Dance a Fandango in Lucca’s Ducal Palace Throne Room yesterday (Boccherini – born in Lucca – and Spanish Music). An insightful conference (Gabriella Biagi Ravenna & Marco Mangani) followed by a gripping performance by fiery dancers (Romina Pidone and Alessandro Ciardini) in classic costumes by Margarita Martinez, a string-guitar quintet and all from an idea by Roberta Martinelli.
See and hear the Lucca Fandango here:
Most people have listened to at least one piece of music by Boccherini. Conjure up an evening at a masked rococo ball. Imagine talcumed damsels with elaborate hair styles and silk flowery dresses. See periwigged noblemen kissing ladies jewelled hands. Admire the reflections of a thousand candles on crystal chandelier pendants…. It’s that scenario which prompts the ‘Boccherini minuet’ to start up as inevitably as ‘Greensleeves’ announces an Elizabethan courtly scene.
But do most of us know anything more about Luccan born Luigi Boccherini than his famous minuet? Perhaps that he was a brilliant cellist as his statue outside Lucca’s conservatoire illustrates?
That coquettish piece is the third movement of one of his hundred-plus quintets – a form which he invented. Boccherini, together with his musical colleagues, had already formed the first professional string quartet consisting of two violins, viola and violoncello, which scored a big hit on its concert tours in cities like Vienna. When he was offered a job with the Infanta of Spain, a lover of the cello, Boccherini added a second cello so that he could play alongside his patron. Often these cello parts are highly virtuosistic, even stealing the higher registers of the violin and viola, and adding special effects like harmonics. Boccherini’s string quintets are thus somewhat different from what became the norm consisting instead of two violins, two violas and one cello.
After his early years touring Austria and Germany Boccherini spent the rest of his life in Spain invited there by the Infante Luis Antonio of Spain Here he wrote the majority of his works. These consist almost entirely of instrumental music for chamber ensembles although there are some well-regarded symphonies too.
Sadly the last chapter of Boccherini’s life is tragic. He lost his second wife and two of his daughters. His patron died. His health declined and he died in abject poverty of a respiratory disease in 1809 with his galante musical style now surpassed by the romantic revolutionary fervour erupting into the nineteenth century.
And that is the problem with Boccherini. Where does his music really fit in? Did he ever evolve from the mid eighteenth century galante style into something more challenging? There was a time when ‘progressive’ composers were considered somehow superior to ‘traditional’ ones. Elgar’s symphonies, written at a time when Schoenberg was developing his atonality, is a case in point. No longer considered unfashionable now Elgar has reasserted his high place in the British musical galaxy.
I am certain that Boccherini’s reappraisal is near. His originality, only now being reaffirmed, lies in the fusion of courtly aristocratic style with traditional popular music. The Fandango is an excellent example of this. Boccherini takes a dance associated with country peasants and raises it to a sophisticated height without losing any of its earthiness. Other examples include the quintet illustrating the night retreat of the palace guards. The frequent introduction of rhythmic patterns associated with Spanish dances like the seguidilla and the habanera in Boccherini’s is evident to anyone who listens to his often enchanting music
Coming from a family with several professional dancers in its midst including a brother it’s not surprising that there is such a close connection between dance forms and Boccherini’s music. So much of it does literally dance along.
It’s so good that Lucca may come to pronounce Luigi Boccherini in the same breath as Giacomo Puccini. In 1926, just two years after Puccini’s death (which Lucca is currently commemorating in style this year), Boccherini’s earthly remains were translated from that lonely Spanish village to the church of San Francesco, the pantheon of Lucca. Since that time the reputation of a composer whose main aim in writing music was to make people feel better and be happier has grown with abundant fruitfulness..
