Text and context: Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez as film score

• Autores: Walter Aaron Clark
• Localización: The Routledge Handbook to Spanish Film Music / Laura Miranda González (ed. lit.), 2024, ISBN 9781003174974, págs. 155-166
• Idioma: español
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• Resumen

  • The Concierto de Aranjuez for guitar and orchestra is the best-known composition of Spanish composer Joaquín Rodrigo (1901–99); in fact, it is one of the most beloved works in the classical repertoire. The central movement in particular has been arranged by several jazz and rock musicians, including Miles Davis, Chick Corea, and Brian May. But this chapter explores the impact of the work beyond concert halls and recording studios, which is to say film and television. Given his blindness, it comes as a surprise that Rodrigo was active as a composer of film music. The movies for which Rodrigo wrote music during the 1950s include Sor Intrépida (1952), La Guerra de Dios (1953), El Hereje (1957), and Música para un jardín (1957). However, this chapter argues that his most impactful contribution to film music was the Concierto de Aranjuez, especially the second movement. Though not intended as movie music, its numerous quotations in cinema and television make it the “film music” most closely associated with the composer. In short, Rodrigo's Aranjuez is more than merely “popular”; it has become a durable staple of mass media, though its composer remains largely unnown to the millions of viewers exposed to his evocative music.