The program notes I wrote for the upcoming Lubbock Symphony Orchestra concert (January 24, 2026) are below. Tickets can be purchased here.
The Three-Cornered Hat
Serge Diaghilev (1872–1929) was a Russian art critic, patron, and impresario who founded the Ballets Russes company in 1909. Over the next 20 years he commissioned some of the leading composers of his time to write some of the best and most influential music of that era.
Among the music and ballets premiered by his company are Stravinsky’s The Firebird, Petruska, and The Rite of Spring. Other composers who wrote music for Diaghilev’s company were Debussy, Ravel, and Prokofiev.
In 1919 Diaghilev commissioned the Spanish composer Manuel de Falla to write a ballet based on the 19th-century comic novella The Three-Cornered Hat (El Sombrero de Tres Picos) by the Spanish writer Pedro Antonio de Alarcón. The full ballet score includes a mezzo-soprano vocalist and features excerpts from Spanish musical traditions such as Canto Jondo (deep song). It is the oldest and most profound style of flamenco singing.
The ballet follows the same story as the novella, depicting the corrupt magistrate’s failed attempt to seduce the miller’s wife. It ends with a jubilant, chaotic climax where the townspeople triumphantly toss the magistrate in a blanket. It is set in an Andalusian village.
The ballet was choreographed by the renowned Russian dancer and choreographer Léonide Massine who also performed the part of the Miller. The sets and costumes were designed by Pablo Picasso.
The London premiere of the ballet was a huge success. It established Falla’s international reputation. Its success has endured both as a ballet and as a concert piece.
The ballet’s story is of a happy miller and his attractive wife who live by their mill. The elderly local governor, the corregidor, who is identified by his three-cornered hat, becomes infatuated with the miller’s wife and attempts to seduce her, but she playfully rebuffs his advances.
That evening, the corregidor has the miller falsely arrested and taken away by his bodyguards to get him out of the house. The corregidor then returns to the mill to pursue the wife but trips and falls into the river, soaking his clothes.
The miller’s wife runs away in alarm. The corregidor undresses and goes to sleep in the miller’s bed to dry off. Meanwhile, the miller escapes from prison and returns home. He finds the corregidor’s clothes and his hat. Thinking his wife has been unfaithful, he swaps clothes with the magistrate and leaves a note, intending to seek revenge by seducing the corregidor’s wife.
The corregidor wakes up, puts on the miller’s clothes, and is immediately arrested by his own returning constables who mistake him for the miller. The miller’s wife returns and sees the “miller” (actually the corregidor) fighting with the policemen and joins the fray. When the miller reappears in the corregidor’s clothes, all misunderstandings are cleared up. The couple is reunited, and the entire village mocks the humiliated corregidor by tossing him in a blanket in a finale of general merriment.
The ballet is divided into two parts, as shown below. Asterisks indicate the selections on this evening’s program.
Part One
Introduction*
The Afternoon*
Dance of the Miller’s Wife (Fandango)*
The Magistrate
The Miller’s Wife
The Grapes
Part Two
Dance of the Neighbors (Seguidillas)*
Dance of the Miller (Farruca)*
Dance of the Magistrate (Minuet)
Final Dance (Jota)*
A fandango is a Spanish courtship dance typically in a lively 3/4 or 6/8 time signature. It is traditionally accompanied by guitars, castanets, tambourines, and hand-clapping. The tempo generally begins slowly and gradually builds in intensity, with dancers often performing improvisational footwork and movements that express passion and flirtation.
A seguidilla is a popular Spanish poetic form, traditionally linked to song and dance, characterized by a specific metrical structure and assonant rhyme in the even-numbered verses. (An assonant word or phrase has a repetition of similar vowel sounds, especially in successive stressed syllables, but with different consonants. In “The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain,” the repeated “ai” sound is an example of assonance.) The most famous seguidilla is Carmen’s aria in Act 1 of Bizet’s opera.
The farruca is a dramatic, masculine form of flamenco known for its somber intensity and highly skilled, often aggressive footwork.
The jota is a lively traditional Spanish folk dance. It is characterized by energetic movement, singing, and traditional instrumentation.
Falla employs a large orchestra to create bright, intense sonic colors, utilizing a rich percussion section – including the iconic sound of castanets, tambourines, and xylophone to lend authenticity and a sense of foot-stamping.The orchestration often mimics the sound of traditional Spanish guitars through string techniques and rhythmic figures. The music is highly energetic, featuring syncopation, dynamic contrasts, and a frequent use of alternating or fluctuating meters. Falla’s studies in Paris with composers like Debussy and Ravel influenced his harmonic vocabulary. Yet he achieves a distinct sound that is unique to him and his Spanish heritage.
Danzón No. 2
Arturo Márquez is a prominent Mexican composer best known for this piece, the second of nine. His work incorporates the rhythms and forms of traditional Mexican and Cuban dance music into a classical format.
Márquez was born in Álamos, Sonora in 1950. He was the first of nine children and the only one to become a musician. His father was a mariachi musician and his grandfather a Mexican folk musician. He spent his middle school and high school years in La Puente, California. After returning to Mexico, he studied at the Conservatory of Music and the Institute of Fine Arts in Mexico City.
He was largely unknown outside of Mexico until conductor Gustavo Dudamel included Danzón No. 2 on the program of the Simon Bolívar Youth Orchestra’s 2007 tour of Europe and the United States.
The danzón is a slow, formal partner dance of Cuba, characterized by its blend of European and Afro-Cuban rhythms. It originated in the late 19th century in the city of Matanzas, Cuba, and later spread to Vera Cruz and then to the rest of Mexico. It still thrives today in public squares and dance halls.
Danzón No. 2, composed in 1994, is Márquez’s most famous and widely performed work, often referred to as Mexico’s “second national anthem” because of its immense popularity. A 1993 trip to Malinalco (70 miles southwest of Mexico City) with painter Andrés Fonseca and dancer Irene Martínez was the initial inspiration for the piece. Further visits to Veracruz and ballrooms in Mexico City deepened his interest in writing a second danzón.
The composition is episodic, alternating between lyrical passages and highly energetic syncopated sections. The intensity and tempo build gradually throughout the piece leading to a dramatic close. It is written for a full orchestra and features prominent solo passages that represent two dancers on the dance floor.
The work is deeply rooted in the rhythmic patterns of the danzón, using a repeated cinquillo (a five-note rhythmic pattern) or clavé rhythm (a pattern of three beats in one bar and two in the next or vice versa) typically played by the wooden claves instrument. This rhythm holds the piece together amidst its changing moods and tempos.
Symphonie espagnole
Édouard-Victoire-Antoine Lalo was a French composer, violist, violinist, and academic teacher. His most celebrated piece is the Symphonie espagnole, a five-movement concerto for violin and orchestra that is his only composition to achieve a permanent place in the standard orchestral repertoire.
Lalo was born in Lille in northern France. After studying at his local conservatory, he entered the Paris Conservatoire under the direction of the conductor François Antoine Habeneck. Habeneck was noted for introducing Beethoven’s symphonies to France. He also conducted the first performance of Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique. Badly, according to its composer who described him as a “military bandmaster”.
After graduation, Lalo worked as a string player and teacher. His first works were songs and chamber music. He destroyed two early symphonies. His other compositions that hang around the far side of the repertory are his Cello Concerto in D minor and his Symphony in G minor. His opera Le Roi d’Ys is more praised than performed, which is almost never. It does contain a tenor aria from Act 3, an aubade (a song concerning the dawn), that is often included in recitals or on recordings. The song and this violin concerto are the only pieces by Lalo a serious music listener is likely to encounter.
His violin concerto was named Symphonie espagnole because a typical concerto of the Romantic era had three movements. Lalo’s work, however, was written in five movements which didn’t fit the standard concerto format. Lalo wrote that he used the title Symphonie espagnole because it “conveyed what I had in mind, a violin soaring above the rigid form of an old-fashioned symphony.”
The work was first performed in Paris on February 7, 1875 by the Spanish virtuoso Pablo de Sarasate to whom the piece is dedicated. It is orchestrated for a piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, timpani, snare drum, triangle, harp, and strings.
It was a success from its first performance and rapidly spread throughout Europe. Tchaikovsky was so impressed with it that he set aside the piano sonata he was working on and began the composition of his violin concerto.
Lalo, who was of Spanish descent, used Spanish motifs, rhythms (like the habanera, actually a Cuban dance form as its name indicates), and melodies. The most famous habanera is again from Act 1 of Carmen. Naming the composition a Spanish symphony emphasized the work’s exotic and fashionable Hispanic character, rather than calling it Violin Concerto No. 2 (his first violin concerto was written in 1873). This Spanish flavor was highly popular in Paris at the time, coinciding with the premiere of Bizet’s opera Carmen a month later; the acme of French fixation on Spanish themes. It was to eventually influence both Debussy and Ravel. The piece was the main reason Lalo received the Legion of Honor in 1880.
The first movement is marked Allegro non troppo. It’s in D minor and establishes the Spanish character with flamenco-like gestures in the solo violin and by its driving, rhythmic intensity.
The second movement (Scherzando: Allegro molto) is light dance movement featuring seguidilla rhythms and lively interactions between the soloist and orchestra.
Movement three (Intermezzo: Allegretto non troppo) was added before the premiere at the request of Sarasate. It features a habanera rhythm.
The slow movement (Andante) begins with a dark orchestral passage. The violin continues this soulful mood. The movement ends softly.
The final movement (Rondo: Allegro) make great demands on the soloist. It brings the work to a satisfying conclusion.
