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Art Song Composers of Spain: An Encyclopedia. By Suzanne Rhodes Draayer. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2009. [xxviii, 518 p. ISBN 9780810863620. $75.] Music examples, bibliography, discography, works list, indexes.
As compared with German lieder or French mélodies, Spanish art song, also called canción lírica, has received scant attention from performers, teachers, and scholars. Suzanne Draayer has done much to remedy this situation, publishing articles on Joaquín Rodrigo's vocal music as well as regularly performing his and other Spanish composers' works. Additionally, Draayer has edited several volumes of nineteenthcentury Spanish art song for high and low voice, entitled Canciones de España: Songs of Nineteenth-Century Spain (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2003-2007). Her latest endeavor, Art Song Composers of Spain: An Encyclopedia, dovetails nicely with her work as an editor, and the two projects complement each other well. In this work, Draayer presents extensive information on the composers of the canción lírica, tracing the genre and its creators from 1775 until the mid-twentieth century.
Draayer begins the book with an introduction to nineteenth-century Spanish history, detailing the political and cultural climate in which the canción developed. Though brief, the introduction covers the main events that shaped Spain from the liberation of the colonies in the 1800s to the Spanish Civil War and Francisco Franco's ensuing dictatorship. This review helps refresh those familiar...