My original idea for what eventually became
Salamanca 1936 dates from 2007. I was reading Antony Beevor’s history of the Spanish Civil War at the time and was struck by his account of an early incident in that conflict. On the 12
th October 1936 at a meeting at the University of Salamanca to commemorate Columbus Day, an initially peaceful gathering was interrupted by a violently inflammatory speech by the Falangist General Millán Astray, founder of the Spanish Foreign Legion and a close associate of General Franco. The writer and philosopher Miguel de Unamuno, at the time Rector of the university, responded with a dignified assertion of humanitarian values and after a violent disturbance was led away to house arrest, dying just over two months later.
I immediately saw the dramatic potential of the incident and conceived the initial idea of a
scena for a solo voice and orchestra, already having the voice of John Tomlinson in mind. I sent him a copy of Beevor’s account and was delighted to find that he shared my enthusiasm. He put together a draft adaptation but there the matter rested for many years, apart from securing Antony Beevor’s permission to use his text. Other commissions took up what time I had available for composition but I continued to mull the project over and always hoped that an opportunity would arise to do something about it.
Finally, in the summer of 2018, I had the resources, the time and could at last set to work. What emerged after about three months is very different from the original conception. Firstly, I decided to use a greater variety of texts. John Tomlinson introduced me to Luis Portillo’s account of the incident, originally published in
Horizon in 1941. This provided a lot of additional detail and has been the basis for most subsequent accounts in histories of the period. Its veracity has recently been called into question but the basic facts are, so far as I’m aware, unchallenged. I also got to know some of Unamuno’s poetry and in
La nevada es silenciosa (the snowfall is so silent) found a means of bringing the work to a conclusion.
Once the decision was made for Unamuno under house arrest to tell the story in flashback, it became necessary to include a chorus. As Unamuno re-enacts his active role and in reminiscence, assumes the identity of Astray, the chorus takes on the role of the narrator. In other places, they are either neutral bystanders or Falangist supporters of Astray. In the Epilogue, they sing the text of Unamuno’s poem while he repeats the final words of his speech.
Apart from the poem at the end, most of the text is based on the words of Antony Beevor and Luis Portillo but with considerable adaptation, editing and the inclusion of some additional lines. The construction of this was very much a collaborative process between John Tomlinson and myself, although decisions that produced the final version were my responsibility. The text grew as the music grew and, apart from the final poem, I was rarely more than a sentence ahead of a musical setting for it.
While I was initially attracted to the story for its dramatic potential, I gradually came to see that it has resonances that go well beyond its specific time and place. In fact, it is as relevant now in the present day as ever it was.
- ISMN: 9790570684656 (M570684656)
