Tomás Bretón
Encyclopedia
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
musician and composer.
Biography
Tomás Bretón was born in SalamancaSalamanca
Salamanca is a city in western Spain, in the community of Castile and León. Because it is known for its beautiful buildings and urban environment, the Old City was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1988. It is the most important university city in Spain and is known for its contributions to...
.
He gained renown as a result of the success of his zarzuela
Zarzuela
Zarzuela is a Spanish lyric-dramatic genre that alternates between spoken and sung scenes, the latter incorporating operatic and popular song, as well as dance...
La verbena de la Paloma
La verbena de la Paloma
La verbena de la Paloma is a very successful 1894 zarzuela with libretto by Ricardo de la Vega and music by Tomás Bretón. It was adapted for the cinema in 1921 by José Buche, in 1935 by Benito Perojo and in 1963 by José Luis Sáenz de Heredia....
, although other were well-received works, included his operas Los amantes de Teruel, based on the eponymous legend, and La Dolores
La Dolores
La Dolores is an opera by Tomás Bretón.La Dolores was first performed in Madrid in 1895 and was an immediate success. It had 66 consecutive performances in Madrid and another 112 in Barcelona. The title character Dolores is maid at an inn in Catalayud....
. After his death, his extensive output was a generally forgotten. His career spanned the majority of the musical areas of the period of the Restoration (1875-1923): Conservatorium Director, reputed orchestral conductor, composer of óperas, zarzuela
Zarzuela
Zarzuela is a Spanish lyric-dramatic genre that alternates between spoken and sung scenes, the latter incorporating operatic and popular song, as well as dance...
s, symphonic and chamber music.
His aimed to create a Spanish ópera, which would form a basis for a national music. He not only expressed these ideas in his many writings, but composed a series of works throughout practically his whole career which reflectec them, from Guzmán el bueno (1876) to Tabaré (1913). His series of nine óperas, two of them in only one act, are an ambitious body of work for Spanish composers of his time. After a long polemic which delayed its première, Los amantes de Teruel (1889) amounted to its definitive consolidation, and was followed by proposals along very different lines, such as the Wagnerian in Garín (1892) for the Barcelona Liceo and the veristic in La Dolores (1894) for the Madrilenian Teatro de la Zarzuela. His last works, despite being tied to a strong nineteenth-century tradition, contain undeniable interest, such as Raquel (1900), based on the famous romantic drama, Farinelli (1902), composed for the failed Teatro Lírico project, Tabaré (1913), set in America, and Don Gil de las calzas verdes (1914), based on a comedy by Tirso de Molina
Tirso de Molina
Tirso de Molina was a Spanish Baroque dramatist, poet and a Roman Catholic monk.Originally Gabriel Téllez, he was born in Madrid. He studied at Alcalá de Henares, joined the Order of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mercy on November 4, 1600, and entered the Monastery of San Antolín at Guadalajara,...
.
At the same time, he approached the art zarzuela with unequal success. His output, while less than that of his contemporaries Chapí, Giménez and Fernández Caballero, is of great quality, given the variety of genres which he tackled. He made several attempts at composing in the zarzuela grande genre, both in a more traditional line than previous generations in works such El campanero de Begoña (1878) and Los amores de un príncipe (1881), and at the end of the century in the Circo de Parish, with El clavel rojo (1899) and Covadonga
Covadonga
Covadonga is a village and one of 11 parishes in Cangas de Onís, a municipality within the province and autonomous community of Asturias, in northwestern Spain...
(1901), where he adopted more modern procedures, within the limitations of the genre. His greatest fame came from the género chico
Género chico
Género chico is a Spanish genre of short light musical plays. It is a subgenre of zarzuela, the Spanish operetta...
, especially La verbena de la Paloma (1894), one of the most famous zarzuelas of the Spanish repertoire, although he later composed many others which were not as successful.
On the other hand, he wrote symphonic music with a singular insistence, at a time in which in Spain, orchestral ensembles barely existed. He composed and conducted numerous works for the Sociedad de Conciertos, of which he was chief conductor from 1885 to 1890. A result of this were his three symphonies (1872, 1883, 1905), revealing a strong assimilation of Beethoven's compositional techniques. His most successful works were those with a Spanish character, albeit in an Alhambristic vein –such as En la Alhambra (1887)– or a more danceable one, as in Escenas andaluzas (1894). During his last years he composes various symphonic poems with a clear, nostalgic character, such as Los galeotes (1905) based on the famous Quixote episode, and Salamanca (1916) on popular themes from his native region. In the chamber-music genre he has left us various works, including three quartets (one of which is published), as well as a trio and quintet, composed from markedly classical standpoints, influenced by the French world of Saint-Saëns. His wide musical knowledge led him to tackle many other fields such as song, including a song-cycle based on Bécquer's rhymes (1886), which was followed by Las golondrinas, and the oratorio El Apocalipsis (1882) composed in Rome as one of the works written under the Academy scholarship requirements.
The prolific composer for the guitar Francisco Tárrega dedicated one of his greatest masterpieces, "Capricho Árabe", to D. Tomás Bretón.
External links
- Tomás Bretón String Quartet in D Major & Piano Trio in E Major Soundbites and discussion of works