Rodolfo Halffter (1900-1987):
Paquiliztli · Obertura festiva · Obertura concertante
La madrugada del panadero · Don Lindo de Almería
The oldest member of a Spanish family of
musicians of Prussian origin, Rodolfo Halffter was born
in Madrid on 30th October 1900. Self-taught as a
composer, he was much inspired by the Harmonielehre
textbook of Schoenberg, who, along with Debussy, was
to have a decisive influence on the music of his
maturity. Through the good offices of the critic Adolfo
Salazar, he and his brother Ernesto were introduced to
Manuel de Falla, by then the leading Spanish composer,
and to the completion of whose ‘scenic cantata’
Atlantida Ernesto would devote many years. A further
stimulus was the Residencia de Estudiantes, a loose
association of forward thinkers which included García
Lorca and Salvador Dalí.
Following the defeat of the Spanish Republican
government in 1939, Halffter chose voluntary exile in
Mexico City, where he taught at the Escuela Superior
Nocturna de Música and won the respect of such
composers as Carlos Chávez and Blas Galindo. In 1941
he began a thirty-year association with the National
Conservatory, while his standing as a writer was
consolidated by becoming editor of the journal Nuestra
música and director of the Ediciones Mexicanas de
Música in 1946. Only in 1962 did Halffter make a return
visit to Spain, when his music, together with that of
Ernesto and Rodolfo’s nephew Cristobál, was accorded
due recognition. Awarded numerous honours in his later
years, he died in Mexico City on 14th October 1987.
Taking his cue from Falla, Rodolfo Halffter
evolved a style of clear-cut rhythmic and tonal contrast,
enlivened by off-beat accents recalling Stravinsky and
polytonal inflections in the manner of Milhaud. In 1953
he began to adopt elements of serialism (the first
Mexican composer to do so), but his use of such
techniques was never at the expense of his essentially
melodic idiom.
Among his last works one of the most striking is
Paquiliztli, composed in 1983 for seven percussionists,
though Halffter’s approach owes less to such pioneering
figures as Varèse or Cage than to the South American
composers with whom he was associated. Opening with a
march-like idea on xylophone and side-drum, punctuated
by cymbals, bass-drum and timpani, the piece generates
a lively momentum as it traces a colourful harmonic
scheme, the main idea being a constant feature either in
itself or as a motivic presence.
Composed in 1952, the Obertura festiva is selfexplanatory
in mood and purpose. The main theme,
alternately graceful and animated, and with solo woodwind
prominent against string textures, has more than a hint
of the Classical Spanish era beloved of Falla. The piece
proceeds as a sequence of ideas related to this theme,
maintaining a robust buoyancy in the process.
On a similar scale, the Obertura concertante dates
from 1932 and is thus among Halffter’s earliest
published music. The clear-cut outlines of the opening
exchange for piano and orchestra, integrated as equals,
as the title suggests, rather than confronting each other
as opposites, hold good over the course of the piece, in
which the influence of Stravinsky and, to a lesser
degree, those of Poulenc and Prokofiev can be
discerned. The central section, begun by a rhapsodic
piano solo, is more lyrical in mood, after which a
curtailed reprise of the opening music rounds off this
compact and personable work.
Along with the Violin Concerto written for Samuel
Dushkin, the ballet-pantomime La madrugada del
panadero helped establish Halffter’s reputation in
Mexico. Composed to a folk-inspired scenario by José
Bergamín, the suite arranged in 1940 gathers together
the main dances in a sequence suitable for concert
performance. The lively Entrada recalls the manner of
Falla’s ballet El sombrero de tres picos. A colourful
Escena introduces the winsome Danza primera,
following which, the cavorting Danza segunda features
some incisive Stravinskian rhythmic writing. The
animated Danza tercera has a recurring idea for piano,
flutes and pizzicato strings, while the heavier Danza
cuarta closes on an expectant pause. This prepares for
the Nocturno, an atmospheric piece featuring imaginative
ostinato writing for piano and the undoubted highlight
of the ballet suite, which then concludes with the
energetic humour of the Danza final.
Five years earlier, Halffter and Bergamín had
collaborated on a ballet entitled Don Lindo de Almería.
First given at the Festival given by the International
Society of Contemporary Music at Barcelona in 1936,
the score was an immediate success, quickly receiving
performances in Paris and in Mexico City (the first
work of Halffter’s to be heard there). Although the
incidents depicted are archetypally Spanish, there is no
attempt to tell a story through the sequence of dances:
rather this is music for the stage after the example of
Stravinsky’s later ballets, an intention consolidated by
recourse to material from Spain’s Golden Age of the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and in the scoring
for strings and percussion.
Bustling divided strings are the mainstay of the
Introducción y Danza primera, after which a sombre
and inward-looking Escena prefaces the contrasting
Danza segunda, castanets adding to the lively
ambience. Violin harmonics begin the Danza tercera in
striking fashion, regularly recurring to colour the music
with harmonic ambivalence, while the astringently neoclassical
Danza cuarta is scored for strings alone. The
Ceremonia nupcial is solemn and restrained, its
expressiveness barely ruffled by a more incisive fugal
passage that briefly emerges. A Baroque courtliness
pervades the Danza quinta, moving, through a brief
anticipatory Escena, into the Danza final. This brings
together elements from earlier in the ballet, which duly
moves towards an incisive and effervescent apotheosis.
Richard Whitehouse