Devin Matthews

Music Research
October 13, 2024

Concierto de Aranjuez (1939) Joaquín Rodrigo

Joaquín Rodrigo was born in Sagunto, Spain in 1901. In 1905 a deadly outbreak of

diphtheria in Sagunto spared him but left him blind. From an early age, he was drawn to music

and began his musical education at the Valencia Conservatoire studying piano and composition

using braille. By 1929, already having had some modest success with the premier of his first

orchestral work, Rodrigo began studying with the composer Paul Dukas in Paris.

It was in Paris that he met the woman who was to be his devoted lifelong partner, Turkish

pianist Victoria Kamhi, and they married in 1933. In Paris, Rodrigo made acquaintance with

some of the day’s important composers, among them Manuel de Falla, Maurice Ravel, and Igor

Stravinsky. With the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, Rodrigo lost the scholarship from the

Spanish government which was his main source of income. The couple were destitute, struggling

to earn a meager living teaching music lessons in Germany, where they fled as refugees. Despite

their bleak situation, Rodrigo and his wife found inspiration in their beautiful surroundings in the

Black Forest and continued their artistic pursuits.

In 1938, Rodrigo was in San Sebastián dining with a fellow countryman, the guitarist

Regino Sainz de la Maza. It was during this meeting of friends that the inception of his most

famous work took place. In his writings, Rodrigo recalled the story:
 “We ate well and the wine was not bad at all; it was the right moment for audacious

fantasizing. (...) All of a sudden, Regino, in that tone between unpredictable and

determined which was so characteristic of him, said:

-Listen, you have to come back with a 'Concerto for guitar and orchestra'- and to go

straight to my heart, he added in a pathetic voice: -it's the dream of my life- and, resorting

to a bit of flattery, he continued: -This is your calling, as if you were 'the chosen one'.

I quickly swallowed two glasses of the best Rioja, and exclaimed in a most convincing

tone: -All right, it's a deal!”

In 1939, during what Rodrigo described as a “joyous spring,” he composed near the

Luxembourg flower gardens. Later that year, their fortunes having improved somewhat, the

Rodrigos returned to Spain just before the outbreak of the Second World War. With them, in a

heavy chest, they carried the braille manuscript of the Concierto de Aranjuez.

The story of the Concierto de Aranjuez is shrouded in mystery and speculation. Though

the composer and his wife shared more details in recent decades, many stories surrounding the

work had already proliferated. Some listeners connect the bombing of Guernica to the sorrowful

second movement. In his writings about the concerto, Rodrigo stated that he was inspired by

imagining the 18th-century Spanish court of the Bourbon King Charles IV. Another possible

catalyst for the composition was more personal: in 1939, seven months pregnant, Victoria
suffered a miscarriage of their first child. In her 1992 autobiography, Victoria says that after the

miscarriage and her serious illness that followed,

“[Joaquin] would spend the long hours of the night at the old piano, unable to sleep…she

heard from her room a melody as full of sadness and longing that it truly gave her chills. This

melody would become the ‘Adagio’ of the Concierto de Aranjuez… It was an evocation of the

happy days of our honeymoon, when we walked in the park at Aranjuez, and at the same time, it

was a love song.”

Following this time of trial, the Rodrigos finally found some stability. The Concierto de

Aranjuez was an instant success at its premiere in Barcelona in 1940 and was performed by

Regino Sainz de la Maza, to whom it was dedicated. The following year, Joaquín and Victoria

welcomed the birth of their daughter, Cecilia. The concerto brought recognition to Rodrigo, who

went on to have a prolific composing career.

The concerto recalls the majesty of the royal gardens at Aranjuez where the Spanish royal

family enjoyed their summer retreat. Set along the river Tagus in central Spain, the palace’s

history reaches back to the Middle Ages. In the passages of the concerto Rodrigo hoped to call

forth “the fragrance of magnolias, the singing of birds, and the gushing of fountains.”

Stylistically, the work is a prime example of neoclassical Spanish nationalism. Rodrigo

followed the conventional three-movement format: Allegro con spirito, Adagio, and Allegro

gentile. The piece pays homage to the musical traditions of Spain, particularly to flamenco, the
passionate music of the nomadic Romani people. The scoring of the orchestra is done very

strategically so as not to overshadow the guitar. The guitar is successful due to its intensity,

rather than pure volume, and its range of colorful timbres.

In Rodrigo’s day, the classical guitar was not yet the popular instrument of today; the

Spanish guitarist Andrés Segovia, a contemporary of Rodrigo, did much to elevate the classical

guitar to a respected concert instrument. Rodrigo, too, would help by contributing many fine

works to the instrument’s modern repertoire. Along with Isaac Albeniz, Manuel de Falla, and

Enrique Granados, Rodrigo was part of a reinvigoration of Spanish music that brought it into the

20th century with a new verve. These composers paid homage to the folk music of their home

country, but blended it with a more modern tonal palette, often showing the influence of their

French education.

The first movement of the Concierto, in D major, opens with the guitar strumming bright

chords using the powerful rasgueado technique, where the back of the right-hand nails strum

individually in a rapid-fire pattern. The rhythms feature hemiola, or alternation between two and

three beats, common in the flamenco song form bulerías. The themes of the first movement are

passed around and developed by the guitar and different voices of the orchestra. The swift scale

passages in the guitar require virtuosic technique from the soloist.

The Adagio draws the listener in with its poignant melody and prayer-like solemnity. In

the relative key of B minor, the guitar once again opens, with sorrowful chords. The plaintive

sound of a cor anglais introduces the melody, which is exchanged with the soloist. The guitar
mimics cante jondo, or “deep song,” characterized by a narrow range, recitative style, and

profuse ornaments. There are also elements of an Andalusian saeta here, a lament sung during

Holy Week. The guitar brings the work to a passionate culmination in its cadenza, with intense

strumming, and finally, the orchestra swells into a last restatement of the main melody. The piece

comes to a gentle close.

The Allegro gentile hearkens back to the stylized dances of the Spanish court with its

light and jaunty counterpoint. Like the first movement, it is in D major and alternates back and

forth between triple and duple meters. The piece ends gracefully, echoing Rodrigo’s description,

that it “only wishes to be strong like a butterfly.”

Joaquín Rodrigo’s most famous work continues to be an enduring favorite of audiences

worldwide and a pillar in the classical guitar repertoire. In Rodrigo’s own words: “...this concerto

awakens every known feeling and mood– love, joy, war, distress, sadness, poverty, richness,

nobility…” Its passages overflow with feeling so that one cannot help but hear their own

emotions reflected in the beauty and passion of the Concierto de Aranjuez.

Word Count: 1214

Laredo, Carlos. Joaquín Rodrigo: biografía. Valencia:‎Institució Alfons el Magnànim, 2011.

Rodrigo, Joaquín. Writings in Music. Translated by Raymond Calcraft and Elizabeth Matthews.

New York: Routledge, 2022.

Rodrigo, Victoria Kamhi de. Hand in Hand With Joaquín Rodrigo: My Life at the Maestro’s Side.

Pittsburg: Latin American Literary Review Press, 1992.