Granada la bella (1896): Musical Exoticism and Nostalgia at the Turn of the Century

Abstract

In a collection of articles published with the title Granada la bella [Granada the Beautiful] (1896), the journalist, writer and diplomatic Ángel Ganivet dreamed of a town which looks like a recumbent woman resting her head on the red pillow of the Alhambra. This end-of-the-century idealization connects with the romantic construction of Granada as the last European refuge of Arab culture, turning the city into a powerful symbol of exoticism, and launched a fashion all over Europe for incorporating oriental influences in painting, architecture and literature. The Alhambra, in particular, became the poster child for the fall and loss of al-Andalus, whilst simultaneously the themes of Reconquest sent a message of Spanish glory to nineteenth-century audiences, all within the reassuring perspective of being the historical victors. Different competing representations of the Alhambra whether Spanish or foreign, brought all these tensions to life: nostalgia, lost empires, and melancholy all helped to transform the Alhambra in an ahistorical moment, but nonetheless serves as a reminder of the past, and of loss. In music, this romantic idealization appeared in Spanish salons with works such as Allú's Ecos de Granada (1849) and the extremely famous Adiós a la Alhambra (1855) by Monasterio ¿even played in significant public occasions almost an hymn¿, and was later extended to popular concerts and wind bands in Chapí's Fantasía Morisca (1873) and El sueño de Boabdil (1908) by Francisco Alonso. But beyond the orientalist and fantastic image of romantic travelers, in Granada la bella Ganivet reflects on the soul of the city, a regenerationist conception related to symbolism ¿even modernism¿ put in music by the last Albéniz in his `Albaicín¿ (1907) and by Manuel de Falla in Noches en los jardines de España (1916), reading Ganivet in another way musically.