In 'Music Criticism and Music Critics in Early Francoist Spain', Eva Moreda Rodríguez presents a kaleidoscopic portrait of the diverse and often divergent writings of music critics in the early years of the Franco regime. Carefully selecting contemporary writings by well-known music critics, Moreda Rodríguez contextualizes music criticism written during the Franco regime within the broader intellectual history of Spain from the nineteenth century onwards.

In Music Criticism and Music Critics in Early Francoist Spain, Eva Moreda Rodríguez presents a kaleidoscopic portrait of the diverse and often divergent writings of music critics in the early years of the Franco regime. Carefully selecting contemporary writings by well-known music critics, Moreda Rodríguez contextualizes music criticism written during the Franco regime within the broader intellectual history of Spain from the nineteenth century onwards.

The Spanish Republican exile of 1939 impacted music as much as it did literature and academia, with well-known figures such as Adolfo Salazar and Roberto Gerhard forced to leave Spain. Exile is typically regarded as a discontinuity - an irreparable dissociation between the home country and the host country. Spanish exiled composers, however, were never totally cut off from the musical life of Francoist Spain (1939-1975), be it through private correspondence, public performances of their work, honorary appointments and invitations from Francoist institutions, or a physical return to Spanish soil. Music and Exile in Francoist Spain analyses the connections of Spanish exiled composers with their homeland throughout 1939-1975. Taking the diversity and heterogeneity of the Spanish Republican exile as its starting point, the volume presents extended comparative case studies in order to broaden and advance current conceptions of, and debates surrounding, exile in musicology and Spanish studies. In doing so, it significantly furthers academic research on individual composers including Salvador Bacarisse, Julián Bautista, Roberto Gerhard, Rodolfo Halffter, Julián Orbón and Adolfo Salazar. As the first English-language monograph to explore the exiled composers from the perspectives of historiography, music criticism, performance and correspondence, Eva Moreda Rodriguez’s vivid reconception of the role of place and nation in twentieth-century music history will be of particular interest for scholars of Spanish music, Spanish Republican history, and exile and displacement more broadly.

Inventing the Recording focuses on the decades in which recorded sound went from a technological possibility to a commercial and cultural artefact. Through the analysis of a specific and unique national context, author Eva Moreda Rodríguez tells the stories of institutions and individuals in Spain and discusses the development of discourses and ideas in close connection with national concerns and debates, all while paying close attention to original recordings from this era. The book starts with the arrival in Spain of notices about Edison's invention of the phonograph in 1877, followed by the first demonstrations of the invention (1878-1882) by scientists and showmen. These demonstrations greatly stimulated the imagination of scientists, journalists and playwrights, who spent the rest of the 1880s speculating about the phonograph and its potential to revolutionize society once it was properly developed and marketed. The book then moves on to analyse the 'traveling phonographs' and salones fonográficos of the 1890s and early 1900s, with phonographs being paraded around Spain and exhibited in group listening sessions in theatres, private homes and social spaces pertaining to different social classes. Finally, the book covers the development of an indigenous recording industry dominated by the so-called gabinetes fonográficos, small businesses that sold imported phonographs, produced their own recordings, and shaped early discourses about commercial phonography and the record as a commodity between 1896 and 1905.

This book brings together 22 essays by musicologists of different nationalities and offers studies conducted within todays most active research lines within the field of musicology. The contributions refer to the analysis of networks of relationships that musical activities and phenomena had developed with the Franco regime (1938-1975). These offer approaches to specific genres (chamber music, instrumental and theatrical music, flamenco, jazz, copla, light music, and cinematic music) and to diverse repertories and creative musical languages (nationalist, Neoclassical, and avant-garde) without neglecting the study of the creation, musical discourse, and its producers (composers, performers, and critics) within the domain of public and private institutional frameworks. Also, they investigate the musical policies that formed part of the regime and involved repertories, creators, and performers. In this regard, the chapters that study music in the context of international relations up to the end of the Second World War stand out, as do those that investigate the impact that historical events such as the Spanish Civil War. Others specifically examine musical influences exerted beyond the Spanish borders on foreign composers and their contexts as well as on Spanish composers in exile. This volume presents a critical synthesis of the historiographic reflection that to date has dealt with the relations of music with the Franco regime, together with an analysis of the theoretic-artistic and identity-defining speeches in force during early Francoism, with an evaluation of their precedents.

English with excerpts in Spanish and French.

The analysis of music criticism, and by extension music literature, has become over the last few decades one of the most active research fields in musicological studies. It has decisively contributed to a reinvigorated understanding of musical life from the 18th century to the present day. It has also provided new methodological tools in order to evaluate the construction processes of the socioeconomic and cultural circumstances that have determined the creation, performance, reception, and intellectual appraisal of the musical reality in contemporary societies. This monograph gathers up to 22 contributions that throw light on a broad range of topics and geographical and cultural areas concerning the situation of music criticism throughout the first half of the twentieth century. So, it offers appealing insights into some of the key elements which define the relationship between music and criticism during a pivotal historical period for the discipline.