ENRIQUE GRANADOS - Goyescas: Los Requiebros (1909-1910)

Granados is best remembered for his piano suite Goyescas, inspired by Spanish artist Goya’s paintings of the majos and majas. The composer was first amazed by these artworks while visiting the Prado Museum in Madrid in 1896, and later aspired to depict in music the amorous adventures of the lower classes of Spanish society. With the success of this piano suite, Granados later turned it into an opera in 1915, creating the first operatic arrangement of a piano work in the whole history of music.

Dedicated to Emil Sauer, the first piece “Los Requiebros” was composed after the fifth of Goya’s Caprichos, Tal para cual. It portrays a maja flirting with a poor man with sword, conveyed through the rich ornamentation (somewhat Scalarttian), playful mood, starts and pauses, and constantly changing tempi. Written in a highly romantic language, this piece explores the capabilities of both the pianist and the instrument. It contains complex textures, three-staff passages that seem to demand more than two hands, and superimposition of metres, reminding us of Albéniz’s Iberia.

The guitar-like languorous opening is based on Blas de Laserna’s “Tirana del Trípili”, immensely popular in the 18th and 19th centuries. Granados reorganises it as a jota, an 18th century song and dance form of northern Spain, so the two distinctive copla (verse) melodies alternate with an estribillo (refrain). Similar to the real jota, this piece comprises inexhaustible variations and ornamentation of its thematic material. The imitations of a guitarist plucking and strumming brighten the setting.

While “Los Requiebros” does not follow any formal structure, its form is outlined by double bars that mark the sections. Granados expands the copla melodies to extensive development and modulation. They do not return together in E-flat major, the home key, until just before the coda. The refrain curiously appears merely once. This loosely arranged alternation of copla and estribillo creates the improvisatory style for this piece. It also brings a touch of the carefree gaiety of the folklore that this work is based.