Just what is a three-cornered hat? You might remember a battered one being worn by Captain Jack Sparrow, in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. Picasso was in London at all for the express purpose of desiging the sets and costumes for this ballet, and he even painted a gorgeous bullfighting scene on the stage curtain. At the post premiere party, Picasso took the hostesses’ eyebrow pencil and drew a laurel wreath around de Falla’s bald head, to crown the composer for his victory. The 1919 London premiere of de Falla’s new ballet, The Three-cornered Hat, had been an enormous success. It also introduced audiences worldwide to the music of Spain. This was the piece that the made the 32-year-old composer internationally famous. It was because of this piece of music that the artist Pablo Picasso drew on Manuel de Falla’s head.Īnd a victory it certainly was. The suite ends with a lovely oboe solo and the return of the rousing music with castanets that ended Act 1 of the ballet. In the second part of the suite, the tambourine returns: Carmen has changed her mind about the matador, and dances with him, passionately. This scene ends with Carmen rejecting Escamillo. The tambourine takes over for the castanets and is then replaced by the increasingly complex rhythmic clapping of the bystanders, who are watching Escamillo as he dances. Flamenco dancers often hold a pair of castanets in each hand, and click them, to accompany their own dancing. You’ll hear the clicking of castanets, which are pairs of shell-shaped wooden percussion instruments. Carmen began life as an 1845 novella by the French author Prosper Mérimée. When we hear the name Carmen, we now immediately think of Georges Bizet’s 1875 opera however, by the time Bizet set it to music, the story of Carmen had already been around for 30 years. Elizabeth Raum (born 1945)įlamenco Dance from The Passion of Carmen These strong chords grow louder, towards the triumphant end of the piece. The repetition of the dance is interrupted by 15 accented major chords in an uneven rhythm, evoking the powerful strumming of a Flamenco guitar.Ĭandela and Carmélo can be together, at last. Candela and Carmélo kiss, breaking the spell and causing the ghost to be drawn into the fire, where he disappears. However, this time, another dancer joins in.Ĭandela and the ghost dance together, faster and faster, until the ghost is distracted by Candela’s charming friend Lucia. Halfway through this short piece, at about the 2-minute mark, the piece begins again, repeating the first half, complete with pulsing trills. It’s much like part of the orchestra posing a question and another part of the orchestra answering it, usually more quietly. The orchestra tosses this and other tunes back and forth. First an oboe, then the high strings, join in, with an enticing, sinuous dance tune. They all join forces, in an attempt to draw the ghost out. Candela, surrounded by friends and family, is dancing the Ritual Fire Dance around the campfire. This is the Jealousy Motif, which recurs throughout the ballet. The unusual opening of this piece musically sets the scene, with half a minute of trills, which swell and recede in the high strings and are joined by an ominous rising and falling bass line in the low strings, setting the rhythm of the dance. When the Ritual Fire Dance scene of the ballet begins, Candela, an Andalusian Romani girl, is in love with Carmélo, but is being haunted by the ghost of her jealous husband.
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