Tricorne

New Zealand Listener, Volume 14, Issue 351, 15 March 1946, Page 12

Tricorne

4 M USIC BY SPANISH COMPOSERS" is a not infrequent visitor to Christchurch programmes and one listens with a view, among other things, to seeking some definite national quality in the music. It is fairly often to be found, and such a work as "Salute to the Bullfighter" could scarcely fail to possess it. But one case recently where the distinctively Spanish quality lay less in the music than in the title was de Falla’s "Three-Cornered Hat," to which a picturesque story could be appended. A reforming King of Spain in the 18th Century, Charles III, issued an edict forbidding the citizens of Madrid to continue wearing the national garb of broad-brimmed hats and voluminous black cloak, and ordering them to resort instead to French models. The earlier wear was, he said, too conducive to disguise and assassination and so forthand the phrase "cloak-and-dagger work" bears him out. But so vehement was the popular resentment that that despotic ‘nd absolute monarch, lacking the in.truments of pacification peculiar to the

present democratic age, found it neces sary to take a country vacation until his good city of Madrid had simmered down; and the edict had to be withdrawn. For some reason, however, this episode never figures prominently in the history of liberty versus tyranny*~and it took the combination of a Spanish composer and a Viewsreel commentator seeking grist for his mill to resurrect it in these columns.