Folklorism and Avant-Garde.

Tensions between the global and the local in Spanish contemporary music.

Miguel Álvarez-Fernández
Department of Art History and Musicology
Universidad de Oviedo

Introduction

Displacement shapes our definitions of identity, not only at an individual scale

but also in a more general —cultural— dimension, so the study of the “poetics and
politics of displacement in music” can represent a way to approach the always
enigmatic problems related with the notion of musical identity. If when we put an object
of a specific color over a background of a different tonality the differences between the
two colors appear more clearly, then the reverberations generated by a work of music
that has been relocated from the cultural space where it was conceived to a new one
may also provide a way to track and question the identity of (or behind) that music.

This would be the case, for example, if we were willing to pay attention to the
resonances left by certain Spanish contemporary music in Germany or Austria. But
these hypotheses could turn even more problematic if this “Spanish” music presented in
Germany or Austria were written by composers who were born in Spain, but received
their higher musical education and developed their professional careers mostly in those
Middle-European countries. What could be the role played in their compositions by
musical elements that sound, so to say, “unequivocally Spanish” (such as influences
from flamenco, or from medieval Hispano-Islamic music)? How would that music
sound to a German, Austrian or Spanish audience? Could those musical features, once
shifted from their original context, produce a characteristic kind of resonance, generated
by a centripetal movement, by the displacement from the (European) periphery to the
(cultural, more than geographical) center of the continent?

As we know, optical illusions can misguide our perception. These illusions

normally tend to show us what we (or our brain) expect to see. In other words, what is
easier to integrate with our previous background and expectations. They can also reveal

1
the contingent character of such notions as background and foreground, center and
periphery, global and national… and therefore raise suspicions about the truthfulness (or
even the utility) of categories like color —including ‘local color’—, distance or identity.

In this article, the reception in Middle-European countries (Germany and

Austria, particularly) of the music written by two Spanish composers, Mauricio Sotelo
(Madrid, 1961) and José María Sánchez-Verdú (Algeciras, 1968), will be analyzed
through a process that will also question the broader notion of ‘national musical
identity’, its current relevance and some of its ideological implications. More
specifically, these pages will discuss how the contemporary musical scene (often
described in terms of post-modernism, multiculturalism, globalization, rhizomatic
structures, etc.) reproduces certain strategies which were considered typical of
modernist aesthetics or of avant-gardism, and how it preserves (with only slight
modifications) the dialectics that oppose such notions as cultural periphery and cultural
center, low-culture and high-culture, or folklorism and avant-garde.1

Before that, the next section will present some methodological remarks
concerning a possible articulation of the concept of musical identity —conceived as an
ever-evolving consequence of complex processes of negotiation—, and the main
problems that the study of this concept can pose for an analysis such as the one
undertaken in this paper.

Identities in/as conflict. Methodological remarks and structure of the work

Identity can be considered the result of a constant and dynamic negotiation

between a specific subject (either individual or collective) and a community that
perceives this subject as such. Regarding the first of these two elements —the self-

1
From another perspective, the following pages will also resonate along with some questions posited by
Rūta Stanevičiūte-Goštautienė in reference to other peripheral musical landscape: “Does the
internationalization of the music scene and the total dependence of composers on the industry of
commissions —local and international— have an effect on the development and concept of a national
culture? If the image and prestige of both the individual composer, and of national music as a whole, is
increasingly defined by their participation in international exchanges, then what are the individual and
collective strategies characterizing a Lithuanian [or Spanish, in our case] reception by the new regime of
music import/export?” Rūta Stanevičiūte-Goštautienė, ‘Authorship Strategies under the New Regime of
Music Import/Export’, in Constructing Modernity and Reconstructing Nationality. Lithuanian Music in
the 20th Century, Rūta Stanevičiūte-Goštautienė and Audronė Žiūraitytė, eds. (Vilnius: Kultūros barai,
2004), pp.110-131, p. 111.

2
perception of the subject—, it could be said that there also exists an internal (and
similarly constant and dynamic) negotiation between how this subject perceives himself
and how he wants to be perceived. The analysis of this individual negotiation exceeds
the purposes of this article, as it points towards psychological concerns (that eventually
can reach pathological proportions —in the case of a great divergence between the
actual and the desired perceptions, for example—). In this work, trying to avoid as
much as possible any psychoanalytical temptation, we will try to (re)construct an image
of each of the two aforementioned composers that combines those actual and the desired
dimensions of self perception, since it is based on their respective (auto)biographic
statements, as well as on factual information. Our final purpose, based on the
assumption that each composer’s declarations and public acts enlighten both how he
perceives himself and how he wants to be perceived, will be to identify the strategies
underlying the process of construction of a public persona as —more or less consciously
— enacted by Sotelo and Sánchez-Verdú.2

In a similar way, the perceptions of the community upon a specific subject

cannot be easily reduced to a simple and objective description, nor accommodated as
the result of a sociological formula. But in order to pursue our analysis, it is possible to
presume that the decisions and manifestations that concern the diffusion of Spanish
contemporary music abroad (as usually undertaken by cultural managers, festival
organizers, curators of concerts, etc.) reflect a perspective on its subject that —being
necessarily partial and interested— has a strong and determining influence on the rest of
the musical community. Therefore, these curatorial decisions (normally receptive to the
feedback generated by the rest of the community —especially in terms of audiences and
critics—) can help to track some relevant perceptions on Spanish contemporary music
in countries such as Germany or Austria.

Apart from these two internal imbalances, both between the actual self-
perception of the subject and his desires, on the one hand, and between the community
and its cultural representatives, on the other, we can also point out the existence of a
similarly intrinsic (and structural) discrepancy between the two more general
perspectives that were mentioned when referring to a negotiation between the subject
2
Or, to mention again a text quoted before, “(…) we are writing not about the human authors, but about
the author as a rhetorical instrument of criticism (or as the composer’s persona, mask, textually defined
figuration of subjectivity).” Rūta Stanevičiūte-Goštautienė, ‘Authorship Strategies…’, op. cit. p. 114.

3
and the community where he is inserted. The composer transforms —through his music
and his public persona— the perception of the community on him, but this community
also modifies —through its expectations and reactions— the decisions and the behavior
of the composer,3 creating a constant feedback loop between subject and community.

A perpetual divergence is thus at the core of that permanent negotiation, which

will constitute the central object of study of this work. More specifically, it is the second
aspect of this negotiation, the one that departs from the community and affects the
behavior of the (foreign) composer, what will receive our attention in the last sections of
this article. But, in order to clarify already in this methodological introduction the points
of view that will be presented along this text, it is important to advance one fundamental
consequence of what has been already stated: the reception of a musical work should
not be understood as a neutral process that automatically integrates new elements within
the network of expectations and preconceived notions that surround those new elements
in a musical community. Quite on the contrary, the idea of reception that will be at work
here conceives this phenomenon as an active process of appropriation that affects,
modulates and conditions its musical object (and this notion of “musical object” should
not only comprise the discursive elements directly associated with a “musical piece”,
but also the ones tied to the idea of a “musical author”).

In the next section, a short analysis of various biographical and aesthetic

accounts related with Mauricio Sotelo and José María Sánchez-Verdú will be presented,
in order to analyze how different discursive resources are articulated in the process of
creation of their respective public personae. This biographical overview will run parallel
to the examination of the reception of these composers’ musical work in Austria,
Germany and in their Spanish homeland, in an effort to intertwine the “subject-based”
and the “community-based” perspectives, and therefore present a broader view of the

3
According to Göran Folkestad, “individuals forming their musical identities are part of, influenced by
and a product of several such collective musical identities, and these exist in parallel and on several levels
—including the local, the regional, the national and the global”. Göran Folkestad, ‘National identity and
music’, in Musical Identities, Raymond A. R. MacDonald, David J. Hargreaves and Dorothy Miell, eds.
(Oxford - York: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 151-162, p. 151. Although in principle the notion of
“individual” used by Folkestad was not meant to address the case of a contemporary music composer, we
think that its application here can be revealing and productive. On the other hand, we should also consider
that the collective musical identities that “influence” and “produce” an individual musical identity are not
only those related to his national origin, but also the ones that characterize the cultural milieu where the
music created by that individual is going to be received. The possibility of an opposition between these
different influences will be discussed throughout this text.

4
different strategies that surround the process of construction of a musical identity from a
national point of view.

Biographies and boomerang effects.

Mauricio Sotelo (Madrid, 1961) and José María Sánchez-Verdú (Algeciras,

1968), though representing two very different aesthetical approaches to music and
composition, have articulated in their respective biographical accounts some similar
rhetorical strategies. The examination of the ongoing process of construction of a
national identity in the autobiographical narratives surrounding these two composers
can help to explain their current position both in the Spanish and in the Middle-
European contemporary music scenes. It can also reveal, as it will be discussed later,
some paradoxes and contradictions between notions that, in principle, could be
considered opposed to each other (such as those traditionally associated with modernist
aesthetics and those related with a postmodern perspective —or, in other words,
between the ideas that give title to this article, avant-garde and folklorism—).

The biography of Sotelo that appears in the webpage of Universal Edition

represents a particularly appropriate source for the purposes of this article. 4 This
Austrian publishing company, which only includes two Spanish composers in its
catalogue (Sotelo and Cristóbal Halffter —born in 1930—), is generally considered as a
reference in terms of its adventurous commitment with modernism (at least in the
Adornian —and characteristically Middle-European— sense of this expression),
especially since the company undertook the publication of the early musical works of
Schoenberg, Berg and Webern. In Sotelo’s biography, a similarly heroic boldness is
present through the whole text, as we will see. The evocation of Spanish musical
folklore also appears prominently:

Mauricio Sotelo was born on 2 October 1961 in Madrid. Driven by a curiosity

for sounds that haunted him even in his dreams, he soaked up the timbral
impressions available in his enviroment [sic]. There was no piano in his home,
but the guitar was omnipresent: pop music, Jimi Hendrix, experimental jazz, but
4
http://www.universaledition.com. Last visited: April, 2008. The frequent and necessary reference to
Internet-based sources along this article is a clear manifestation and consequence of the lack of printed
publications related with the most recent contemporary music production in Spain.

5
 most especially flamenco and cante hondo (“deep song,” a highly emotional and
tragic song cultivated among prisoners).

Though this first reference to cante hondo is not very accurate,5 the presence of
this music will be as constant in this biographical account as it apparently is in Sotelo’s
life. In the following lines of the text, and in a somehow contradictory way (because
flamenco undoubtedly is a form of popular music), we read: “Of these early influences,
his fascination with popular music was early exhausted, but the fascination with
flamenco remains unbroken today.” The text continues with a brief report on Sotelo’s
first motivations for travelling to Austria, in a paragraph that clearly illustrates many of
the ideas about the centre-periphery dialectics that will be discussed later in this article:

In 1980 Mauricio Sotelo finished school in his native Madrid and moved to
Vienna, a move essential to his artistic development. The reasons for this step
were twofold: Although acquainted with 12-tone and serial composers he was, at
18 years of age, too young to be fixed on a specific teacher and, in Madrid, too
far removed from centers of contemporary music activity such as Paris,
Darmstadt, etc. But at first Vienna was a bitter experience for Sotelo: His
education in Madrid had not sufficiently prepared him, and he was not
successful at the entrance exams in composition and conducting. Dejected, he
decided nonetheless to remain and spent the next semester visiting courses and
writing exercises. In the next round his diligence was rewarded by success.

These few lines present a typically modernistic depiction of the opposition

between the European cultural periphery and the “centers of contemporary music
activity such as Paris, Darmstadt” or, actually, Vienna. In the musical margins of
Europe, Madrid could not provide the young Sotelo with enough preparation to become
a student at the Musikhochschule. But the chance of having access to the courses taught
in Vienna, combined with Sotelo’s “diligence”, allowed him to pursue his Middle-
European dreams. Once inside the Viennese conservatory, the student had finally access
to the keystones of our musical tradition: “At the Musikhochschule he also discovered
works of Ligeti from the 60s, Stockhausen’s Gruppen, Helmut Lachenmann’s works,

5
Differently from blues or other similar musical expressions, historically cante hondo has not been
related to prisoners’ songs.

6
early works of Luigi Nono, and the vocal polyphony of Vittoria, Morales, Guerrero,
Ockeghem, Dufay, and Josquin.” Paradoxically enough, Sotelo had to travel to Vienna
in order to discover the music of Spanish composers such as Tomás Luis de Victoria
(1548-1611), Cristóbal de Morales (1500-1553) and Francisco Guerrero (1528-1599).
But the text also reveals the importance of his contact with the music of composers
related with the post-war German landscape, especially those connected with the earliest
Darmstadt Summer Courses. This is confirmed in the following lines:

Sotelo’s aesthetic considerations derive from his view of the development of

serial music after the 1950s: Through its concentration on structure and
abstraction, New Music had become caught in a one-way street. Vital to the
liberation from this situation were, for Sotelo, Salvatore Sciarrino and his almost
physical thinking of musical tradition, Helmut Lachenmann’s “instrumentale
musique concrete” [sic] and its consequences for a new definition of timbre, and,
finally, Luigi Nono.

Nono played a fundamental role in the musical evolution of Sotelo (elsewhere in

this biography is mentioned that “After his studies, in 1988, Sotelo made the
acquaintance of Luigi Nono.”), and through his mentorship the Spanish composer
inserted himself in the symbolic genealogy of the Middle-European modernist music (as
the Italian Nono had done before, not only by becoming one of the earliest members of
the “School of Darmstadt”, which inherited many of the aesthetic principles of the
Second Viennese School, but also —and in a more literal sense— by marrying
Schoenberg’s daughter Nuria in 1956).

This symbolic gesture of ‘adoption’ by the ‘fathers’ of the European musical

tradition had also very practical consequences, as this process helped to introduce
Sotelo in the Middle-European contemporary music scene. His work soon received the
recognition —in the form of scholarships— of different Austrian and German
institutions, like the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (1985), the Alban Berg
Foundation in Vienna (1987-1989), or, some years later, the Hamburg-based Körber
Foundation (1994), and was also honored with prizes granted by the cities of Vienna
(1989), Cologne (1992) and Hamburg (1996), as well as with the Förderpreis of the
Ernst von Siemens Foundation (1997).

7
 It is interesting to remark that, though Sotelo had won in the early stages of his
career some small awards and contests for young composers in Spain (like the one given
by the Young National Orchestra, in 1987, or the Composition Prize of the SGAE —the
Spanish performance rights organization— in 1989), it was only after his general
recognition in Germany and Austria when he received the most important musical
honors awarded in Spain, namely the Reina Sofía Prize for Musical Composition (2000)
and the National Prize for Music (2001). This fact could be understood as the result of a
“boomerang effect”, meaning that the Middle-European success of Sotelo was a
necessary step for the recognition of his work in his homeland.

But before analyzing with more detail this go-and-return movement, it might be
helpful to consider the biography of the second composer mentioned before, José María
Sánchez-Verdú, because it also reveals a similar trajectory between the periphery and
the center of Europe. As we can read in his personal website, 6 Sánchez-Verdú was born
in Algeciras (Andalusia) in 1968, though he moved as a child to Granada, and then to
Madrid, where he would stay for many years. After finishing his studies of Musicology
and Composition at the Real Conservatorio Superior de Música of Madrid and obtaining
a degree in Law from the Universidad Complutense in the same city, he started his
studies abroad. Following a stay in Italy as a composer in residence at the Spanish
Academy in Rome, between 1997 and 1999 Sánchez-Verdú received a scholarship to
continue his studies with Hans Zender at the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende
Kunst in Frankfurt. This contact with Germany continues until the present day, as the
composer still lives Berlin and, since 2001, teaches composition at the Robert
Schumann Musikhochschule in Düsseldorf.7

A short overview of the long list of commissions received by Sánchez-Verdú

also reveals strong ties with the German contemporary music scene: Biennale für Neue
Musik Hannover, German Pavillion of the EXPO 2000, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern
Festival, Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, Staatsoper Berlin, Münchener Biennale,
Beethoven Festival… Along with these names, some others —mostly related with the
composer’s native country, and shorter in number— appear on the list: National
6
http://www.sanchez-verdu.com. Last visited: April, 2008.
7
The fact that Sánchez-Verdú’s compositions are published since 2004 by the German company
Breitkopf & Härtel also indicates the proximity between the composer and that country’s musical scene.

8
Orchestra of Spain, Symphonic Orchestra of Madrid, Spanish Ministry of Culture,
International Festival for Dance and Music of Granada and Teatro Real of Madrid.

If we were to arrange in chronological order the list of commissions, the

invitations to music festivals or the composition prizes received by José María Sánchez-
Verdú, a quite similar pattern to the one already described when referring to Mauricio
Sotelo’s career would appear. After some first honors as a young composer in Spain, a
broader recognition takes place in Germany (through this country’s cultural
institutions), and it is only after that when the most sought-after Spanish awards arrive
to him (for example, the National Prize for Music, which Sánchez-Verdú received in
2003, just two years after it was granted to Mauricio Sotelo). A remarkable difference
that appears when comparing the biographies of these two composers is the fact that,
while Sotelo moved his residence from Austria to Spain some years ago, Sánchez-
Verdú —seven years younger than his colleague— still lives in Germany.

But the parallelisms between Sotelo and Sánchez-Verdú do not only appear
when comparing their respective artistic careers. Along with their strong ties with the
musical milieus of Austria and Germany, the use of musical materials and gestures
associated with different Spanish traditions is probably the most characteristic feature in
the artistic work of both composers.

The fascination of Mauricio Sotelo for flamenco and cante hondo has already
been mentioned while reviewing his biography. Even though the scope of this article
does not allow for a general overview of the current Spanish contemporary music scene,
it is important to remark that the use of elements derived from flamenco in
contemporary music is not common at all among Spanish composers. Therefore, the
strong ties between this musician and the so-called “flamenco world” are unique among
contemporary music composers. Sotelo himself referred in an interview to this special
relationship:

“Well, though it makes me blush a little bit, I want to tell you that the flamenco
music magazine ‘El canon’ is going to dedicate its next issue to me. This, apart
from a great honor, is especially meaningful for me because when I first
approached this world I was literally kicked out. It was [flamenco singer]

9
 Enrique Morente the first one to open for me, with a big respect and affection,
that door. Now the world of flamenco loves me, respects me, and considers me
one of their kin.”8

Following this early contact with Enrique Morente, Mauricio Sotelo has
composed numerous works of chamber and orchestral music that also incorporate other
renowned flamenco singers like Arcángel (in Si después de morir…, for cantaor, flute,
tape and orchestra —1999/2000—, and also —along with Miguel Poveda— in Sonetos
del Amor Oscuro, for two cantaores, mixed choir, instrumental ensemble and tape —
2004/2005—), Eva Durán and Marina Heredia (in the chamber opera De amore —1999
—), Carmen Linares (In Pace —1996—)… and tocaores (flamenco guitar players) like
Juan Manuel Cañizares (in the recent Como llora el viento, for flamenco guitar and
orchestra —2007—).9

As the composer has repeatedly declared in interviews like the one quoted
before, there is a powerful connection between his learning experience as a disciple of
Luigi Nono and the incorporation of folkloristic traits in his music. Nono’s problematic
relationship with musical writing (especially evident in his last years), his rejection for a
detailed notation of the acoustic subtleties that he pursued —an effect of his search for
new ways of listening—... all these aesthetic concerns of the Venetian composer find a
strong similarity with the intrinsic oral character of the flamenco, its improvisational
nature, and therefore with the conflict implied by the desire to blend this vernacular
practice with the Western classical —and written— tradition. But this is not the only
conflict enacted in (and through) Sotelo’s music. The tensions between a popular (and,
in general terms, traditionalistic) musical world and the “high-culture” practices related
with contemporary music (especially as it is understood in the modernist Middle-
European tradition of the Neue Musik and its Darmstadtian heirs) also inhabit the music
of Mauricio Sotelo. The examination of these interesting issues will take place after a
short, parallel comment on the presence of different elements linked with the Spanish
musical tradition in the work of José María Sánchez-Verdú.

8
Camilo Irizo, ‘Entrevista con Mauricio Sotelo’, in Espacio Sonoro, on-line journal, 15 (January 2008),
available at http://www.tallersonoro.com/espaciosonoro/15/Entrevista.htm. Last visited: April, 2008.
9
For a broader perspective on the connections between flamenco and Mauricio Sotelo (as well as other
older contemporary music composers), see also Marta Cureses, ‘Polisemias del flamenco en la música
española actual’, in Música Oral del Sur, 6 (Granada: Centro de Investigaciones Etnológicas Ángel
Ganivet, 2004), pp. 321-336, p. 325.

10
 As the musicologist Germán Gan points out in an enthusiastic monograph
devoted to the music of the Spanish composer,

One of the usual references when describing Sánchez-Verdú’s poetical universe

is his approach to Islamic culture, marked not only by his sensibility towards the
musical manifestations that this culture hosts, but also by his admiration for the
poetry and the architecture created in the geographical sphere where that culture
develops itself; his attention extends from Medieval Islam —with a special love
for the Andalusian space— and Sufi mysticism to the nearest present time, as
personified in the Lebanese poet of Syrian origin Adonis (1930) or in the great
[Spanish] connoisseur and divulgator of the concerns related to the
contemporary Maghreb Juan Goytisolo (1931).10

The musical results of this attraction can be heard in several works by Sánchez-
Verdú, at least since his Fifth String Quartet, Nazarí (1993), composed during his stay
in Italy, and populated by what Germán Gan describes as “melodic arabesques”. 11 The
references to Hispano-Islamic music, poetry and architecture have also appeared
constantly in compositions for orchestra like Alqibla (which obtained the First Prize of
Composition from the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie in 1999 and was presented at the
Berliner Philharmonie the following year), Maqbara (written for orchestra and the voice
of Marcel Pérès, who sings a half-improvised part written in pneumatic notation, similar
to the one used in the ancient Hispanic liturgy), Qabriyyat (for string orchestra,
commissioned by the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Festival and premiered in 2000 at the
German pavilion of the Universal Exhibition of Hannover), or the cycle Kitab al-alwan,
which includes Istikhbar, Abyad-kamoon, Taqsim and Ahmar-Aswad), and also in
chamber music pieces like the ones included in the cycles Kitab (1995-1998) and Qasid
(2000-2001).

Similarly to the case of Mauricio Sotelo’s music, in the works of José María
Sánchez-Verdú we find the concurrence of different features associated with Spanish

10
Germán Gan Quesada, ‘José María Sánchez-Verdú: músicas del límite’, in Espacio Sonoro, on-line
journal, 12 (January 2007), p. 5 (available at PDF format at
http://www.tallersonoro.com/espaciosonoro/12/Articulo2.htm). Last visited: April, 2008.
11
Ibid., p. 3.

11
musical history and traditions (such as instrumental timbres and compositional
techniques reminiscent of the Islamic presence in the Iberian peninsula between the 8 th
and the 15th centuries) and a aesthetic discourse strongly connected with the Middle-
European tradition of musical modernism, as exemplary incarnated in philosophers such
as Theodor W. Adorno or composers like Helmut Lachenmann. The presence of this
second element in the artistic discourse of Sánchez-Verdú came into sight very clearly
in an article, published by the bestselling Spanish newspaper El País, where the
composer tried to answer a previous text (appeared in the same newspaper a few days
before) written by the Spanish writer and philosopher Félix de Azúa. These were the
words of Sánchez-Verdú:

To vindicate an art created for its consumption by the masses as an indicator of

“what is good” is too banal even for deserving an answer. All exigent and
excellent art is not, in principle, addressed to the majority, and it has always
been like this. If we were to accept Azúa’s supermarket ideas, we should exclude
Mallarmé, Joyce, Mondrian, etc., because their proposals were “difficult” and
initially not accepted nor “understood” by the big masses: they offer something
that, at the same time, demands, and this has no space among the offers of the
supermarket.

Fortunately, it will always exist a creative art committed and difficult —art is a
form of transmission of knowledge, not only of entertainment and spectacle, as
Azúa seems to believe—. We could not approach to a culture without the rigor
and commitment of the creators that have taken risks and opened new paths. […]
Beethoven was accused of making noise, of being incomprehensible; Bach, of
going against the laws of music. ¿Where were the “Azúas” of the time? Without
any doubts, also against them.12

12
José María Sánchez-Verdú, ‘Cultura de supermercado’ [‘Supermarket Culture’], El País, 29th
November 2005. This article was an answer to ‘Sólo quiero lo major para ti’ [‘I just want the best for
you’], by Félix de Azúa (published the 10 th November, and based on a comment about The Oxford
History of Western Music by Richard Taruskin). This interesting and very unusual exchange was
followed by another article by Azúa, ‘Triste atraso de los avanzados’ [‘The sad delay of the advanced
ones’], published the 9th December 2005, also in El País. For more information (in Spanish), visit
http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/disonancia/message/290.

12
 Though these words can be understood as the result of a big misreading of the
ideas appearing in Azúa’s initial article (where many subtle implications of postmodern
aesthetic thought were discussed and put into question), they nevertheless present a
good depiction of the composer’s artistic credo. Apart from the general naiveté of the
article, is interesting to mention that, in spite of Sánchez-Verdú’s apparent affinity for
Islamic music, the artistic references he uses in this text are not strictly connected with
those cultural influences, but rather with quite “typically European” ones: Mallarmé,
Joyce, Mondrian and, when it arrives to music, Bach and Beethoven.

A series of paradoxes

Even though the scope of this article, as it has been already mentioned, does not
allow us to trace here a general overview of the current Spanish contemporary music
landscape, it is important to remark again that the use of elements derived from
flamenco or from the Hispano-Islamic musical tradition is by no means frequent among
Spanish composers of the generations represented by Sotelo and Sánchez-Verdú. In
fact, it should be underlined that the appearance of this sort of features in contemporary
Spanish music is generally associated with traditionalistic composers, such as Antón
García Abril (b. 1933) and Manuel Castillo (1930-2005), who rejected the use of
dodecaphonic or serial principles in their music, or, belonging to a previous generation,
Joaquín Rodrigo (1901-1999), whose work —as we will briefly examine now— reflects
very well the different connotations derived from the use of folkloristic traits.

The frequent characterization of the use of musical gestures associated with

flamenco or reminiscent of the Islamic presence in Spain as traditionalistic has not only
aesthetic implications, but also political ones. During Franco’s dictatorship (1939-
1975), the presence of these folkloristic musical resources was strongly promoted and
supported by the regime, because —according to the political thought of the period— it
represented the most genuine and authentic character of the Spanish nation and people.
The autarchic isolation encouraged by Franco’s regime not only applied to economy,
but also to culture, and music was no exception during the time, so “good music” should
sound “Spanish”, and should also be free from external influences. Maybe the most
successful example of this nationalistic cultural policy was the huge promotion (and
consequent diffusion) of what remains today as probably the most well-known Spanish

13
classical music piece, the Concierto de Aranjuez written by Joaquín Rodrigo, a
composer who remained supportive and faithful to Franco’s regime along his life.13

These observations lead us to a series of interesting paradoxes that inhabit the

musical work of Mauricio Sotelo and José María Sánchez-Verdú. The enunciation of
these paradoxes will serve here as a bridge between the previous commentary on the
works and lives of these composers and the analysis of some aesthetic problems that
emerge when the reception of their music (both in Spain and in foreign countries) is
considered. The first of these paradoxes appears when we take into account that, in spite
of the fact that Sotelo and Sánchez-Verdú probably are the only Spanish composers of
their respective generations whose musical work presents such an intensive use of
musical gestures derived from their national traditions, they are also among the best
known (and most frequently programmed) Spanish living composers in Germany and
Austria. Against the impression that the use of musical gestures derived from the
Spanish tradition should impose a bigger distance between these composers and the
audiences of those Middle-European countries, the reality shows that this “exoticism”
has undoubtedly helped the reception of the music of Sotelo and Sánchez-Verdú in
Austria and Germany.14 Moreover, and as our review of the biographies of the composer
also demonstrated, only after the successful reception of their music in those countries
these composers were recognized by the institutions (and the audiences) of their
motherland.

This first paradox leads us to a second one, also related with the different
reception of these composers’ work in different countries. As the different statements of
Sotelo and Sánchez-Verdú that have been quoted in the last pages confirmed, their
respective aesthetic discourses remain (or, in any case, try to remain) very close to the
post-serial, Adornian tradition of musical modernism. Both composers refer to serialism
and the composers associated with the “School of Darmstadt” (which they discover
already abroad) as shared points of reference for their musical aesthetics, and consider

13
Cf. Joaquín Rodrigo y la música española de los años cuarenta, Javier Suárez-Pajares, ed. (Valladolid:
Glares Gestión Cultural-Universidad de Valladolid, 2005).
14
Especially when compared with the less successful careers of other Spanish composers that have
studied in Germany and Austria (like José Luis Torá —b. 1966—, Carlos Bermejo —b. 1967— or
Alberto C. Bernal —b. 1978—) or who still live there (like Manuel Hidalgo —b. 1956—). None of these
composers has received such important prizes as the ones awarded to Sotelo and Sánchez-Verdú, and
their respective musical works do not contain any direct references to Spanish musical folklore.

14
themselves as part of a linear tradition where such names as Bach, Beethoven,
Schoenberg, Nono or Lachenmann also appear. Not surprisingly, all these facts have
contributed to the identification, in the Spanish musical scene, of Sotelo and Sánchez-
Verdú among the most “Germanic” composers of their generations. In other words, and
arriving to the announced second paradox: while the constant references to the Spanish
musical tradition in their compositions make Sotelo and Sánchez-Verdú’s music very
“Spanish” for Austrian and German audiences, the aesthetic position and the academic
background of these composers define them as very “German” for the rest of the
Spaniards.

A third paradox, derived from the previous ones, can be detected when
examining the aesthetic implications of Sotelo’s and Sánchez-Verdú’s musical
discourses. As we have already attested here, these discourses do not diverge very much
from the modernist perspective found in Adorno’s philosophy of music. Remarks like
the ones exposed by Sánchez-Verdú in his article for El País, or attitudes such as the
ones described in Sotelo’s biographical account exemplify an undeniable influence of
Adornian aesthetics in these composers: the defense of a “high culture” (only accessible
to a few, selected ones) from the influence of the masses and the market, or the believe
in the existence of cultural centers (such as Paris, Darmstadt or Vienna) where a
composer should go in order to receive an appropriate education are two examples of
how a (very simplified, and indeed probably mistaken) interpretation of Adorno’s
philosophy lies behind the musical thought of Sotelo and Sánchez-Verdú. The paradox
appears, once again, when we contrast Adorno’s support of a modern music which
should be exempt from any “picturesque” and “popular” reference (because of the
conservative —and even retrograde— implications of such gestures), and the constant
apparition in the work of Sotelo and Sánchez-Verdú of musical materials that find their
origin in (and can be easily recognized as coming from) the Spanish popular music
tradition.

Folklorism and avant-garde

The discursive incongruity that emerges from the contradictory presence of

musical traits associated with different Spanish popular traditions and an Adornian
conception of what modern music should be (or, in the words that give title to this

15
article, the conceptual opposition between folklorism and avant-garde) hosts many
interesting aesthetic problems. Among them, and in a very relevant dimension, we find
the contradiction between a local, peripheral and traditionalistic perspective (as derived
from the use of folkloristic elements), and an allegedly universalistic or global ideal,
which points towards the renovation of music as a whole, to its future (so reads the
program associated with the avant-garde since the inception of this concept).

The history of the last century has confirmed that this universalistic approach
associated with European modernism was not, in fact, really detached from all possible
national influences, and today it has become clear that the aesthetic program of post-war
serialism (as it was defended by the composers linked to the “School of Darmstadt” and
by philosophers like Adorno) was not as far from a very specific Middle-European
musical tradition as their supporters wanted to see. The links between serialist thought
and, for example, the idea of absolute music (brilliantly analyzed by Carl Dahlhaus in
its connections with the philosophical movement of German idealism 15), and therefore
with a particular nationalistic musical tradition, appear very clearly from the perspective
of our days. Schoenberg’s musical ideas, which in the first decades of the 20 th century
could be perceived as a revolutionary rupture with the past, now can only be understood
in the general context of the evolution of an Austro-German musical tradition. Serialist
thought, although presenting itself as a new beginning, as a tabula rasa totally
disconnected from any musical reference of the past, and in spite of its universalistic
aspirations (perfectly exemplified by the International Summer Courses of Darmstadt,
started just after the German defeat in the Second World War 16), was originated in what
was (and apparently is, still for many) supposed to be the center of Europe. Not a
geographical center, of course, but a cultural axis, a point of reference that still attracts
young peripheral composers such as Mauricio Sotelo or José María Sánchez-Verdú.

The ideological construction of the opposition between a cultural center and its
surroundings is not simply based in a mental or theoretical image of the reality.
Countries like Austria and Germany not only count with a very rich (or, at least, very
well documented) musical tradition, but they are also still now among the ones that
15
Carl Dahlhaus, The Idea of Absolute Music, translated by Roger Lustig (Chicago - London: University
of Chicago Press, 1989).
16
In the context of the Darmstadt courses, the first compositions of Pierre Boulez would not “sound”
French, nor Karlheinz Stockhausen’s early works should be perceived as German, nor Luigi Nono’s as
Italian…

16
support contemporary music through the strongest financial and political efforts,
channeled by a big number of prominent musical institutions (from possibly the best
orchestras in the world to the most prestigious music schools) as well as by a
determined policy related to prizes, grants and scholarships for musicians, not to
mention the huge number of commissions offered by public and private institutions in
these countries. It is not surprising that this huge support for contemporary music and
all these opportunities still attract today to Germany and Austria young musicians from
all over the world, as it is the case of the two Spaniards studied in this article.

These considerations lead us to the following question: How the huge cultural
influence of these cultural axes (which were defined throughout the cultural process of
Modernity) affects the artistic production of the creators attracted to them in a
postmodern context, where precisely this particular notion of center —and the
hierarchies that it implies— is supposed to be outdated and not valid anymore? If we
remember some of the remarks mentioned in the introduction to these pages, it is
difficult to believe that the musical communities represented in this “central” and
“attractive” countries have not conditioned at all the aesthetic decisions of those foreign
composers that have developed their musical careers (and identities) in this Middle-
European context. So maybe it is possible to formulate a more precise inquiry than the
one which opened this paragraph: What role has played the Spanish origin of these
composers in the process of negotiation of their respective musical identities?

It seems quite clear that the peripheral origin of Sotelo and Sánchez-Verdú has
not been erased from their music by the strong cultural influence of the centers
represented by Austria and Germany. The possibility of a total deletion of the Spanish
background of these composers from their musical production (in other words, a total
adaptation of their musical poetics to “Middle-European patterns”, just as if the
composers had their origin in Austria or Germany) could appear as a very predictable
output of a classical process of cultural domination exerted from the more powerful
center towards the weaker cultural periphery.17 But here this is not the case at all;
nobody could say that the Spanish origin of Sotelo and Sánchez-Verdú has been
repressed by the influence and power of the Middle-European cultural institutions. More

17
It could be argued if this is the case of some Spanish composers who received their main musical
education in Germany, such as the aforementioned José Luis Torá, Carlos Bermejo or Alberto Bernal.

17
on the contrary, if we take into account the fact that these composers are among the only
ones in their respective generations whose work presents such an intense use of musical
features associated with the Spanish popular traditions, we could even start considering
a possibility actually opposed to the one just discarded, a possibility that leads us to
another question: Could the use of such folkloristic musical gestures be understood as a
reaction (or a response) to the Middle-European cultural environment where Sotelo and
Sánchez-Verdú have developed their musical poetics and artistic careers?

If we must presume some kind of influence of the Austro-German cultural

milieus where these composers evolved as professional artists, maybe the evident and
unmistakable presence of a Spanish flavor in their music, clearer than in any other
composer of their age bracket (either based in Spain, in Germany or in Austria) should
be understood as a result of this influence. According to this hypothesis, the cultural
power emanated from the European musical centers would not manifest itself as the
imposition of particular musical elements from the Austro-German musical past in the
poetics of the composers linked to these traditions (though in the cases of Sotelo and
Sánchez-Verdú the importance of post-serialist thought could be perceived as the result
of such a kind of cultural imposition), but instead it would adopt a somehow opposed
form: the encouragement to construct a musical discourse based on what are supposed
to be autochthonous musical features that clearly reflect the “original” and “authentic”
national background of the composer.18

The idea of the stronger cultural centers promoting the most authentic artistic
self-expression of those composers from the European provincial periphery that, like
Sotelo and Sánchez-Verdú, have culminated their pilgrimage to the musical capitals of
their continent is obviously much more adjusted to the current trends of
multiculturalism and political correctness than our previous hypothesis of a complete
deletion of the original cultural background of the peripheral composers. This process of

18
Göran Folkestad, following the expression coined by Hammarlund in his study of the music among
Syrians in Sweden, defines this function and kind of music as “emblematic”: “Emblematic music is
directed outwards and has national symbolic meanings. In situations in which the main purpose is to play
for other people, or to impress national ideas upon the home group, ‘traditionalistic’ music is used. [...]
This means that the emblematic function is to present a simplified and conventionalized version of the
music which is geared towards the perceived experiences of the audience.” The somehow symmetrical
function of music is “catalytic”. In this case, according to Hammarlund (quoted by Folkestad), music
works as “a catalyst in the social chemistry which produces the feeling of belonging to a group”. Göran
Folkestad, ‘National identity and music’, op. cit., pp. 155-156.

18
encouragement could be read as a demonstration of “tolerance” towards the
manifestations of the composers’ cultural (and national) origins.

An interesting issue emerges at this point: What definitions of “authenticity” or

“cultural background” are supposed to be applied —and tolerated— in these cases? If
the music of a Spanish composer based in Vienna or Berlin should not hide but, on the
contrary, reveal the national origin of its author… Who is supposed to define what
sounds “Spanish” and what does not? Is it only a concern of the composer, who remains
romantically19 independent from the demands of his audiences? Or is it a decision of the
foreign audiences that pay not only for the tickets, but also for the grants, scholarships
and prizes that recognize the authenticity of the composers?

In the initial paragraphs of this text it was stated that any attempts to analyze in
psychological terms the relationship between the composers and their musical
production would be avoided here. And, of course, it is very far from the purposes of
this article to explain the use of features associated with different Spanish musical
traditions in the music of Sotelo and Sánchez-Verdú as simple strategic and conscious
reactions to the sociological demands of the cultural industry of the Middle-European
countries. A much more interesting question, from our point of view, is how the cultural
influence emanated from the European cultural centers (or, in other words, from areas
with stronger musical traditions and institutions) reveals itself when projected upon
foreign subjects. In the first paragraphs of this article it was described how optical
illusions tend to project our expectations on the reality that we observe. If the audiences
from countries like Germany or Austria expect to hear something “Spanish” when
listening to the music of Sotelo or Sánchez-Verdú, then we can question if, and to what
degree, these expectations could lead the composers to introduce folkloristic gestures in
their music.

Expressed in other words, this problem would appear when European nations
with more consolidated musical and cultural traditions, which still are stronger cultural
producers than other peripheral regions of Europe, want (or need) to increase the offer
in their respective cultural market by supplying not only domestic musical productions,

19
Of course it should be remembered here that the musical movements related with Nationalism have
their origins in the aesthetics of Romanticism.

19
but also cultural goods imported from foreign regions. The political significance of such
operations is quite important, because presenting music from distant cultural traditions
not only strengths the international relations with the represented nations (increasing,
for example, the chance for composers and performers from these places to travel to the
host country), but, as we have already mentioned, also endorses one of the most popular
and “politically correct” values —or aspirations— of our times, multicultural tolerance.
However, an important difficulty arises in these cases: in order to fulfill these functions,
the imported music not only should come from abroad, but it should also sound like
coming from abroad.

The imposition of these picturesque stereotypes on the foreign music demanded

by the “central” cultural producers could be regarded as a classical form of colonization,
not very different from the one that characterized the nationalist musical movements
during the 19th century. Spanish composers like Albéniz, Granados o Turina —more
attracted in their times to the Parisian “center” of Europe than by the Austro-German
influence— would represent, from this point of view, a tendency which is not very
different from the cultural strategies described in previous pages. But the contradiction
that deeply affects the aesthetic discourse of composers such as Sotelo and Sánchez-
Verdú derives from their support of the progressive and internationalist thought
associated with musical modernism and the Darmstadt avant-garde, which paradoxically
leads them to reproduce in their work a cultural scheme considered typical from the 19 th
century.

The paradoxes derived from this contradiction do not stop here, because it still
could be argued that another form of cultural colonialism is enacted through the music
of these Spanish composers. When we take into account the context where flamenco
music (considered as a form of popular culture) is traditionally presented, and observe
how a composer like Mauricio Sotelo displaces some of its elements and features to the
context of a typical high-culture classical music tradition (for example, by juxtaposing a
cantaor with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, not in a tablao but in a concert hall, and
not for flamenco audiences but for the assiduous visitors of the Wiener Konzerthaus),
should not we consider that another form of violence —another kind of colonization—
is exerted upon this music?

20
Conclusions

The American anthropologist Clifford Geertz described culture as “stories we

like to tell about ourselves”.20 We could also invert this formulation, and consider
culture as “stories we like to be told”. In the first pages of this article, the process of
identity negotiation was described as the constant conflict between two dimensions that
could adopt the form of two questions: How the other perceives me, and how the other
is expected to behave. This second aspect, understood as an active process of projection
of desires and fears on the other, has been the main concern of the previous pages.

The projection of certain forms of meaning on the sounds we hear seems

unavoidable for us as humans, and as a consequence music necessarily becomes a mode
of representation of various ideas, some of them associated with places and histories.
Paying attention to the different forms of symbolic violence that we exert on sound (and
on the human communities that produce and receive it) in order to extract meaning from
it appears as a responsibility for all listeners (not only musicologists). How specific
modes of representation are imposed on different musical expressions is a concern that
affects our most basic assumptions about (musical) identity.

We have considered here the case of recent contemporary music productions that
not only “are” Spanish, but —at least for certain audiences— also “sound” Spanish. The
reflection on who is able to impose this kind of defined aesthetic values on those
musical representations can show how, under an appearance of multiculturalism and
tolerance, other discursive trends, which from another point of view could seem aged or
even extinct, remain active and pervasive. Through the exercise presented here, it
becomes clear that by removing from our language (and from our thought) old
oppositions like the ones which confront center and periphery, high-culture and low-
culture, or the global and the local, we do not necessarily delete them from the reality
that surround us. Because maybe, after all, identity is much more than an optical (or
acoustic) illusion.

20
Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays by Clifford Geertz (New York: Basic
Books, 1973).

21