Isaac Albéniz: Granada (Serenata) from Suite Española, Op. 47

Played by Julian Bream at the 10th-century Moorish fortress-palace the Alhambra, overlooking the old Andalusian city of Granada. (A less picturesque but even better version is on Bream’s 1962 recording Popular Classics for the Spanish Guitar.) Click on the image for video.

“View from La Alhambra” (photo by Casey Berger). Click on image to play.

Spanish composer Isaac Albéniz (1860−1909) at the piano with his daughter Laura.

Guitarist Stanley Yates: “Imagining himself of Moorish ancestry, most of Albéniz’s own comments concerning the programmatic aspect of his music derive from images of the Alhambra—the elaborate Moorish palace-fortress that overlooks the Andalucian city of Granada. Of this place (which he visited on several occasions), Albéniz imagined evening serenades and juergas (all-night gypsy flamenco parties), accompanied on the one hand by the strumming of guitars and on the other by the ‘lazy dragging of the fingers across the strings’ of the guzla, an ancient Arabic instrument (a single example of which Albéniz surely never saw, let alone actually heard). Speaking in 1886 of his serenata Granada, Albéniz wrote:

“‘I live and write a Serenata [Serenade]…sad to the point of despair, among the aroma of the flowers, the shade of the cypresses, and the snow of the Sierra. I will not compose the intoxication of a juerga. I seek now the tradition…the guzla, the lazy dragging of the fingers over the strings. And above all, a heartbreaking lament out of tune…I want the Arabic Granada, that which is art, which is all that seems to me beauty and emotion…'” More…