Musical nationalism began in nineteenth century Europe and used culture unique to a people or nation to evoke patriotic feelings and pride. Composers employed popular music, folk songs, folk dances and folklore, or music suggestive of folk and popular music, to conjure nationalistic feelings in audiences.
Like other Realists, nationalistic composers communicated extra musical ideas via descriptive titles, accompanying text or poems. Sometimes nationalistic pieces were linked to political movements but, more often, were a reaction to the dominance of German Romanticism—the mainstream European style. Thus, nationalism was attractive to composers working outside of the European cultural mainstream, especially Spanish, Russian and Czechoslovakian composers.
Exoticism
When a composer uses musical material from outside his or her culture, it is called Exoticism. A French composer using Japanese folk music in a symphony is an example of Exoticism. While the uninitiated listener may find Nationalism and Exoticism difficult to distinguish aurally, their origins are different: Nationalism draws on one's cultural roots while Exoticism appropriates culture of others.
Flamenco
One of the most fascinating examples of musical nationalism occurred on the Iberian peninsula during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Flamenco—the music of Spanish Romani—was elevated to the center of Spanish identity. Nineteenth century Spanish composers such as Isaac Albeniz and Enrique Granados were inspired by flamenco and used it as the basis for Spanish nationalism. Ironically, Spanish Romani, also called gypsies, were outcasts but invented the music viewed as the essence of Spanish culture.
Before we listen to Spanish nationalistic music, let's find out what flamenco is and how it came to be.
Spain | Spain (red) is located in Europe (green) but only 13 km (8.1 miles) from North Africa | Wikimedia Commons
Flamenco refers to the folkloric music traditions of Spanish Romani—the gypsies of Southern Spain. In a broad sense, flamenco refers to musical styles influenced by and intermingled with traditional flamenco and played both in and outside Spain. This cross-fertilization of styles coincided with flamenco’s rise in popularity. As flamenco spread, it became professionalized while absorbing aspects of popular music and other Hispanic styles.
In Romani culture, flamenco was an oral tradition passed down to family and friends. Now it is taught systematically in schools and studios throughout the world. There are more flamenco academies in Japan than in Spain!
During the Middle Ages, Spain was a melting pot, hosting a large population of Jews, Muslims, Christians and Romani living together in relative peace. Spain and Portugal were part of Al-Andalus, an Islamic state controlled by Moorish Kings for eight hundred years (711-1492). It was an international and enlightened society compared to most of Medieval Europe: Moors introduced significant technologies, advanced mathematics, astronomy and modern architecture to Europe. The Moors were also responsible for bringing many of the musical instrument families (including the guitar and lute family) into Europe.
When the last Moorish city fell to the Christians in 1492, the Romani remained, coming to be known as Gitanos. Gitanos, like all Romani, are descendants of immigrates from northwestern Hindustan (Northern India), arriving in Europe en masse around 600 AD. The Romani language is closely related to Hindi.
Thus, flamenco's roots are found in the music of the Romani of Southern Spain, especially Andalusia, Extremadura and Murcia. Flamenco also has strong ties to the traditional music of Morocco and North Africa, owing much to the ancient culture of the Moors. Even in the twentieth century, the famous flamenco singer El Lebrijano frequently performed with Moroccan musicians, explaining both flamenco and the music of Morocco were essentially the same.
In its original folkloric form, flamenco included an entire ecosystem of performance activities: singing (cante), guitar playing (toque), dance (baile), vocalizations (jaleo), hand-clapping (palmas) and finger snapping (pitos).
The sound of flamenco is the result of centuries of mixing Romani, Hispanic, European, North African and Middle Eastern music cultures, resulting in a unique musical style. Within flamenco, there are over fifty distinct styles, called palos, and classified by rhythmic pattern, scale mode, chord progression, poetic form and geographic origin. Palos are organized into three broad categories:
Cante jondo: serious mood with traces of Arabic and Spanish folk melodies
Cante chico: light and frivolous mood
Cante intermedio: anything not cante jondo or cante chico
The scales used to create melodies and guitar solos are especially distinctive in flamenco. For example, the scale known as the Spanish Phrygian or Flamenco mode shouts flamenco to even casual listeners:
Standard Western modes and major and minor scales are also used in flamenco. The Spanish Phrygian commonly occurs in palos such as soleá, most bulerías, siguiriyas, tangos and tientos.
Harmony
Certain chord progressions are characteristic of flamenco. For example, a progression of four descending chords—Am–G–F–E—known as the Andalusian cadence, is among the most distinctive sounds of the style:
These chords are frequently embellished with pedal or drone tones created by playing open strings against moving chords.
Rhythm
Compás is the Spanish term for meter. In flamenco, it refers to the rhythmic cycle of a palos, so it's more than mere meter. The concept of flamenco compás is similar to tala in classical Hindustani music. For example, peteneras and guajiras have a 12-beat cycle of 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 (bold indicates accents). In actual performance, flamenco musicians overlay complex layers of rhythms over the top of the compás.
Patterns that define style—scales, rhythm and harmony—form a framework for flamenco musicians to improvise. Each performance is unique because improvisations are created anew. Plus, the spontaneity of improvisation yields a raw emotional energy to a good flamenco performance.
Castanets | José Tárrega Peiró (founded 1890) | Clapping, finger snaps and castanets are often used to accompany flamenco. | Metropolitan Museum of Art
Flamenco Guitar
Flamenco revolves around the sound of the guitar. Flamenco guitars are similar to classical guitars but have a thinner soundboard, less internal bracing, tap plates and lower string height. Thus, the flamenco guitar is optimized for fast playing, percussive tapping and has a brighter and more punchy sound (shorter sustain) than classical guitars.
Flamenco Guitar (1924) | Santos Hernández, 1874-1943 | Note the white tap plate for golpe use. | Metropolitan Museum of Art
Guitar technique, although similar to the classical guitar, has unique techniques optimized for the flamenco style:
Rasgueado
Percussive strumming, called rasgueado, is executed with outward flicks of right hand fingers:
Bulerias | Antonio Rey (2:17)
Golpe
Tapping on the soundboard at the area above or below the strings is called golpe. This technique requires a tap-plate to protect the top of the guitar. See the above video for the golpe technique.
Alzapúa
One of flamenco's most characteristic sounds results from the plucking and strumming of notes and chords with down and up strokes with the thumbnail of the right hand. Upstrokes render a lighter and brighter tone than down strokes. In contrast, classical guitar thumb strokes are mainly down strokes with emphasis on evenness of timbre. This down and up thumb technique is called alzapúa:
Soleá | Antonio Rey (1:45)
Ligado
The technique of using only left-hand fingers to play notes by hammering into a string or pulling a finger off a string is called ligado. In an extended section of ligado, sometimes performers will use their right-hand to tap percussive rhythms or golpe on the soundboard.
Granaína | Antonio Rey (1:18)
Tremolo
Rapid repetition of a single note, often following a bass note, is called tremolo:
Alma | Antonio Rey (2:11)
Now that we've gotten a taste of flamenco guitar, let's take a look at how these sounds were used in Spanish nationalism.
Isaac Albeniz
Isaac Albeniz (1869-1909), a Catalan pianist and composer, is best known for his nationalistic piano works based on Spanish folk music idioms. A child prodigy, young Isaac toured internationally under the protection of his father, a Spanish customs agent. In 1876, at age seven, he studied at the Leipzig Conservatory and later the Royal Conservatory of Brussels under a royal grant.
Albeniz wrote two hundred-fifty piano works. Although he composed operas and zarzuela (musicals with spoken and sung scenes), Albeniz is best known for his piano works, especially Chants d'Espagne (1892) and Iberia (1908), a suite of twelve piano pieces inspired by regions of Spain. Before you hear these pieces, you already know they are nationalistic because of the titles. And, because Spanish folk music revolves around the guitar, these piano pieces imitate textures, harmony and melodies of flamenco guitar. Composers such as Albeniz and Granados drew attention to authentic flamenco, eventually positioning flamenco as the de facto Spanish style.
Zambra
Zambra by Isaac Albeniz was composed for piano but is better known as a guitar piece. It evokes Spain through use of flamenco scales and harmony, open string pedal tones (drones), tremolo, rasgueado, ligado, etc. Unlike true flamenco, this piece is precisely composed in music notation and involves no improvisation.
Zambra (Piezas características Op. 92, 1888) | Isaac Albeniz (5:41)
Enrique Granados
Composer, pianist, conductor and nationalist, Enrique Granados (1867-1916), wrote seven operas, two symphonic poems, three orchestral suites, chamber music, songs and two volumes of piano pieces. He died tragically at sea while returning from the premiere of his opera, Goyescas, in New York: his ship was torpedoed in the English channel by a German U-boat in 1916. Granados managed to scramble into a lifeboat, but his was wife fell in the water. Granados drove in to save her and they both perished.
Enrique Granados and Friend | Granados (right) and Andrés de Segurola in 1915 | Library of Congress
Oriental
Granados' piece, Danzas Españolas Op. 37 - No. 2 "Oriental," was originally composed for the piano, designed to evoke the textures and sounds of flamenco and its ancient Middle Eastern beginnings. The subtitle, "Oriental," refers to the ancient Islamic culture of Medieval Spain—not East Asia.
Flamenco 
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Flamenco Style
Harmony
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Flamenco Guitar
