Exile and memory in post-Franco Spain: Julián Orbón’s Libro de cantares (1987)

Moreda Rodríguez, E. (2023) Exile and memory in post-Franco Spain: Julián Orbón’s Libro de cantares (1987). Twentieth-Century Music, (doi: 10.1017/S1478572222000378) (Early Online Publication)

Abstract

In the song cycle Libro de cantares (1987), Spanish-Cuban composer Julián Orbón (1925–91) entered into a dialogue with the work of two other men who, like him, were displaced under the Franco regime: he re-used Asturian folk songs compiled by Eduardo Martínez Torner in 1920; and he followed compositional models deployed by Manuel de Falla in Siete canciones populares españolas (1914). In this article I argue how, by doing so, Orbón engaged in individual and collective memory-building processes that matched to an extent but also diverged from similar processes that were then underway in Spain in the 1980s (following the end of the Franco regime in 1975) and, particularly, in Orbón's natal region of Asturias. I also argue that Orbón's understandings of memory and modernity are unique within the context of displaced twentieth-century Spanish composers, and as such afford us opportunities to reconsider these crucial categories.

• Item Type: Articles
• Status: Early Online Publication
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Moreda Rodriguez, Dr Eva
• Authors: Moreda Rodríguez, E.
• College/School: College of Arts & Humanities > School of Culture and Creative Arts > Music
• Journal Name: Twentieth-Century Music
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• ISSN: 1478-5722
• ISSN (Online): 1478-5730
• Published Online: 01 March 2023
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © 2023 The Author
• First Published: First published in Twentieth-Century Music 2023
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced in accordance with the publisher copyright policy