The sunny south conjures up images, especially for northerners, of bright sunshine, an azure sea and brilliant blue skies, of bright colours, festive dances and enchanting stories, of languid warmth during siestas and nightly dinners in illuminated squares. Even in France, ‘Colores del sur’ and dances from southern Spain, for example, were considered exotic. Since the mid-19th century, the music and dances from Spain have captured everyone’s imagination.
In the 19th century, the Spanish bourgeoisie was mainly charmed by the opera-like zarzuelas. They saw the many Spanish dances as uninteresting folk music and turned their noses up at Andalusian flamenco and cante jondo.
Only in the last quarter of the 19th century did this change, when especially foreigners like Glinka and later Rimsky-Korsakov in Russia and Frenchmen like Lalo, Bizet and Chabrier professed their love for Spanish music so convincingly. In their wake followed Debussy and Ravel, more or less at the same time as in Spain itself Isaac Albéniz and Enrique Granados. Then the writer Federico García Lorca and the composer Manuel de Falla elevated Spanish folk music to the status of national cultural heritage.
Since many Spaniards in the late 19th and a large part of the 20th century worked and often lived in France, the influence has been strong both ways. In fact, Villa- Lobos came to France to look at the art there, but the other way round, Milhaud travelled to Brazil for his work and got to know the ‘couleur locale’ there, which struck him as so colourful and exotic. In short, in Colores del sur, the many crosslinks between Spain and France in particular (with excursions to and from Brazil) are discussed in detail, with a multitude of dances and impressions.
