In Uniting Music and Poetry in Twentieth-Century Spain, Nelson R. Orringer uses both literary and musical analysis to study sung poems in twentieth-century Spain. In nine chapters, each focusing on an individual sung poem, song cycle, or various poems set by the same composer, Orringer enriches and deepens interpretations of the art-songs by comparing the poet's vision to the composer's. In examining composers such as Falla, Turina, Mompou, Toldrà, Rodrigo, Montsalvatge, and Rodolfo Halffter, Orringer shows that Spanish art-song is an exceptional product of Spain’s Silver Age and reveals a new way to understand and appreciate poems set to music in twentieth-century Spain.

A composer of singular vision. Joaquín Rodrigo (1901–1999) is best known as the composer of one of the most popular works of music in the twentieth century—the Concierto de Aranjuez for guitar and orchestra. It’s been featured in movies and television commercials and remains a staple of concert programs for orchestras around the world. Miles Davis said, “After listening to it for a couple of weeks…I couldn’t get it out of my mind,” and he used it as inspiration for his album Sketches of Spain. But as Javier Suárez-Pajares and Walter Aaron Clark reveal in this musical biography—the first complete study in English—Rodrigo’s work and influence extend far beyond that singular composition. A Light in the Darkness takes us through Rodrigo’s childhood in Valencia, the onset of blindness at the age of three, and the beginnings of his musical education. He achieved some early success in Spain as a composer before moving to Paris in 1927 to advance his studies, following in the footsteps of other eminent Spanish composers like Isaac Albéniz, Joaquín Turina, and Manuel de Falla. There he enrolled in courses with composer Paul Dukas, met the woman who would become his wife, and earned the respect and friendship of Falla, who became his champion. Along the way, Rodrigo’s musical voice developed and matured as his horizons widened. Suárez-Pajares and Clark present a definitive account of the making of Rodrigo’s celebrated guitar concerto, even as they capture the breadth of Rodrigo’s compositional output, from solo works for piano and guitar through chamber music and vocal works to concertos and orchestral pieces. As they demonstrate, Rodrigo’s music is unmistakably Spanish, but with his own unique accent. Rodrigo’s life and career spanned a period of great tumult in Spain, and he had to navigate strong, shifting political and cultural currents—before, during, and after Franco. An authoritative life of one of the twentieth century’s great musical geniuses, A Light in the Darkness becomes a stunning tale of how art gets made under even the most challenging circumstances.

Presents a diverse sample of twentieth century Latin American poems from eighty-four authors in Spanish, Portuguese, Ladino, Spanglish, and several indigenous languages with English translations on facing pages.

From the poems of Anne Bradstreet, Phillis Wheatley, and Emily Dickinson emerges what the author calls FemPoetiks, a discourse of female empowerment. Situating the work of these poets in their historical eras, Linda Nicole Blair considers a sampling of their poems side-by-side with a number of song lyrics by singer-songwriters Brandi Carlile, Rhiannon Giddens, and Lucinda Williams, having found commonalities of theme, motif, and language between them. Blair argues that while FemPoetiks has continued to develop in various ways in American poetry by women, the fact that this discourse finds expression in songs by Americana female artists indicates a matrilineal line of influence from the 1630s to today. In order to show the omnipresence of this powerful feminist discourse, she closes this book with eleven interviews she conducted with female singer-songwriters from around the United States. The phenomenon of FemPoetiks is not limited to the arts but extends into all areas of American life, from the domestic to the political. FemPoetiks is a woman’s truth.

"First published in a slight different form in Great Britain in 2019 by Profile Books Ltd."--Title page verso.

This anthology includes translations of a number of original poems from each of the ten collections of poetry published to date by Spanish poet Ana Maria Fagundo. Its goal is to provide a representative sample of Fagundo's work for an English audience. With the basic tenet of phenomenology as scaffold, the introduction of this anthology elucidates Fagundo's poetic writing as a process whereby the abstract is transformed into a concrete experience through the speaker's own self and body. From Brotes/Buds in 1965 until Trasterrado Marzo/March Beyond in 1999, Fagundo's poetry is an ongoing dialogue with the poetic word. Fagundo's poetic speaker looks into essences, but only in order to reintegrate them into existence. There is no Truth or Beauty or Good out there for which this poet strives, but a truth that each poet articulates in his or her own way. Hers is an aesthetic enterprise, which implies the ethical obligation to affirm life. Candelas Gala is Professor and Chair of the Department of Romance Languages at Wake Forest University.

In Portuguese and English.