Regino Sainz de la Maza

Regino Sainz de la Maza Part 1

Paris and Henri Collet

Allan Clive Jones

Note: These two articles were published in Classical Guitar in August 2000 (pages 20-24) and September 2000 (pages 50-53), when Rodrigo’s Toccata and Henri Collet’s Briviesca were unknown. Both pieces are mentioned in Part 2. In the versions of the articles published in 2000 I referred to these works as unknown, and possibly lost. Both pieces were rediscovered after these articles were first published. In March 2015 I revised the articles to take account of the fact that both pieces were now available.

Although Regino Sainz de la Maza (1896–1981) enjoys an honoured place in musical history as the dedicatee and first performer of Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez, to most guitarists he remains a somewhat shadowy figure – at least in the UK. In these two articles I hope to offer some glimpses into the early career of this remarkable musician by looking at some reviews dating from the 1920s, and at a substantial piece of journalism written by him in the early 1930s. I do not pretend my two articles will bring Sainz de la Maza out of the shade and into the full blaze of daylight, but some of the material will, I hope, cast new light on him. At the very least, I think there are some surprises in store. Much of my material in this first article is drawn from the French weekly musical magazine Le Ménestrel, and in particular from the writings of Henri Collet, one of the magazine’s regular contributors. Collet turns out to be an interesting figure in his own right, and I shall say a little about him in due course. Beginnings, and Paris debut

Sainz de la Maza was born in Burgos in 1896, and initially studied the piano. A move to Madrid brought him into the orbit of Daniel Fortea, with whom he studied the guitar. He also pursued composition with the composer and writer Jaime Pahissa in Barcelona. Almost inevitably, the young Sainz de la Maza found his way to Paris, which in the early part of the twentieth century was the leading musical capital in Europe, and a long-standing alma mater for innumerable Spanish musicians. Many of them studied in Paris or sought to establish their careers there. The first reference I have found to Sainz de la Maza playing in Paris is a review of a concert he gave on 18 February 1925, a mere nine months after Segovia’s debut in the same city.1 Sainz de la Maza did not create as big a stir as Segovia had – it would be hard to imagine how anyone could – but he was certainly well received, as the frequent linking of his name with those of Llobet, Pujol and Segovia shows. The following review, by Henri Collet in Le Ménestrel, gives a flavour:2

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After Segovia, after Llobet, after Pujol, after Fabian, here is Sainz de la Maza, the Castillian guitarist from Burgos, the bard of the solemn and meditative meseta [the vast and sparsely populated Castillian plateau]. His concert at the Salle Pleyel was an enchantment. In the same repertoire as Segovia, he managed to remain true to himself through the refined, elegant, subtle and pure style of his playing. It is enough, moreover, to study the slender fingers, responsive and supple, of Sainz to guess what his style will be [...]

[Sainz de la Maza] is, first and foremost, a musician. His nostalgic and profound compositions, harmonically rich, prove to us that he can become one of the rare poets of the guitar. And his transcription of the Barca of Mompou is a complete success. The large audience took an exceptional interest in this display, and gave Sainz de la Maza a warm welcome. Unfortunately it is not clear from Collet’s review what Sainz de la Maza played at this concert, but a review in another journal supplies the missing information.3 The programme included a Gavotte, Menuet, and Bourrée by de Visée, a couple of Pavans by Milan, a Sarabande by Handel, a Loure by J S Bach, the Homenaje by Falla, Torroba’s Sonatine (recently composed for Segovia, of course), and some Sor and Albeniz. Clearly the programme was as Segovian as Collet says. There were, however, a couple of interesting departures from the Segovian template, namely Sainz de la Maza’s own Zambra Gitana and the arrangement of Mompou’s Barca which Collet refers to. 4 By the early 1930s, we shall find the gap between Sainz de la Maza’s programmes and Segovia’s has starting to widen, principally because of Sainz de la Maza’s adoption of certain contemporary composers whom Segovia did not cultivate. Return to Paris

In late 1926, almost two years after his debut in the city, Sainz de la Maza was back in Paris to perform again. If the Paris public had been sated with the guitar by the time of his return, it would surely have been no surprise, for the indefatigable Segovia had managed to squeeze in at least nine performances in Paris by this date. 5 The reviewer Henri Collet’s appetite, at any rate, was not blunted:6 We have had Segovia. And now we have another incomparable guitarist, this time Castillian, Sainz de la Maza. A pure artist, in the line of Sor and Tarrega; and, what is more, a distinguished composer for his instrument, of which the infinite resources for polyphony he knows to perfection. Furthermore, his Salle Erard concert drew all the dilettanti. And justly so. The dignity, aristocratic nobility, the concentrated fervour, the persuasive power all make Sainz de la Maza the ideal interpreter of Castillian music. [....]

Collet then goes on to mention Sainz de la Maza’s playing of a Bach Bourrée and Sarabande and then returns to the Spanish, or Spanish-influenced, part of the programme:

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In the works of Sor, Sainz was admirable. He was able, moreover, to convey all the fantasy of Samazeuilh’s Serenade, and I am infinitely grateful for his colourful transcription of my Bolero. It was with his own works that he concluded his fine programme. And all his listeners loved his melodic and harmonic style, the subtle modulating iridescences of his Cantilena, of the Chanson Populaire de Burgos, of the lively Andaluza and of the prestigious Zambra. [...] Let’s hope that in Germany, where he is heading, he will be triumphant!

The programming of Samazeuilh’s Serenade, composed for Segovia the preceding year,7 shows a further overlap between the programmes of the two guitarists. Indeed, according to Collet, by early 1929 Sainz de la Maza was performing music by Segovia’s beloved Ponce – though which piece is not specified. But in my view the most surprising feature of the concert reviewed here is the inclusion of a piece by the reviewer himself, Henri Collet, albeit in transcription. It suggests that Collet is someone who merits a closer look. Henri Collet

In so far as Henri Collet (1885–1951) is remembered now in the UK, it tends to be for a perceptive piece of musical journalism. In a survey of up-and-coming French composers of the immediate post First World War period, he grouped six promising, but otherwise unconnected, composers and dubbed them Les Six. The tag has stuck, even though only three of them are performed with any frequency nowadays: Poulenc, Milhaud and Honegger.8

Henri Collet. Picture by kind permission of Mme M.-T. Clostre-Collet.

Collet’s real passion, however, was not French music, but Spanish. He lived in Spain for a time during his youth, and soaked up Spanish culture. All varieties of Spanish music appealed to him, from vihuela to zarzuela, from Victoria to flamenco. He wrote a fine book on Albeniz and Granados, both of whom were friends of his – as were numerous other Spanish musicians such as Casals, Segovia, Turina, Falla, Ricardo Viñes and, of course, Sainz de la Maza.

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Collet did what he could to further the careers of these Spanish musicians in Paris. Indeed, for many years he contributed an ‘Espagne’ column to Le Ménestrel in which he summarised notable events on the Spanish musical scene, and reported the activities of its leading lights. (Other contributors supplied similar columns devoted to music in Britain, the USA, Germany, etc.) Henri Collet was also a composer, and in his large catalogue are piano pieces, songs, chamber music, operas, and orchestral music. The Spanish influence is very evident in much of this music, for instance the Danzas Castellanas (1923) or the Danses Espagnoles (1936) for piano. There is even an orchestral Symphonie de l’Alhambra and two ‘Flamenco’ concertos, one for violin and one for piano.9 He also composed a piece for Segovia, which I will say more about in Part 2. Collet’s Bolero, which Sainz de la Maza transcribed and performed in his late-1926 concert, was almost certainly no. 4 of Collet’s second set of Chants de Castille (1921), opp. 62–66 for piano. At about two minutes long, it would hardly have occupied a large slice of the programme, but Collet clearly appreciated the gesture. London and eslewhere

Whether Sainz de la Maza’s progress from Paris to Germany in late 1926/early 1927 was triumphal, as Collet hoped, is not reported. Certainly Sainz de la Maza’s London appearance 18 months later (14 June 1928) at the Aeolian Hall was only partly successful, if the Times’s reviewer is to be believed: He is technically very proficient, though the variety of tone he produces is limited, and its volume rather too small for a concert hall. His programme consisted of Spanish music with two pieces by Bach and Handel. Two movements from a ‘Grande Sonate’ by Sors [sic] were the most ambitious things in the programme. But they were musically undistinguished, as also were some variations on a theme of Mozart’s by the same composer, and they needed far more brilliance in their performance to make them interesting. The more modern pieces, for instance a Fandanguillo by Turina, proved a good deal more attractive. 10

No doubt Sainz de la Maza was overshadowed in London, as he had been in Paris, by Segovia, who had already given six concerts there by the time Sainz de la Maza appeared – the most recent Segovia concert being a month before the concert reviewed above.11 Although I have not found any other reviews by Collet of Sainz de la Maza’s performances in Paris, snippets of news concerning Sainz de la Maza continued to appear occasionally in Collet’s ‘Espagne’ column. January 1929 finds Sainz de la Maza performing in Madrid, and again in December 1931. In the autumn of 1934 he is in the USA, as is Segovia.12 Despite the paucity of information given in these short notices, it is clear that Sainz de la Maza, while maintaining a Segovian core to his repertoire, was cultivating a more adventurous line of contemporary composers. Which composers he cultivated will become apparent in my next article, which will look at a substantial piece of journalism by Sainz de la Maza. PART 1

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Acknowledgement

For much of the information in this article relating to the life and work of Henri Collet, I am greatly indebted to Collet’s daughter Mme M.-T. Clostre-Collet.

Notes

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1

I take Sainz de la Maza’s concert on 18 February 1925 to have been his Paris debut. The reviews that I quote

in this article certainly speak of the event as though it were a debut. Segovia’s Parisian debut was on 7 April 1924. My series of articles ‘The Judgement of Paris’ (Classical Guitar, April–December 1998) looked at Segovia’s the early Parisian appearances. 2

Le Ménestrel, 6 March 1925, p. 117. This review, and all the others translated from French, carry a health

warning: my French falls a good deal short of virtuoso level. 3

Le Monde Musical, February 1925, p 69. The reviewer was Marc Pincherle, a Segovia devotee and the editor of the

Le Monde Musical around this time. 4

The Barca is presumably La Barca from Mompou’s Impressions Íntimes for piano.

5

Segovia had played in Paris on: 7 April 1924 (debut), 7 May 1924, 28 June 1924 (?uncertain), 6 May 1925,

13 May 1925, 28 December 1925, 16 January 1926, 23 January 1926, 2 June 1926, and 18 November 1926. 6

Le Ménestrel 10 December, 1926, p 529.

7

A short item in Le Courrier Musical, 15 October 1925, p. 488, dates the composition of Samazeuilh’s

Serenade to the summer (or possibly late spring) of 1925. It was premiered by Segovia in Paris on 16 January 1926 (Le Ménestrel, 22 Jan 1926 p. 41). 8

Collet’s two articles on Les Six appeared in Comoedia, 16 and 23 January 1920. The other three composers

were Germaine Tailleferre, Georges Auric and Leon Durey. 9

The Symphony and the two Flamenco Concertos are recorded on Claves CD 50-9801.

10

The Times, 16 June 1928, p. 12.

11

Segovia had performed in London on at least these dates: 7 December 1926, 29 January 1927, 18 May 1927,

31 May 1927, 29 October 1927, 11 May 1928. 12

Among the interesting snippets that Collet gives is a note in Le Ménestrel dated 15 February 1935, p. 58,

reporting the enthusiastic reception Bach’s ‘Chaconne’, as performed by Segovia, has received in Spain. Clearly the usually cited date and place for the premiere of this arrangement, 4 June 1935 in Paris, is incorrect.

Regino Sainz de la Maza Part 2: Journalism and new music Allan Clive Jones In my second article about the guitarist and composer Sainz de la Maza I want to look at a sample of his musical journalism and, briefly, at the evidence for some of the contemporary composers he performed. For some time Sainz de la Maza was a music critic for the Spanish daily newspaper A.B.C. This newspaper continues publication to this day, and is known for its liberal slant and for its cultural coverage. In former times it was identified with a somewhat pro-monarchist and then pro-Franco stance. The sample I shall look at in this article, however, is drawn not from A.B.C. but from El Imparcial. Adorned with a cartoon of its author, Sainz de la Maza’s article was printed on Tuesday 21 March 1933 and was a contribution to the series ‘Los Artistas y su Arte’. The following translation was made by Sean Scrivener, to whom I am extremely grateful. Sean also provided the clarifications shown in square brackets. El Imparcial, 21 March 1933 Artists and their art By Regino Saíz de la Mata [sic] The guitar cannot be compared with any other instrument. Its sound is a unique sound, a ‘deep and faraway’ sound, as Stravinsky put it, completely different from any other. Its quality of sound, the product of six very different timbres in its six strings, is instrumental and they give it unmatched powers of expression. A stubbornly held prejudice has had us believe for a long time that the guitar was unable to respond as an instrument to the demands of today’s musicians; and, with a false idea of what progress is, it was believed that, like the spinet and the lute, it had been forever displaced by the arrival on the musical scene of the pianoforte, with the latter’s volume of sound and all its modes of expression. According to this view, the guitar could be relegated to the realms of archaeology, back in the world of prehistory and legend along with the Assyrian tamboura or the Egyptian eoud from which, according to its mythology, it originated. The guitar remained popular: [so] a glib literature put about, without any knowledge or sense of tradition, that it was decadent. It took as a symptom of its demise that gipsy picturesqueness and that awful flamenco-ism which have detracted from its purest essence, as created by the genius of a people. The guitar, because of its glorious tradition, because of its origin, because of its part in the development of European music, its ability to adapt to the most diverse means of musical expression, could not disappear, even though it had its crises, its periods of decadence, just as it had its periods of highest grandeur. There is no point in arguing about the supposed superiority of some instruments over others. Their worlds of sound, their souls, are not interchangeable. The same arguments PART 2

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rage about modern and old music. Wanda Landowska puts it very well: “Bach’s Christmas Oratorio cannot be surpassed. A small piece by Couperin cannot be surpassed. Bach tried with the Suites Françaises and created, nevertheless, new beauty.” Since the time that the Latin guitar, as we now know it, was used in the short pieces in Alfonso the Wise’s Cantigas, every century has left its mark and the stamp of so many brilliant minds on this instrument. There is, in particular, that extensive period of the Spanish Renaissance, which the most distinguished musicologists have studied in depth: Gevaert, Fetis, Mitjana, Soubies, Chavarri, Pedrell, Salazar, Trem, Father Villalba, Agejas, Torner and so many others all agree on the decisive influence which those magnificent guitar composers of the Sixteenth Century had on the development of musical forms. Today, the guitar is expanding [its repertoire] and achieving splendid new heights. Its technique is starting to become systematically ordered, with a high pedagogical sense [i.e. increased scope for teaching and learning], and it is broadening its register with effects of sonority and polyphony hitherto unknown. Stravinsky, Schönberg and Hindemith incorporate it into some of their orchestral arrangements, something which had its first precedent in Monteverdi, who brought two guitars into his orchestra for his opera Orfeo, sung in the court of Mantua in 1607. Its repertoire is steadily being enriched by contemporary musicians of all nationalities and all schools: De Falla showed first, with his Homage to Debussy, that the guitar was capable of high artistic attainment; and Turina, Salazar, Torroba, Chavarri, Rodrigo, Bautista, Pittaluga, Bacarisse, Halffter, Antonio José, Palau, Ponce, Villalobos, Tansmann, Samazeuilh, Collet, Migot and several others have all followed his example.

*** From our vantage point over 80 years after Sainz de la Maza’s article appeared, one naturally raises an eyebrow at one or two of the author’s more dubious claims, such as his apparent annexing of the viheulists into the guitarists’ camp (in the fifth paragraph). But on the whole, the most striking feature is how little there is to take issue with, and how contemporary the article appears to modern eyes. Take for instance, Sainz de la Maza’s attitude to ‘early’ music and instruments. His scepticism about the notion of musical progress as applied to instruments, although not unique to him at the time, is nevertheless in sharp contrast to the opinion of, say, Segovia, who held the lute in contempt. 1 Although Sainz de la Maza and Segovia were only a few years apart, on this issue they seem almost to belong to different generations. I am also struck by Sainz de la Maza’s taut writing style, refreshingly free of that windy rhapsodising that blights so much writing about the guitar. Of course, we don’t know how much the article was changed between writing and publication, but on the evidence here Sainz de la Maza appears to have been an accomplished writer.

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In addition to the style, one is struck by the clear sense of purpose that informs the article from start to finish. Many writers (and no doubt some composers) would say that the hardest part of their craft is organisation: the eternal problem of arranging ideas in a way that has shape and direction. On the evidence of this piece I am tempted to borrow a description applied to another guitarist/journalist, Hector Berioz – a ‘born writer’ according to his biographer David Cairns.2 Composers

Among the composers listed in Sainz de la Maza’s final paragraph are several names made familiar by their association with Segovia, namely Turina, Torroba, Ponce and Tansman. The other names, Salazar, Chavarri, Bautista, Pittaluga, Bacarisse, Halffter, José, Palau, Collet and Migot, are not associated with Segovia, although some of them certainly composed for him, and Rodrigo and Villa Lobos were only taken up by Segovia some time after the appearance of this article. The interesting question arises of whether Sainz de la Maza featured any of these ‘nonSegovian’ composers in his own programmes. Thanks to the writings of the French composer and critic Henri Collet, whom I mentioned in my first article and who features in Sainz de la Maza’s list of composers, a tentative answer can be given. Collet reports that in January 1929 in Madrid, Sainz de la Maza performed a programme which included – besides the expected names of Bach, Sor, Tarrega, Torroba, etc. – pieces by Beovides and Villa Lobos.3 Three years later, in December 1931, again in Madrid, Sainz de la Maza included music by Bautista and Rodolfo Halffter in his programme, as well as his own Alegria.4 And in November 1934 he performed at least one movement of José’s Sonata. José’s Sonata, which has only recently become well known, was completed in August 1933, about five months after the appearance of Sainz de la Maza’s article. In citing José as a composer for the guitar, Sainz de la Maza was presumably thinking of José’s Pavana Triste, an earlier guitar piece that was later incorporated into the Sonata. Collet and Rodrigo

Two of the composers mentioned by Sainz de la Maza particularly deserve our attention: Henri Collet, who featured heavily in my last article, and Rodrigo, because of the famous Concierto de Aranjuez which he would write for Sainz de la Maza in 1939, six years after the appearance of the above article. As we saw last month, Sainz de la Maza performed a transcription of Henrie Collet’s piano piece Bolero at a concert in Paris in 1926. Somewhat before this event, Collet had provided Segovia with a piece, almost certainly at Segovia’s request. This piece was believed to be lost as no guitar piece survived in Collet’s papers. However, in May 2001 a manuscript of Collet’s Briviesca: Poema para Guitarra was found among Segovia’s papers by Angelo Gilardino. The same piece, in a version for solo piano, had been published by Salabert in 1921. It is therefore probable that Collet adapted his own piano piece for the guitar and presented it to Segovia. The guitar version has been published by Bèrben in the Segovia Archive series. So far I have found no evidence of Sainz de la Maza performing this piece. PART 2

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Rodrigo’s Toccata

The Rodrigo piece alluded to in Sainze de la Maza’s article is likely to have been the Zarabanda Lejana of 1926. In August 1933, five months after the publication of Sainz de la Maza’s article, Rodrigo composed what appears to be his second guitar piece, the Toccata. This piece was unknown until 2005 when it was found in Sainz de la Maza’s archive, although a few allusions to it were made during the 1930s.5 Possibly the earliest allusion comes from a short item published in Le Monde Musical in October 1933. In that month the journal published the responses of various composers to the question of what they had been working on during the summer. Rodrigo supplied the following.

‘First of all, I wrote a Toccata for guitar which my friend Sainz de la Magda [sic] will perform during his South American tour. Currently, I am harmonising Three Valencian Popular Songs for mixed voices, after which I want to finish my Three Pieces for Piano.’ Sainz de la Maza appears not to have performed the piece, which is formidably difficult. The composer reworked it as the first movement of his first movement of his violin concert Concierto de estío. The names of Sainz de la Maza and Rodrigo are, of course, inextricably linked because of the Concierto de Aranjuez, which Sainz de la Maza premiered in November 1940. However, as I hope these two articles have suggested, there are many reasons aside from the concerto for celebrating his achievements. Acknowledgement

I am extremely grateful to Sean Scrivener for permission to use his translation of Sainz de la Maza’s article, and to Mme M.-T. Clostre-Collet for information concerning her father Henri Collet.

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Notes

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1

See John Duarte, Andres, Segovia as I Knew Him, Mel Bay, 1998, p.34. Segovia’s attitude to the lute did not

extend to the music composed for it, much of which he admired. 2

Cairns makes this comment in his introduction to C. R. Fortescue’s translation of Hector Berlioz’s Les

Soirées de l’orchestre, published as Evenings in the Orchestra, Penguin, 1963, on p. 15. 3

Le Ménestrel, 25 Jan 1929, p. 41.

4

Le Ménestrel, 25 December 1931 p 554.

5

Wade, Graham, Joaquin Rodriogo, A Life in Music: Travelling to Aranjuez, 1901–1939, GRM Publications,

2006, p. 164.