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Fandangos by Roberto Sierra
b. 1953

Dating back to around the sixteenth century, the fandango is a Spanish dance characterized by a repeated four-note bass line, one of the hallmarks of Flamenco music. The bass line descends stepwise but resolves harmonically only upon the repeat of the first note of the pattern, resulting in a massive buildup of tension until the final cadence.

Roberto Sierra writes about Fandangos, composed in 2000: “Antonio Soler's (1729-1783) Fandangos for keyboard has always fascinated me, for its strange and whimsical twists and turns. My Fandangos is a fantasy, or a ‘super-fandango,’ that takes as point of departure Soler's work and incorporates elements of Boccherini's Fandangos and my own Baroque musings. Some of the oddities in the harmonic structure of the Soler piece provided a bridge for the incorporation of contemporary sonorities, opening windows to apparently alien sound worlds. In these parenthetical commentaries, the same materials heard before are transformed, as if one would look at the same objects through different types of lenses or prisms. The continuous variation form over an ostinato bass gave me the chance to use complex orchestration techniques as another element for variation.”

The orchestral color and variations in Fandangos suggest another popular work based on the repetition of a Spanish theme, Maurice Ravel’s Bolero.

Composer and educator Sierra was born in Puerto Rico and received his music education at the Conservatory of Music and the University of Puerto Rico. He then went to Europe to study at the Royal College of Music and the University of London, later doing advanced work in composition at the Hochschule für Musik in Hamburg under György Ligeti. In 1982 Sierra returned to Puerto Rico as Director of the Cultural Activities Department at the University of Puerto Rico and later as Chancellor of the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music. His many compositions have been commissioned, performed and recorded around the globe. During 2000-2001 he was Composer-in Residence with the Philadelphia Orchestra. He was elected to the Americal Academy of Arts and Letters in 2021.

Fandangos by Roberto Sierra
b. 1953

Dating back to around the sixteenth century, the fandango is a Spanish dance characterized by a repeated four-note bass line, one of the hallmarks of Flamenco music. The bass line descends stepwise but resolves harmonically only upon the repeat of the first note of the pattern, resulting in a massive buildup of tension until the final cadence.

Roberto Sierra writes about Fandangos, composed in 2000: “Antonio Soler's (1729-1783) Fandangos for keyboard has always fascinated me, for its strange and whimsical twists and turns. My Fandangos is a fantasy, or a ‘super-fandango,’ that takes as point of departure Soler's work and incorporates elements of Boccherini's Fandangos and my own Baroque musings. Some of the oddities in the harmonic structure of the Soler piece provided a bridge for the incorporation of contemporary sonorities, opening windows to apparently alien sound worlds. In these parenthetical commentaries, the same materials heard before are transformed, as if one would look at the same objects through different types of lenses or prisms. The continuous variation form over an ostinato bass gave me the chance to use complex orchestration techniques as another element for variation.”

The orchestral color and variations in Fandangos suggest another popular work based on the repetition of a Spanish theme, Maurice Ravel’s Bolero.

Composer and educator Sierra was born in Puerto Rico and received his music education at the Conservatory of Music and the University of Puerto Rico. He then went to Europe to study at the Royal College of Music and the University of London, later doing advanced work in composition at the Hochschule für Musik in Hamburg under György Ligeti. In 1982 Sierra returned to Puerto Rico as Director of the Cultural Activities Department at the University of Puerto Rico and later as Chancellor of the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music. His many compositions have been commissioned, performed and recorded around the globe. During 2000-2001 he was Composer-in Residence with the Philadelphia Orchestra. He was elected to the Americal Academy of Arts and Letters in 2021.