The prolific recording
label, Naxos, is very resourceful in
recycling its own numerous products.
The Arts and Music series is
a fine example of how it’s done. You
take a famous visual artist, fish out
from your stock of previously marketed
discs some pieces (or extracts from)
that were written during the artist’s
lifetime, and hey presto, you have a
new product called, for example, Van
Gogh: Music of his Time.
This may sound cynical
but at least if you buy one of these
discs you may get an interesting compilation
from a given period that mixes some
well known music with some off-the-beaten-track
stuff. If you like one or more of the
pieces you may go and get the original
disc from which it was extracted. So
Naxos wins – but so do you.
This Goya disc
is, I think, the fifteenth in the series
and is typical. There is a range of
music that goes from a jolly little
minuet for guitar through a Paganini
violin Caprice to the profound statement
that is the Adagio from Beethoven’s
late B flat Quartet.
The attempt to draw
meaningful direct links between the
music and the artist is half-hearted,
understandably so since, as far as I
am aware, nobody knows to what extent
Goya was interested in music. So none
of the pieces has any connection with
Goya or his art (apart from being "of
his time"). All that Naxos can
do is draw a link with the artist’s
native Spain which it manages with less
than a handful of the twelve items.
Domenico Scarlatti was Italian but he
did settle in Spain and was the leading
composer there. His pupil, the composing
priest, Antonio Soler, is represented
by a whole, albeit very short, harpsichord
sonata. Fernando Sor and Dionisi Aguado
both have guitar pieces – the national
instrument. Marcos Antonio Portugal
is from Portugal. Close.
Beethoven is the only
composer represented twice. Now here
is a tenuous but fascinating link. Both
he and Goya went deaf, Goya in the 1790s
after an illness at the same time that
Beethoven’s symptoms were appearing.
So even if Goya knew of Beethoven’s
music, which is doubtful, he would not
have been able to hear what it was like.
One way of drawing
a link could have been to choose music
that was in some way in keeping with
the themes of Goya’s work which included
the violent, macabre horrors of the
war that ravaged the country in the
early part of the nineteenth century,
a period that saw the armies of Wellington
and Napoleon trampling across the country
and a hidden civil war between patriots
and collaborator’s with the French.
Goya got into trouble not only as a
suspected collaborator but also as someone
who created "works indecent and
prejudicial to public good", through
erotic paintings of naked women. Links
with these themes are not drawn (with
the possible exception of Beethoven’s
Prisoners’ Chorus from Fidelio)
but some of the paintings and etchings
are nicely reproduced in an excellent
booklet. There is also a substantial
and very helpful essay by Hugh Griffith
covering historical background, Goya
and his work, and the music. At the
back there is a five page chronological
chart showing Goya’s life and that of
his contemporaries.
So what we have is
an eclectic mix of pieces, largely from
the early nineteenth century; most of
them excellently recorded and well performed.
You get a nice anthology with a good
booklet at bargain price. I found it
enjoyable.
John Leeman
NAXOS 8.558178 Arts and Music Series [70:03]
