El retablo de Maese Pedro, de Manuel de Falla: un diálogo entre música, literatura y política
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2015
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02-02-2016
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Abstract
In this research project, we analysed Manuel de Falla's opera "Master Peter's Puppet Show" (1923) as an interpretation of Cervantes' "Don Quixote" (1605 and 1615), focusing on the relations established by the composer between music, literature and politics. Our project is, therefore, a comparative study between both works, even if it focuses on defining the dialogue established by the composer with Miguel de Cervantes.
The title of this Ph.D. speaks of "dialogue" between music, literature and politics, using the concept of "dialogue" in the Gadamerian sense of the term. That is to say, we will analyse the opera "Master Peter's Puppet Show" as Manuel de Falla's reading of "Don Quixote" in which an ideal communication between past and present is set by a conversation between two interlocutors: the text (the you of the past) and the reader (the I of the present) or, in our case, Cervantes' text and Falla's opera. We analyse the content of this dialogue from an interdisciplinary perspective.
When analysing Manuel de Falla's "Master Peter's Puppet Show", one of the key points (and also one of the most neglected) is Don Quixote's importance and connotations (specially in the episode of Master Peter's puppet show) in Spain in the early 20th century. What is the significance of the composition and its reception, of choosing "Don Quixote" as the subject of the opera? What does Master Peter's episode represent? In addition, except few brief exceptions, in the study of the opera "Master Peter's Puppet Show" it has not been carried out a direct comparative analysis, beyond the script, between Falla's and Cervantes' texts. One of the main purposes of this study is to make a contribution in that direction. From this perspective, we have proposed, developed and put to the test the following three hypotheses:
- First, we claim that in "Master Peter's Puppet Show" Manuel de Falla carries out a reconstruction of the musical imaginary of Cervantes' work.
- Second, based on Falla's conception of his opera "Master Peter's Puppet Show" as a tribute to Cervantes, we interpret that Falla's music succeeds in imitating and conveying many of Cervantes' stylistic features.
-Third, we consider that in "Master Peter's Puppet Show" Falla develops his ideal vision of Spain (thus advancing a political proposal), which he sees as a Catholic nation from the angle of a Castile-centered Spanish nationalism, nonetheless respectful of cultural and linguistic diversity of regions such as Catalonia, aligned in Europe with the Allies and from a Europeanist stance.
From this perspective, we claim in this work the need to deepen the study of Cervantes' "Don Quixote" and its reception to make it possible to understand Falla's "Master Peter's Puppet Show". As a result of this perspective, we propose several novelties in the analysis of the work. Falla bases his opera on a literary classic, Cervantes' "Don Quixote", with the willingness to pay him homage, and to this end he articulates a fruitful dialogue between tradition and vanguard which is embodied in "Master Peter's Puppet Show".