Beyond Bullfights and Sangria: Five Centuries of Spanish History through Its Music, Art, and Literature

Professor Walter A. Clark

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September 28: The Golden Age of El Greco and Cervantes

During the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, Spain was the global superpower. It conquered, colonized, and ruled territories extending from Europe to the Americas to Southeast Asia. Its wealth supported great artists and writers, including such figures as El Greco, Diego Velázquez, and Miguel Cervantes. It was also a musical superpower, and Spanish composers and performers were a dominant presence during the Renaissance and early Baroque periods. This lecture begins by examining the medieval origins of Spain’s ascent to greatness, and then focuses on its cultural accomplishments during what came to be known as the Siglo de Oro, its golden age.

October 12: Goya’s Bohemian World of Caprice and Disaster

By the eighteenth century, Spain was no longer in the first rank of European powers, but it still ruled a vast empire and possessed a vibrant culture. This period is typified by the art of Francisco Goya, whose canvases capture the colorful world of Madrid around 1800, in particular the lower-class bohemians known as majos/majas. Keyboard and orchestral music flourished, especially in the works of Italian composers active at the Bourbon court. Native composers wrote enduring masterpieces for the stage and for the guitar. Napoleon’s 1808 invasion, however, brought about a disaster that only an artist like Goya could convey.

October 26: Flamenco and Other Regional Songs and Dances

Though Spain drove out Napoleon, it had lost most of its empire by 1830 and was destabilized in the process. Decades of political insurrection and civil wars resulted in a period of diminished greatness in the arts. Regional folklore, however, flourished during these troublous times, and this lecture presents the wide variety of songs and dances from Galicia, the Basque country, Catalonia, Aragon, and Castile. Of special interest is the development of flamenco, the music and dance of Andalusia that originated among the Gypsies and then took the rest of Spain, as well as Europe, by storm in the 1800s.

November 9: 1898, Imperial Demise, Cultural Renaissance

As a result of the Spanish-American War in 1898, Spain lost all of its remaining colonies. This was the disaster that reduced Spain to a mere shadow of its former self. Ironically, post-imperial Spain experienced a cultural florescence in painting, literature, and music. Artists like Joaquín Sorolla reestablished Spain as an international presence in the art world, while novelists and philosophers like Vicente Blasco Ibáñez and José Ortega y Gasset achieved renown throughout Europe and the Americas. Native composers drew on the rich folklore of their country, especially flamenco, to create operettas and concert music with a distinctively Spanish flavor.

November 23: The Silver Age of Picasso and Lorca

Though Spain stayed out of both world wars, its inherently unstable politics produced a ruinous civil war and military dictatorship in the middle of the twentieth century. The cultural achievements of the previous generation, however, set the stage for what came to be known as the Silver Age in Spanish arts and letters. Pablo Picasso, Juan Gris, Joan Miró, Salvador Dalí, and Federico García Lorca were among the leading lights in European culture during this period. Spanish composers, led by Manuel de Falla, achieved international renown for their forward-looking works blending Spanish folklore with the latest trends in French music.

Note: Walter Aaron Clark received his PhD from UCLA in 1992 and is a professor of musicology at UC Riverside, where he is founder/director of the Center for Iberian and Latin American Music. He is the author of Oxford biographies of Isaac Albéniz, Enrique Granados, and Federico Moreno Torroba, as well as editor-in-chief of the journal Diagonal: An Ibero-American Music Review and the Grove Dictionary of Latin American and Iberian Music.

Coordinator: Steve Clarey

Course Number: OSHR-70055   Credit: 0 units in Osher Lifelong Learning Institute