Thanks to the Leonardo Grant, Álvaro Torrente has recovered the music of dances from the Golden Age

Álvaro Torrente (Madrid, 1963) has received the Leonardo Grant to Researchers and Cultural Creators to carry out work on lost scores from the Golden Age. The title of his project, À la recherche du bal perdu, aims to compose, interpret and record a selection of sung Spanish dances of the Golden Age of which the scores have not been preserved, in the style of the early Baroque. It is a proposed musical creation based on a musicological investigation and the discovery of poetic texts from the period. The Leonardo Grant has meant, in his own words, ‘a recognition of my research work in musicology and an opportunity to be able to continue with it.’

Today, October 28 at the Auditorio Nacional (7.30 p.m.) listeners have the chance to listen to a sample of the creations of the musicologist at a performance by Raquel Andueza accompanied by the group La Galanía. They will offer a program based on original music from the 17th century, also including three pieces by Álvaro Torrente: a jácara, a zarabanda and some seguidillas.

The three works premiered by Torrente at the Auditorio are the origin of the project that he will carry out with the support of the BBVA Foundation.  Next year he plans to put music to between six and ten more pieces. Explaining how he will choose his next works, Torrente says, ‘what I want to do is make a representative selection of various genres and find the texts. It’s important that the text should be almost complete; that’s a fundamental premise because the reconstruction is based on the poetic rhythm.’

The recovery and transcription of these texts involves research and searches in libraries across the globe: As well as being located in the Spanish National Library, there is also a great variety to be found in Italy (Rome, Florence, Mantua, Verona and Ravenna) and in libraries in Paris, London, New York and Amsterdam. After collecting these pieces, the basic musical patterns of each dance will be extracted and recomposed for performance in concerts and recordings.

The musicological project combines both investigation and creation. ‘Creativity is essential because it forms part of the original work. I’m convinced that the pieces I compose today would be recognized instantly if we played them in the original period: I’m sure Quevedo would identify them,’ explains Torrente.

This project of musical reconstruction of the dances sung in the Golden Age is also a recovery of the poetic heritage of this period. Until now, the sung dances such as the jácara, zarabanda and seguidillas were only known indirectly, as there are very few examples preserved in musical notation, and mostly very late. ‘The final goal is to reconstruct a significant part of the Spanish musical heritage, the sound landscape of the taverns, open-air theaters and salons of the Golden Age, which has largely remained hidden or shielded from our ears,’ explains Torrente.

While he carries out his research, Álvaro Torrente will stage the three works already finished in venues such as the Salle de Cortot in Paris, the Teatro Arriaga in Bilbao and the Instituto Cervantes in New York and Chicago. To mark the completion of the second phase of his project, Torrente plans to make another tour with his new works and to record a second CD, with the collaboration of Raquel Andueza and La Galanía. ‘I’ve evolved from being a researcher into musicology to a neo-Baroque composer,’ he admits.