Of Self and Circumstance: Music and Representation in the Works of Rodrigo

Abstract

Though Joaquín Rodrigo (1901-99) is renowned for his guitar works, especially the Concierto de Aranjuez, less well known is the fact that his compositions embrace a wide variety of genres, styles, and media, from piano solos to art songs and from orchestral tone poems to film scores. This article proposes a novel way of organizing and comprehending the roughly 200 works in his catalogue. Rather than the standard method of organization by chronology or medium, it surveys his oeuvre through multiple lenses, including literary, folkloric, virtuosic, sacred, historical, theatrical and descriptive. Each of these categories represents the salient dimension of a particular work, though it allows for the presence of two or more such traits. We are then in a position to make some generalizations about his basic stylistic orientation, which follows in the footsteps of Falla’s neoclassicism by incorporating national elements to produce a style often referred to as neocasticismo. The article concludes with a bibliography of writings, published and unpublished, about Rodrigo's guitar music, beginning with a general overview and proceeding to those devoted to the Aranjuez.