The National Society of Music (1915–1922) and the Ambivalent Democratization of Music in Spain

The Context and the Origin of the Ideology

The members of the National Society of Music projected inside the institution an aesthetic conflict between two external cultural powers: France and Germany. Musicologist Samuel Llano, in his book Whose Spain?,⁵ has explored this issue in depth, putting on the table the influence of France in the configuration of the face of Spanish musical identity, which had been the most visible up until the present. Paraphrasing his own words, the first two decades of the twentieth century show a change in the mentality of French intellectuals who, in their cultural studies of Spain, captured concerns over the military and cultural hegemony of Germany, who had won the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. Consequently, they ended up building an image of Spain that is based on its Latin essence and is described by a very strong anti-Teutonic character, especially within the musical milieu. In this sense, Spain was considered within their writings to be the best cultural allied of France against Germany, and this reality—which will be crucial to understand the operation of the Spanish National Society of Music—is summarized by Samuel Llano as follows:

The early decades of the twentieth century witnessed a significant change in how Spain was situated on the French intellectual horizon. At that moment, Spain ceased to be mostly regarded as an exotic corner of Europe, and was increasingly being used as a discursive site on which to project shared anxieties over the definition of a French identity. Although the popular imaginaries mostly relied on nineteenth‐century “exotic” stereotypes of Spain, French intellectuals started to reflect their concerns over Germany’s military power and cultural hegemony in their studies about Spanish culture, literature, music and the arts. This phenomenon stemmed from the fact that, unlike Spain, Germany had represented a military, diplomatic, economic and cultural rival since at least the mid‐nineteenth-century.⁶

Hence, before 1914 in France, the French intelligentsia wrote a set of anti-German discourses based on the idea of a union between all nations with a Latin tradition. Once again using Llano’s words, for the French, Spain rapidly assumed the status of a “cultural periphery, or [even] more particularly, a satellite of France.”⁷ Some years later, immediately after the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the idea of Spain as an appendix of France became more pronounced and was supported by the most celebrated French Hispanists of the time, who continued with the idea of considering the adjacent country as a major cultural ally against Germany. Within the musical sphere, Henri Collet stands out as a leading French intellectual during this period, and Llano summarizes his ideas in the following manner: “[Collet] argues that the Spanish national musical school exists only thanks to the support and encouragement of French musicians, who have instilled a sense of national pride in their Spanish counterparts.”⁸ In addition to that, the Spanish musicians who were studying in France contributed themselves to the consolidation of this artificial stance. A good example of this is the testimony of the Spanish composer Manuel de Falla, who wrote in a letter addressed to the painter Ignacio Zuloaga: “referring to my profession, my homeland is Paris.”⁹

From my discussion above, a reality that was important for the constitution of the National Society of Music emerges: a sizable majority of the Spanish composers from the beginning of the twentieth century had chosen Paris for studying with the masters of the French school. Not only did they learn French musical techniques but also assumed and integrated the anti-German discourses that I have mentioned. Once World War I began in 1914, these musicians returned to Spain with a clear aesthetic point of view and were ready to defend the principles instilled in their minds by French propaganda. If this was not enough, due to the neutrality of Spain during the Great War, French Hispanists could keep in touch with the principal Spanish musicians of the time, which made it possible for them to maintain their influence during the years of activity of the National Society of Music (1915–1922).

However, in those years Madrid was also going through the last peak of the Wagnerism, especially after the first premiere of Tristan und Isolde in the Royal Theater, in 1911,¹⁰ which meant that some composers supported the German musical influence. Of course, this reality reveals a larger debate that comes from the so‐called “Disaster of 1918.” Yet, after losing the colonies of Cuba and Filipinas, Spain initiated a process of political and cultural regeneration in order to integrate the country inside Europe. The outbreak of World War I took place in the middle of this process, when nothing was completely defined. In consequence, Spain—which at the moment was not important to the other European nations—faced a military conflict without a clear ideological position, and have to decide among three proposals derived from the war: the parliamentary monarchy of Great Britain, the French Republic, and the authoritative monarchy of Germany.¹¹ The problem was that the political tendencies and the artistic influences of the Spanish intelligentsia did not match: for example, a political supporter of France could also be a cultural supporter of Germany, and vice versa. This is just one reason why the apparent neutrality of Spain was much more complex than the simple fact of not participating in the actual war.¹² This also applies in particular to the musical milieu and, especially, to the National Society of Music. Hence, the ingredients for an internal aesthetic conflict within the institution were on the table.

Indeed, the cultural and social tensions that I have outlined allowed the coexistence of two opposed aesthetic models within the Artistic Committee of the National Society of Music: on the one hand, those who had returned from Paris, represented by Manuel de Falla, brought with them a Francophile agenda influenced by the style of Claude Debussy. Therefore, they built a musical identity based on Spanish popular sources subjugated to the symbolistic modal harmonies of Debussy’s model. On the other hand, there was a group of musicians with Conrado del Campo at the forefront,¹³ which projected practices from the second half of the nineteenth century and combined them with more advanced gestures, textures, and harmonies that were employed by other German composers of the time. Thus, they created an alternative vision of the Spanish musical identity which also made use of material stemming from traditional music, but hybridized them with a German influence combined with the strong Wagnerian heritage that had been developed during the first fifteen years of the twentieth century. Despite the fact that this situation was general within the Spanish musical milieu, it ended up conditioning the operation of the National Society of Music, as I will demonstrate.

The Programmed Repertoire

Of course, this aesthetic confrontation was reflected in the musical programming of the National Society of Music. In this sense, during its seven seasons of activity (1915–1922), the institution organized a total of 82 concerts in which an approximate number of 754 musical pieces were performed, as it is shown on Table 1¹⁴.

After having carried out a systematic study of the National Society’s programming in the aforementioned study,¹⁵ it is possible to state that, in general, the society was quite integrating: despite the internal ideological inclination that I will explain later, they put together, to a greater or lesser extent, a very rich variety of musical styles. In this sense, the concerts included pieces that are modern and canonical; Spanish and foreign; solo, chamber, and orchestral. In addition, performers ranged from musicians known primarily in Spain to artists with international reputations. This was explained by the secretary of the institution, Adolfo Salazar, who wrote in 1919—when the institution had already overcome the middle‐point of its activity—an accurate summary of the Society’s programming that, as a matter of fact, completely matches with my analysis:

The Society has given 61 concerts, in which 338 Spanish works have been performed, premiering 157 of them. The number of foreign [compositions] is approximately the same: 387, with 171 at the first hearing. Among the authors, most of them current, we can find French, English, Italians, Bohemians, Hungarians and Russians. The works range from the grand orchestra to solo piano, [and] there have been “concert versions” of lyric theater, symphonies, suites, symphonic poems, sextets, quintets, quartets, trios and sonatas for bow and wind instruments; [and] celebrated virtuous and emerging artists have paraded for their stage (the sessions were held in the concert hall of the Ritz hotel).¹⁶

However, if we focus our attention on the names of the composers that were programmed on the concerts of the society, we see its actual aesthetic tendency. First of all, let us take a look at the general top ten:

As it is possible to see in Table 2, Claude Debussy is first in the ranking (8.1%), with more than twice the number of pieces as the next composer. Debussy is followed by Enrique Granados (4.4 %) in second place and Isaac Albéniz (3.3%) in third—two composers who are considered to be aesthetic precursors of Manuel Falla and are also very close to the Francophile style, especially Isaac Albéniz¹⁷. Next, two canonical musicians show up, F. Chopin (3.1%) and W.A. Mozart (2.3%), who, more than representing their own nations, are symbols of a musical past with a different set of aesthetic implications. Following this pair are Cesar Franck (2.3%) and Gabriel Fauré (2.3%), two of the most important masters of the French school prior to Debussy. They are followed by Manuel de Falla (2.2%) and, somewhat unexpectedly, Rogelio Villar (1875–1937)—a Spanish composer linked to the German tradition (2.3%)¹⁸. The reason for Villar’s appearance might lie in the fact that, as I showed at the beginning of this article, he was the first promoter of the institution and had a close connection with Falla and the secretary Adolfo Salazar, especially with the latter, with whom he was in charge of the Revista musical hispano‐americana. Finally, this top ten list is closed by another leading figure of the French milieu, Maurice Ravel (2.2%). Hence, as we can see, there is a prominent and evident relationship with French music.

However, we can go even further, since shifting the attention to the ten most programmed Spanish composers results in a more or less similar outcome, as demonstrated in Table 3.

The first four, as is evident, are the same Spaniards included in the previous table (Table 2). They are followed by Antonio Soler (2.2%), representative of a musical past that was highly admired by Falla during his neoclassical period.¹⁹ Moreover, Joaquín Turina (1.7%) and Óscar Esplá (1.1%) are both, once again, related to the Francophile style.²⁰ Rogelio Villar (2.3%) and Conrado del Campo (1%) also sneak into the list, the latter being a member of the Artistic Committee and, therefore, possessing a certain (but not too much) influence on the programming. Hence, the principal conclusion is evident: at least on an internal level, the aesthetic battle between the musical supporters of the Francophiles and the Germanophiles was clearly won by the French, since they had a stronger presence in the concerts programmed by the institution between 1915 and 1922. As it could not be any other way, this triumph was translated into a positive valuation of the Francophile group and into an ulterior and exclusive historiographic treatment of them, since Spanish musicology has ignored the German‐influenced side of our musical identity. Fortunately, this mistake is already being rectified by Spanish musicology.

Typology of the Members: Propaganda, Exclusivity, and Social Impact

Not only was this victory the product of a friendly cultural exchange within the Francophile group, but it was also supported internally by the two main leaders of the society—president Miguel Salvador²¹ and, especially, secretary Adolfo Salazar, who was also a composer, but, above all, a very influential and vehement musical critic. In this sense, I have to highlight the role of Salazar as the principal source of musical propaganda that was crucial in tipping the aesthetic scales toward the French side. As musicologist Elena Torres puts it, when Adolfo Salazar met Manuel de Falla in person, he became one of the biggest supporters of the Andalusian composer, announcing him as “the savior of Spanish music.”²² This attitude was fully integrated into his duties as a secretary, and, as Mexican musicologist Consuelo Carredano states in her dissertation about Salazar, it was within the National Society of Music where he first proved his capacity for musical influence.²³

One of Salazar’s most notable efforts can be seen in the program notes he wrote for each concert, which can be considered as authentic propaganda in favor of the Francophile side. For the concert on November 29, 1916,²⁴ the National Society had programmed together the orchestral version of Manuel de Falla’s El amor brujo and Manuel Manrique de Lara’s Symphony in D minor, representative examples of the two aesthetic models: Francophile and Germanophile, respectively. In his program notes for the concert, Salazar introduces the first composition as a musical piece in which Falla “adopts an extremely new technique and a way of expression, to whose first advances alone are we just started to get accustomed.”²⁵ Contrastingly, he describes Manrique de Lara’s symphony as “a spiritual decadence or regression to a less refined state of sensibility than that of Wagner.”²⁶ Thus, as we can see, the secretary of an institution that is supposed to be democratic and impartial with the Spanish repertoire it programs is defending his own aesthetic stand.

Hence, it is very evident that Salazar’s program notes represent a slanted and highly tendentious set of documents which—due to their widespread public nature and availability—turned the National Society of Music into one of the most active driving forces of musical propaganda of the time. In addition, I must underline the consequences of such propaganda. Despite the fact that the works of both Falla and Manrique de Lara are considered to be of high quality today, the two composers did not secure the same status in history: Falla has always received more favor in historiographical discourses. This unequal treatment—and, of course, the situation of Manrique de Lara can be extrapolated to the rest of the composers with the same aesthetic profile—is a result of the strong impact of the general media spider web that reached into different places, including the National Society of Music.²⁷

In this sense, all the matters treated to this point reflect an evident attempt by the majority sector of the National Society of Music to impose their ideals and to have influence over the musical taste of the audience, a fact that reveals a non‐democratic agenda. Indeed, there is no doubt that not only were the propagandistic discourses generated in France against Germany assumed by a large majority of Spanish musicians, but they were also the catalyst for the exclusive historical prevalence of the Francophile model of musical identity that stems from themselves. Notwithstanding, the historical testimonies prove that, actually, the capacity of the National Society to change the aesthetic inclinations of the immediate audience was quite limited and remains reduced to its internal French‐related circle.

First of all, the Society focused its attention on a very limited social spectrum. On the one hand, in order to be a member of the institution, it was necessary to reside in Madrid, as one can read on its Book of Regulation.²⁸ This fact alone shows an evident contradiction with the adjective “national” included within its own name. On the other hand, within their lists of members, it is possible to find three different social groups, all of which belong to the Madrilenian upper class: 1) the most prominent musicians, 2) the most prestigious intellectuals, and 3) the aristocracy and the highest social classes of the city. This element, which the press used to refer to as “a very distinguished audience” or “the most important of the Madrilenian milieu,” reveals the image of a very exclusive institution that did not welcome ordinary people. Finally, once again regarding the repertoire, it is very significant that the National Society always refused to include in its concerts the zarzuela, a kind of musical spectacle that was appreciated by all social classes. All of these elements together confirm that the institution, its programming, and membership cannot be considered as democratic: the National Society of Music ignored the most popular genre of the time (zarzuela); marginalized German‐influenced composers; and, finally, excluded not only the popular audiences of Madrid, but also those from the rest of the country.

Second of all, the main foundational principles of the institution were not ignored but understood in a very particular way in order to favor the propagandistic interests that I have outlined. This issue can be observed through the historical press: its study reflects the social impact of the institution as well as the consequences of its decisions. Initially, and no matter the ideological inclination of each newspaper, the National Society of Music was welcomed with a great deal of enthusiasm. A good example of this is the following newspaper clipping from La Correspondencia de España, published on February 6, 1915:

It is undeniable that we are walking with firm steps toward the revival of the Spanish music. This fact is clearly proved by the recent success of Spanish composers, such as Turina, Falla, Pérez Casas, Guridi, Conrado del Campo, Vives, Casals, Villar, Usandizaga, Viñes, Óscar Esplá and many other youths that with their talent and enthusiasm are strengthening this flattering hope. […] Another piece to underline what we are saying is the foundation of the National Society of Music, whose main objective is—according to its Book of Regulation—to promote the musical creation and to ensure that the music thus produced would be published in concerts and editions.²⁹

In this excerpt, we must focus our attention on a special element: the insistence on linking the National Society with the resurrection of the Spanish music, which allows us to situate the institution within the Spanish cultural regeneration—already introduced at the beginning of this chapter—during the first three decades of the twentieth century. Notably, evidence of the aesthetic confrontation are not yet present in this review, since the writer names both groups of musicians: Francophiles, with Falla and Turina, and Germanophiles, with Del Campo and Villar, among many others.

Over the years, the ideological inclination of the National Society became more evident, and, consequently, the first critical voices against the institution appeared. One of the most representative instances was Rogelio Villar who, as we can read in the following excerpt from a musical magazine, did not hesitate in pointing out the lack of space for Spanish composers within the National Society of Music:

Another thing that I really hate in some of my friends of the National [Society] is what I designate as an excessive effusiveness for the so‐called new music […] and for some of its performers, which is highly detrimental for our production. They do not realize the damage they make […] and the confusion they cause in the audience, which can be one of the reasons why they lose all appreciation of our music, being imposed as a kind of art that they are not able to understand.³⁰

However, this fact must be situated in context: what Villar is really exposing is that the musicians who do not support the Francophile side are being intentionally ignored by the National Society of Music, as we already know. In addition, the other main problem of the institution comes into light: its favoring of radical tendencies and excessive usage of musical vanguards, which will become the central aesthetic issue during the next decade.

All of these problems—the excessive praise of vanguards, the personal influences, and the unilateral propaganda—were summarized in the memoirs of Carlos Bosch, who was the first Secretary of the National Society of Music and who ended up succumbing to the power of Adolfo Salazar, as can read in the following extract:

One of the causes that spoilt our “National [Society]” was the abuse, in all of the concerts, of these avant‐garde novelties, which were rejected by a big majority of the members. The decisions about the music to be performed were made without careful consideration: they mixed some very thoughtful pieces with other new monstrosities and, as it usually happens in such cases, personal influences were imposed with a damaging and very destructive bias.³¹

These codes of conduct caused an institutional crisis that signified the gradual decline of the institution. In consequence, little by little, the National Society of Music lost the favor of its members who did not identify with the musical selections, and also the support of the Germanophile side of the Artistic Committee. On the other side, and despite Salazar’s efforts to protect the institution, the press during the last years notably reduced their coverage to mere descriptions of the concerts without relevant content, diverting the attention away from an institution that had already lost its social impact.³²

Conclusions

Having arrived to this point, the main conclusion is evident: not only was the National Society of Music an institution with the aim of musical diffusion, but also it was involved in the cultural and aesthetic debates of the time and, especially, in the process of cultural regeneration through which the country was living. The analysis of its musical programming can be understood as an immediate indicator of this issue, considering that it has revealed an aesthetic inclination toward the Francophile model. In this sense, although at the beginning they tried a confluence of musical tendencies, over the time it became completely sectarian. As I have demonstrated, the main agent in charge of making this mechanism works was Salazar, who used his own program notes as a means of propaganda. This was done with a triple objective: first, to defend the Francophile model and the figure of Manuel de Falla; second, to stop the development of German‐influenced music in Spain after World War I; and third, to guide and influence the audience’s musical interests.

However, and despite Salazar’s efforts, the outcome was not as expected. This was due to three reasons: first, because the institution limited its own impact to a very small and exclusive sector of the society; second, because the real tastes of their audience were ignored by means of the repudiation of the most popular Spanish lyric theatre, the zarzuela; and finally, because the National Society, eventually, alienated its own members, who no matter how exclusive they were, did not support the programming of a certain musical aesthetic or the excessive predomination of the vanguards, which, paradoxically, entered Spain thanks to this institution. Hence, the conclusion becomes evident: even though the National Society of Music was created in order to integrate every aspect of Spanish music, its development reveals a non‐democratic tendency with the aim of stopping the influence of German culture (a consequence of World War I) and consolidating a Spanish musical identity related to the French aesthetic.

This last aspect leads us to an interesting conclusion directly related to the cultural consequences of World War I in Spain: a large part of the institution’s members, mostly the aristocracy, came to the National Society from the Wagnerian Association of Madrid, which had disappeared in 1914. Their entry into the National Society of Music can be perfectly understood as an attempt to dissociate themselves from the German side during the years of conflict, but not because they truly liked the new Francophile aesthetic and the vanguardism imposed by the National Society. A good proof of this consists in the fact that this group started leaving the institution once the war was over.

To conclude, all of these issues confirm that the institution did not have its hypothetical and presupposed democratic effects. Its capacity for the musical indoctrination of the society was reduced to its internal circle and to a limited and exclusive number of members who remained until the end. Nevertheless, we also have to recognize their undeniable merits related to musical diffusion, since it was thanks to its activity that the vanguards could enter Spain and become the inspiration for the composers of the next period—the so‐called “Generation of ’27.” In this sense, the aftermath of the Society’s activities would be positive because, despite the elitism and the sectarianism, and putting away the aesthetic debates, the musical diffusion was transcendental for the cultural and musical regeneration that took place in Spain during the first third of the twentieth century.