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Canciones clásicas españolas for Voice and Guitar
Fernando Jaumandreu Obradors

- Born October 17, 1896, in Barcelona
- Died October 9, 1945, in Barcelona
- Composed in 1921
- Duration: 13 minutes

Unlike many of his contemporaries, the Spanish composer Fernando Jaumandreu Obradors was largely self-taught. He received some training at the Escuela Municipal de Música de Barcelona and spent a bit of time as a student in Paris, but most of his expertise came from independent study of harmony and counterpoint. After he finished his studies, he found a career as an orchestral conductor in Barcelona and on Grand Canary Island. From the late 1910s to 1941, he worked on four volumes of Classical Spanish songs, which comprised transcriptions of folk and popular tunes as well as new settings of texts by poets from the course of Spain’s history. 

The first volume of these songs, heard here in an arrangement for guitar and soprano, provides a mix of reflections on the nature of love. The first song, on a text by Juan Ponce (c. 1470–1521), depicts jealous love, insisting that “Laureola” is “mine alone.” The soprano, a cappella, first sings this line in a vulnerable, yearning fashion. Then, the guitar takes the soprano’s tune and builds it into a sparkling, efficient fugato, a satisfying, formal interlude that establishes the set’s “Classical” nature. The second tune expresses the secretive, impassioned love of the poem “Al amor” by 16th-century poet Cristóbal de Castillejo. Repeated, sung notes insist on “eleven hundred kisses” and then “eleven hundred more” while guitar breaks hint at those kisses taking place. The unrequited lover of the third song, on a text by an unknown 17th-century source, pines for the object of her affections, while the fluid accompaniment teases her for not moving on but holding out for someone “in the arms of another.” The fourth song, from an anonymous 18th-century author, is more discursive. A woman explores the pros and cons of her current affair, while the accompaniment waltzes along and occasionally wanders off on a string of dissonant runs that end with an abrupt cadence.

We jump back in time for the fifth song, to a poem by Juan de Anchieta (1462–1523), a lullaby-like ode of gratitude to maternal love. Flowing arpeggios in the accompaniment support the sweet, admiring affection of the sixth tune, based on a popular ballad. The final tune opens with a dramatic, Carmen-like flourish, followed up a virtuosic melisma sung on “Ah!” This is strange, ironic music: melodramatic and changeable. The setting of this beguiling text by Francisco Fernández Bohigas, known as Curro Dulce (1816–1898), serves as a brilliant conclusion to Obradors’s varied collection of love songs.

Canciones clásicas españolas for Voice and Guitar
Fernando Jaumandreu Obradors

- Born October 17, 1896, in Barcelona
- Died October 9, 1945, in Barcelona
- Composed in 1921
- Duration: 13 minutes

Unlike many of his contemporaries, the Spanish composer Fernando Jaumandreu Obradors was largely self-taught. He received some training at the Escuela Municipal de Música de Barcelona and spent a bit of time as a student in Paris, but most of his expertise came from independent study of harmony and counterpoint. After he finished his studies, he found a career as an orchestral conductor in Barcelona and on Grand Canary Island. From the late 1910s to 1941, he worked on four volumes of Classical Spanish songs, which comprised transcriptions of folk and popular tunes as well as new settings of texts by poets from the course of Spain’s history. 

The first volume of these songs, heard here in an arrangement for guitar and soprano, provides a mix of reflections on the nature of love. The first song, on a text by Juan Ponce (c. 1470–1521), depicts jealous love, insisting that “Laureola” is “mine alone.” The soprano, a cappella, first sings this line in a vulnerable, yearning fashion. Then, the guitar takes the soprano’s tune and builds it into a sparkling, efficient fugato, a satisfying, formal interlude that establishes the set’s “Classical” nature. The second tune expresses the secretive, impassioned love of the poem “Al amor” by 16th-century poet Cristóbal de Castillejo. Repeated, sung notes insist on “eleven hundred kisses” and then “eleven hundred more” while guitar breaks hint at those kisses taking place. The unrequited lover of the third song, on a text by an unknown 17th-century source, pines for the object of her affections, while the fluid accompaniment teases her for not moving on but holding out for someone “in the arms of another.” The fourth song, from an anonymous 18th-century author, is more discursive. A woman explores the pros and cons of her current affair, while the accompaniment waltzes along and occasionally wanders off on a string of dissonant runs that end with an abrupt cadence.

We jump back in time for the fifth song, to a poem by Juan de Anchieta (1462–1523), a lullaby-like ode of gratitude to maternal love. Flowing arpeggios in the accompaniment support the sweet, admiring affection of the sixth tune, based on a popular ballad. The final tune opens with a dramatic, Carmen-like flourish, followed up a virtuosic melisma sung on “Ah!” This is strange, ironic music: melodramatic and changeable. The setting of this beguiling text by Francisco Fernández Bohigas, known as Curro Dulce (1816–1898), serves as a brilliant conclusion to Obradors’s varied collection of love songs.