, most famously demonstrated in the work of Miguel de Cervantes, the author of Don Quixote de la Mancha. Spain's most prolific playwright, Lope de Vega, wrote possibly as many as one thousand plays during his lifetime, of which over four hundred survive to the present day.
(wiki)