El Retablo de Maese Pedro - Musical Analysis

Musical Analysis

The musical idiom abandons the Andalusian taste of Falla's earlier work in favor of medieval and Renaissance sources; for his narrator, Falla adapted the sung public proclamations, or "pregones", of the old Spanish villages. Falla borrowed themes from the Baroque guitarist Gaspar Sanz, the 16th-century organist and theorist Francisco Salinas, and Spanish folk traditions (but Castilian folk music, not Andalusian), in addition to his own evocative inventions. His scoring, for a small orchestra featuring the then-unfamiliar sound of the harpsichord, was lean, pungent, neo-classical in a highly personal and original way, and pointedly virtuosic. The output is a completely original music, apparently simple, but of a great richness. The match of music and text is one of the greatest achievements of the work: as never before Spanish language finds here its genuine musical expression.

From Celebrating Don Quixote by Joseph Horowitz:

"The work is surprisingly theatrical. It bristles with wit and limitless panache. It percolates with such subtle details as Don Quixote's long and ungainly legs – the only part of him which remains visible once Master Peter's production begins;'during the show, Falla specifies, 'they will remain in view, sometimes at rest, sometimes crossed over one another.' Beyond praise is Falla's juxtaposition of his two puppet casts and the pacing that propels their climactic convergence when Don Quixote rises to intervene for Melisandra (at which point the other puppet spectators crane their necks to better observe the action). This peak, cunningly scaled, recedes to an equally precise denouement: Don Quixote's closing salutation to knights errant (culled from a different chapter of the novel), with which he finally and fully pre-empts center stage."