Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1982

Abstract

The two plays of Calderón that were set to music in their entirety have a number of common characteristics beyond those associated with the mythological plays as a whole. Both of the plays were performed in 1660, La púrpura de la rosa on January 17 to celebrate the marriage of the Infanta María Teresa to Louis XIV of France, and Celos aun del aire matan on December 5 to celebrate the third birthday of the Infante Felipe Próspero. Presented in the Palacio del Buen Retiro, set to music by Juan Hidalgo, staged with the appropriate elaborate machinery, and performed by many of the same actors, the two plays deal with similar mythological themes: a victim of love's power is killed because of the jealousy of a god, but there are twin apotheoses in which Adonis, in Púrpura, and Céfalo and Pocris, in Celos, are turned into celestial entities by the great and good power of the very love that destroyed them. On the structural and poetic levels there exist other similarities that tie these two works together even more. Besides the images and metaphors conventionalized in the comedia: «flores,» «sol,» «clavel,» and «jazmín,» for example, there are a number of locutions that make the transition from one play to the other without alteration, such as the stammering «Yo...si...caundo...» repeated once in Púrpura and three times in Celos. While many of these similarities can be ascribed to the chronologic circumstances of their appearance in the works of Calderón, other stylistic aspects of the two plays may well be considered to have their origins in the nature of the play as librettos which must take into account their musical accompaniments. This paper will address the relationship between poetry and music based on the music of Juan Hidalgo for Celos aun del aire matan, and on that of Tomas de Torrejón y Velasco for La púrpura de la rosa. While Torrejón's music is not the original, it does come from a performance of the play in Lima in 1701 and therefore exhibits much of the same musicological heritage as Hidalgo's 1660 score for Celos. The principal difference between the two scores is that Hidalgo's is assumed to be the product of a collaboration with Calderón while Torrejón's is clearly music added to the text at a later date.

Publisher

East Tennessee State University

Publication Information

Crítica Hispánica

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