Hispanic Community; Bloch - 1971-02-02 Beardsley

what marks this is peterborough in us here is hispanic community we're going to war here this program scans to look for thea day is build slowly jr the director of the hispanic society of america and i show discuss various subjects with him we'll see is some music because he has brought along a very interesting record and there's always said this is a very informal broadcast of the beardsley and a remote pond to talk us we would be new on my living room now i would like you ever just that before we went on the air top ten as a few things about your life and your career well i'm finished up my doctorate in spanish studies at the university of pennsylvania almost ten years ago now

post graduate work in spanish at the mercy of heidelberg just before starting and at the time i was in the united states army also and it was at that time that i was married after completing live dr depend i went to university of southern illinois briefly for one year and then on to the university of wisconsin where i was an assistant professor of spanish in nineteen sixty five i was invited to come to the hispanic society is the director of that institution and yes it what is it about high loop because of some interest i think to be cause that germany has always been a center of hispanics dhabi is very much so their true impulse toward modern literary linguistic studies have to have their own slang which as we know them now can of gently in the mid nineteenth century and toward the clothes

particularly with a man named bill home ireland who was investigating comparatively the five romance languages and he had a number of disciples who was at work for awhile various other german universities so that at least two or three of the german universities since the nineteenth century have been quite strong in spanish studies starting with linguistics but then they're branching out into literature years i've often been asked how come that a person born in germany he saw in moore have been hispanic affairs but that is not so amazing considering this tradition of hispanic studies and german know natal is really i suppose the the german romantics who became interested in spanish and there's a particular certain authors among them comment on and we're going to talk about a little bit later years and done it feel that the hispanic society is to be congratulated to have selected you as its direct role because what this a

narrow boat a prestigious institution needed very much was a young and dynamic director and you really have been doing outstanding job now many of our listeners probably don't even know what the hispanic society is not that they know what the hispanic museum of the society is because as it always happens tourists for a mass come to see this the most new yorkers of course i don't it's the same thing with provisions will never go up or pop off got republicans who assumed that the provisions or to talk about in soho where ab one to encourage new yorkers to see that hispanic museum because addiction really one of the best hispanic collections in the world and even in spain people pointed out experts pointed out is one of the finest hispanic connections anywhere and even people from spain was a new york bagel reassessing them were their first stop sizzling there was a first a state and as a few words about the hispanic society in the museum it is necessary is primarily a research institute

was formed early nineteen five by torture huntington the son of color speed huntington a wealthy railroad executive order and builder younger huntington archer spy it's a great deal of time as a young man in texas on the properties owned by the railroad so that by the time he was a teenager he was totally bilingual says their extinction and spanish and in english he then as a man in his will taking the teen years will begin to make trips to spain and came to feel that spain was underestimating the united states both in in terms of the peninsula itself and in terms of what's painted contribute to the new world and so he decided to found yet the money to do this an institution which would present the art and the literature of spain in other words a collection of love painting sculpture glass in every aspect of our

visual plastic cards as well as an extraordinary collection of books and then train himself with some help from a professor from yale who was his original mentor train a group of persons we have almost fifty professionals just what we had to study those bills to collections to catalog them to come to some conclusions about spanish culture to the rationale of that collection was pretty much a historical one and in the case of alaska is for example he was quite content with three of the best paintings did some half dozen of el greco three of korea's best paintings are there the idea not not really quantity in debt but fair representation of the history of spanish culture and its books and it's plastic and that's what they expect and it succeeded extremely wealthy go the museum is really a jewel of an unknown warm pool is interested in hispanic culture nice little lee was sitting at once but coming again and again as i once off

and done i feel that sen this museum will facilitate as it was supposed to do the understanding all of the hispanic people and civilization and cooler counter the blank legend the focal upright legend that still today is very widespread in this country i've had this experience being the schools and i was lecturing lot for the student for the teachers the teachers that many of the teachers were very prejudiced and still are we will talk about this and other broadcast know that said it both ends up to the importance of this collection of course now the hispanic society has also been publishing a number off they say isn't treatises and then on the other hand

it has presented a number of events petain and crisp and a coach and one of the most important recent hispanic cultural events in new york was the premiere of my yacht set the map which is a musical and political in dramatic work and it was really dug debates this meant that this could be produced because another organization had been too timid to do it it was to a bowl and they work and i would like the bill beardslee to tell us something about it although there has been a previous broadcast or were the station before the premiere of mayas the bia announcing the work that way is the author of in the rather the composer and a lot about a lot of being interviewed or the station but now that the premier has been a lot for a few months and they were careful to be performed

iain monday it i would like ok beardsley the tail our listeners about it many of home of course haven't heard about again mathias arena was almost a bit if you will in the jewish tradition of hispanics said back in nineteen sixty nine they're about really a sky by going now this was performed for a permit was given at the metropolitan opera and it now seems that was jonathan had something to do with the presentation of that premiere any event were back at it you can get it all a half a century later with muddy a sabina it is a bold work it's a very exciting work it's too early yet to say i think in terms of the music of the twentieth century comedy a sabina compares with glorious couple of others but it even at this point don't feel it's dreadfully him for ios to help ease somebody's far as i facetiously said if we can do that when every fifty years have to be quite happy

the response time it hasn't been it has been very interesting in spite of the fact that it is a bold work in terms of its text it's music is it is also bold and yet comprehensible i think still melodic to some degree in a very exciting work musically as well as opposed to actually the work was performed two times that he is this past may end by the national opera company of the grid and went back home and played there it is now scheduled in sweet form an abbreviated text far three different art because i think i may be premature about the final arrangements of some senators copper company the pittsburg symphony and the new orleans symphony also either have already planet are having in the planning stage and there's been some talk about a performance in mexico so we feel that obviously this is a work that people were not satisfied here once but it is being

performed around both in europe and in other places in the united states in the world for octavius agreed to a satisfaction and speaking as a music critic i would like to end that it is a great composition great score and of course the text by communal estates a long eight of every year in the good sense of the word controversial all its spanish writer board of the day it's exciting interesting and there i feel that this is a really an addition to the music all the twentieth century and it presents a form that could be compared perhaps a little too with the tragedy of ancient greece yes precisely it was bought out interesting enough with continuous a fearless full ascent in approval who found a happy word tacky for me to describe the farm itself if you'd rather evolved between the two of them the work that is and the family felt that

word tacky phone yet expressed the symphonic and leave the classical tragic banter of the attacks i guess we daresay that seems certainly contemporary money as sabina was the queen is still alive and that we know that a listener janet mushroom cult in mexico so are the things that you brought us yes and it is really a very very exciting to a false politically and musically it's impact i believe we'll continue to grow a truly it is a work that goes on you i myself would like to listen to it again i hope there would be a recording available before ladies of recording of x games before perhaps than the performance in new york was just splendid under the direction of the composer and ways that money is a little mealy yes says marcelino great actress republican actress who was ideal for the partridge is a speaking part or so ideal infectious it's a grueling

role and i certainly should mention the fact that several important spanish names were suggested for the role in spain with the lithium opera company and they finally decided that the best thing they could do was to get money so that limit on an airplane from the argentine into madrid had to do both performances there and debt and therefore we can say that if i called blair the hispanic society before the venerable it's too rigid lee is it is also very young and dynamic one thinks of the beardsley because that it is a very up to date and a real pioneer and does not just live in the past so it's really fulfilled the task that it was assigned by its founder and it's a beautiful thing to say because i know so many institutions which are very rich but have become forty five it's not the case of the hispanic society now lepage is being of music and i know the puppeteers brought

along a very interesting record something that i've never heard before either so would you like a lot of music yes indeed nineteen twenty seven the well known spanish composer money will be a failure composed the score for a seventeenth century play by kyle duncan about a car and a gun attachment the moon will literally the great theater of the world i wish that someone would do a fresher translation of that fascinating piece by cardinal and given the title it's polling more apt or that i like better and that is all the world's a stage play in other words is based on the metaphor of life as as drama life as perhaps tragedy theater in any event an error in a recent essay of mine i think i've been able to show that it seems probable probable that luigi pirandello new going to have to go and that it may indeed that have inspired him or helped him to write six

characters in search of an active very well it's six characters in every well is best known play in fact interesting enough the original work there are six characters and the author who is god is in search of them so that metaphor simply rivers but it certainly there for this special performance in the alhambra itself in nineteen twenty seven on the life i had composed the score very carefully following the text itself inserting music where it seemed that the text tradition called for it and then since he had been trained by philippe petit oh the great spanish music artist of the twentieth century he was able to reconstruct music which we think is as a that's about as authentic is one good could find at the same time he didn't desert his own idiom is it's interesting that modern and ancient music simultaneously one of my favorites is the overture which perhaps we might hear i know

i need to paint creek very good perhaps i should explain what we have with hispanic society and i have to do with players' music for going to the moon you know i was teaching a course at new york university and lamenting the fact that there was no film there are there was indeed very little that one could see and hear it to represent an out of sacramento and at dinner because of that coarse and mr hoffa arrived in in new york i had heard one performance of this

work together with the play in the courtyard of the a schoolyard in the mid sixties but the piece had never been recorded no film had ever been made of them out a second we had just finished telecast of video i'm at a second job and decided that this is the contest that exciting play with an equally exciting score by manuel they fight it would make an excellent movie would feel the gap and out a second encounter very special dramatic form that is perhaps best to translate his kind of pageant and studying the text on it is very difficult for students because they're only seeing for the text of america to the x ray of a beautiful woman all they're seeing is that there are bones there's much more to it than the color of the excitement of it and so they bonded college columbia university under the direction of military to semi years and several other people in the orchestra under the direction of a meadow but now that we got together what i think is a really first rate performance of the

center performing the oldest church near city transit perished and got it all on film and it's the only recorded for me which you can hear that's glorified and that score has never been published and it perhaps some of their fourth time that was ever played since its initial alhambra run in nineteen twenty seven and as he you have written an essay about it yes i did a little piece on the manuscript is on the way five year work on the way in which he dr balzer say to reconstruct what the music to the alto was probably like at the same time as we just heard not to totally abandoned his own modern medium so it's a rather wonderful blend of the old and the new very much in the manner of music for you did do the music for a keyhole the pc or example of what you read in the foreign fighter doesn't do a blend of the old and the new yes yes now we're sense that we will also mentioning your writings the other day the

bill beardslee gave me a new book that he has published and he said that it was a mediocre fi off translations that have been made in spain of two hundred years ago all the classics the ancients and that this was a very dry matter but when you opened the book and read a bit beardsley is common so these translations to see that is not just the geography but the hole in my deck comes to life and that's ruled this question of howl and under which circumstances the ancients legislated in spain in the sixteenth and seventeenth century for example that this sets much light about the intellectual life off spain ian those centuries and i would like to tell us something about the ball well it was it was a long time accompanying that book it was part of my dissertation at

university of pennsylvania some ten years ago and then revised to buy several trips to europe to see books that i hadn't been able to find even at the hispanic society that and then finally published by duquesne university press this past summer an interesting mishap with the book was that in the course of of its publication the printing company who was doing the printing for duquesne press went out of business and the mime and shippers last fifteen years and they never told me i couldn't understand why the book didn't come out they were afraid to tally the lost manuscript that was out in any of them that's kind of another chapter in some of the problems that my translators it hadn't that certainly book publishing hand in spain in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the purpose of this this little book was to try to be a little bit more precise about the period we call the renaissance in the period we call the bar everybody admits that was outclassed bothers you don't have a renaissance that's all very well but what ones and how many is the renaissance constant or does

it change those i think we might have gotten some answers to some of those questions in the book that is certainly as we go from the year at fourteen eighty two which is the date of the first to the publication of a translation into spanish language classics down here seventeen hundred both the numbers of translations being published and the names of the authors who are being published to change radically and violently i was able to more less categorize for different stages i call it of the renaissance if you want to take their missiles all the way down to seventeen hundred year event in those years for different stages for different complexions of the gospel influence in spain now one of the nice things about published translations is the you know tell us who's being translated and where a lot of the favorite works when are they being done but that comes in to the plate and play the question of the reprints of a given translation and this really tells us

how many people were reading what the book was an expensive thing in spencer in the sixties and in the fifteenth century in fact i like to compare probably what we call a luxury incredible and that is one of the beautiful books done in spain in the late fifteenth century that was beau is expensive is a color television relatively as a coalition set was today really interesting things that came out of this i think it's in the book and where is that there is a dearth of the most popular books that existed that is the books that were most frequently printed are the ones that we find the most difficulty getting a little copy of today i finally have come to the conclusion there's some words that they were literally read out of existence because books are so expensive they were passed around sold and resold and resold until it was absolutely nothing left of them but one of the things that we do know we have the paintings and it estimates about this among others and i suppose in the early days of color tv i

certainly would call something like this when you got a book you've called all of your neighbors in and you had a party in human red part of the book to the results posts say was having a little cocktail party for friends to see the new color ten years ago at least when they were rather rather a thing as human nature fire behaves in the same ways under good circumstances i think i would say perhaps one of the most exciting things for student literature about this book is that it it tells us where to look and also confirms the directions that spanish literature itself takes a given period there's been a whole book written on the influence of virtual for example on the novel don quixote the statistics of translation certainly bear that out and the question really is the quixote is that's a seventies has formed

you see a man who is coming to be a writer at the time when precisely virtual is bestseller number one of the classics in spain it fits we have enough cases a demonstrable influence i think to show that pretty much we can work it around the other way if you have an author and you do have a feeling that there's certainly classical tone here find out when you win win he went from age twenty to thirty and i should say that as the speculation in many cases you can get his classical influences through the bibliography that is what are people reading today and there are two aspects to this there's not only the formation of the writer himself but there's the formation of the reader and whether we like it or not from the day that the first book was sold literature was no longer really pure some literature pure than others that use the book became a product and it had to be sold and very few authors refused ever to pay any attention to what the public wanted

obviously there's a great margin of play there but most writers were to some degree aware of what the public like wanted and that that is certainly even subconsciously to have influence they're there it was bibliography gives us a direction but for those things i think it also tells us things about censorship in spain and tells us things about shifts in it not just from one author to another bit from one category to another wi fi in the early seventeenth century spain would appear to be highly philosophical bent seneca antecedents are the best sellers in the early part of the end of the seventeenth century as the sixteenth closes editions of all that are coming off the presses like hotcakes suddenly gone the most famous works on in dallas which is based on the allegorical her to the modern reader seems

dreadfully dense and if you read through it a metamorphosis rather carefully and then goes on the kind of work is not nearly so dense as it seems to be it was created precisely a time when everyone knew his eyelid and this eliminates somewhat them with the author was doing it among many others that of politics team interesting and as i said the bodies fall from guy quite the opposite is going to write about the phillips a second his interest in the classics which is something that i believe most people even those interest in spanish history don't know i confess i hadn't known this at all because that it sheds a new light on human at the new dimension to this somewhat strange and dirty treating personality of philip the second g yet was not only jazz a very dogmatic carefully key was that certainly but that doesn't want to eat then that he was a renaissance

man and the contradiction maybe a real upper hand but i don't think that is any human being without set of contradictions in him no no i think not yes that's quite true i think philip more than any other of the other monarchs firmly from the time period has been actually covers every reigning monarch seems to have commissioned at least one translation no question that phil commissioned by far the highest number and those translations which you did commission are in themselves quite interesting the others tended to have two or three favorites are at least let's say one favorite category of literature poetry epic portrait project phillips engaged in everything he commissioned a scientific translations he committed poetic translation he commissioned greek works as well as as latham works and he was quite carefully played the lord is a yemeni in his days with respect to classical literature another interesting thing that

i don't think anyone had looked at literary patronage with respective to philip they certainly had looked at his patron edge of the arts and that is the field apparently goes through some kind of crisis of midway in his career that is around fifty and seventy five a little bit further than that and begins to prepare for death and his commissions in the arts fall off sharply unless they're connected with the haskell yeah which is actually to be used to and something happened to them that i think could stand or probably is fascinating and i wish to continue this for quite some time how airway since time is running out i would just like to say that it is people like dr beardslee who make it possible for the american public to get a much better understanding of the great hispanic civilization one of the greatest in the world and thereby old soul although they are spanish speaking fellow citizens think has so much of the abyss it's wonderful to have you had a game is

against month one and that will ever see you again he and i hope i think is a lot