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| Marc Destrubé |
Folia a baroque Louie Louie 7 listening to Marc Destrube play while on my back under a harpsichord.
According to my Real Academia dictionary folía is a word of French origin that means mad. It is further defined as a dance typical of the Canary Islands but also an extremely noisy Portuguese dance that involved many people. This is partially confirmed by the Folia website and I quote:
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| Natalie Mackie |
The name "Folia" is of Iberian origin and refers to a fertility dance in three-four time originating in the late 15th century. The first time the name emerges is in a text by the Portuguese dramatist Gil Vicente entitled "Auto de Sibilla Cassandra". In music Folia meant, at least till the 1670's, a very quick paced and tumultuous dance, in which the dancers carried men dressed as women upon their shoulders. They were literally driven mad by the noise and the stirring rhythm.
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| Lucas Harris |
Yesterday March 7 I went to an intimate concert by La Modestine ( a trio) at Hodson Manor. It was a most pleasant surprise as the music was early baroque compositions by Spanish composers or by a Portuguese composer Falconieri who was in Spanish ruled Naples and an English Henry Butler who and English composer who spent 29 years in Madrid in the court of Philip IV.
Because my Manila-born grandmother María de los Dolores Reyes de Irureta Goyena was educated in Valencia in the 19th century she inculcated me with lots of stuff about her Spain. Interestingly she often told me that the best songs about Spain had been written by Mexican composer, Agustin Lara (one version of La Malagueña) or by Cuban Ernesto Lecuona (the other better known Malagueña). She further cited Edouard Lalo’s Opus 21 in D minor Symphonie Espagnole written for Spanish virtuoso violinist Pablo de Sarasate. She would end her argument telling me that Rimsky Korsakov’s Capriccio Espagnol sounded more Spanish than most Spanish music. She did not have to tell me about Bizet’s opera Carmen to put the nails on the Spanish coffin. I eventually agreed with her in 1961 when in my new craziness for American jazz I bought Miles Davis’ Sketches of Spain.
Because I am Argentine, and, because of my grandmother’s love for the Spanish language, I was most impressed by lutenist-theorbist(?) & Spanish guitarist, Lucas Harris’s fine pronunciation of Spanish. My Argentine counterparts say they speak castellano while Mexicans and Spaniards speak español. In Spanish we never capitalize languages or nationalities.
I was delighted to see Ray Nurse and Michelle Speller who never uses tail hair from female horse to make her violin bows.
Many years ago Ray Nurse gave fabulous pre-concert talks. One day I asked him about my favourite folias, chaconnes and passacaglias. He told me that they were basically the same thing. And then amazingly he surprised me by telling me that the Dave Brubeck Quartet’s Take Five was a chaconne!
Marc Destrubé’s groups always feature lots of explanation of the music played and its origin.
One of the real pleasures of listening to La Modestine (in this case minus a harpsichord) was the lovely sound blending between the always smiling Natalie Mackie and Lucas Harris’s Spanish guitar and his huge theorbo (built by Ray Nurse).
All in all the concierto was macanudo ( an Argentine word for wonderful). And there is this: Macanudo (1963) is a jazz album by pianist Ahmad Jamal, released on the Argo label. Recorded in 1962, it features Jamal with an orchestra arranged and conducted by Richard Evans, blending Latin-influenced sounds with strings
