The appearance of this book is timely, not only for being published in the 25th anniversary of the composer’s death. Despite the continued popularity of several pieces (one in particular), the music of Joaquín Rodrigo falls into that category where being taken for granted essentially equates with neglect.

Earlier publications by Javier Suárez-Pajares and Walter Aaron Clark have taken in the extent of Spanish composers over the Romantic period, and they are well placed to undertake this study of a composer whose life extended across almost the entire 20th century. They opt for a broadly chronological approach, integrating discussion of life and music as it unfolds, and this results in an often illuminating overview of a career played out against seismic social and cultural upheaval – a backdrop from which Rodrigo was always at a remove given his virtual blindness from the age of three.

Much of the biographical information has not been easily available in English, and here emerges a detailed picture of Rodrigo’s early years in and around Valencia, studying in Paris with Paul Dukas (of whom he was a favourite pupil) and Maurice Emmanuel, followed by a decade spent uncertainly between Spain, France and Germany before returning to his home country in 1939. There has been much speculation about this decision, taken on the cusp of Nationalist victory in the Spanish Civil War, to the extent of inferring a new-found loyalty to Franco’s dictatorship. But, as is pointedly underlined here, Rodrigo simply sought the best working conditions and financial security for himself and his wife, the pianist and author Victoria Kamhi, whose support was just one facet of a partnership that never wavered over 58 years of marriage.

A pertinent comparison might be with Prokofiev’s return to the Soviet Union, at a time when Stalin’s control over every aspect of society was becoming absolute. Yet whereas Prokofiev unleashed a whole sequence of major works across the ensuing decade, Rodrigo struggled to establish himself on a larger scale. Certainly, the equivocal reception of Concierto heroico in the early 1940s and his subsequent failure to achieve success in the genres of opera and ballet most likely exacerbated periods of depression that became a feature of his later years.

Not necessarily a miniaturist, Rodrigo was best suited to smaller scale and subtler ventures as exemplified in his songs and music for piano or guitar – his output for the latter was a factor in the guitar’s emergence in the mid-20th century as a ‘serious’ instrument, and its technical prowess is all the more remarkable given Rodrigo was never a practitioner. The present authors are dependable guides to these aspects, and it is to be hoped that works such as Doce Canciones españolas (1951) or the song-sequences El hijo fingido (1963) and Con Antonio Machado (1971) eventually establish themselves in the repertoire.

The main reservation about this book is its frequent impression of being a series of studies or lectures its authors have sought to integrate a posteriori. The detailed yet didactic analyses of its second chapter are not pursued in what follows, while any objectivity subsides in the writing on Rodrigo’s later years, which rather skirts hagiography. Two analyses stand out. One is of Concierto de Aranjuez (1939), actually inspired by Jardin du Luxembourg in Paris but a work that became the unwitting exemplar for the idealised Spanish-ness that Franco was keen to promote; despite this, as the template for future guitar concertos or Rodrigo’s own concertos, its achievement endures. The other is of Himnos de los neófitos de Qumrán (1965-74), with texts adapted by the composer’s wife from the Dead Sea Scrolls, whose hieratic otherness makes it Rodrigo’s most personal work and surely his masterpiece.

The nine chapters have been readably if idiosyncratically translated (with a few factual errors, as on page 394 when the conductor of the premiere of Concierto pastoral is listed as David rather than Eduardo Mata). In his final years Rodrigo’s status as a celebrity seems to have impeded his creativity though not before he had composed one last major work, the calmly rapturous Cántico de San Francisco de Asís (1982). At his death in 1999, the composer had become an icon idealised by many but admired by only a relative few, and it is to the credit of the Fundación Victoria y Joaquín Rodrigo that the intrinsic worth of his musical legacy has gradually been accorded greater prominence (its extensive website can be accessed at joaquin-rodrigo.com).

It was not so many decades ago that an esteemed critic commented on the continued emergence of new recordings of Concierto de Aranjuez as being welcome to the extent that socks were at Christmas. A deeper appreciation of Rodrigo’s overall output is still a work in progress, and A Light in the Darkness is a much-needed addition to the limited literature on this composer in English. It may not be the last word on Rodrigo’s life or work, but in focusing attention on his music it more than serves its purpose. 

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