Isaac Albéniz: Iberia (Book I) – arranged by Peter Breiner (PB001)

Sheet music edition of the full score. Choose your format from the selection above.

Performance material available for hire. 

53 pages
Duration: 18m
Instrumentation: Book 1, No.1: Evocación – 2+1, 2+1,3d1, 2 - 4, 4, 0, 1 - timp - perc - hp - cel- str
Book 1, No.2: El Puerto – 2+1, 2+1, 3d1, 2 - 4, 4, 4, 1 - timp - perc - hp - cel - str
Book 1, No.3: El Corpus en Sevilla – 2+1, 2+1, 3d1, 2 - 4, 4, 4, 1 - timp - perc- hp - cel - str

The first book of the piano suite Iberia ,12 Nouvelles impressions en quatre cahiers (Twelve New Impressions in Four Books) was published in 1905 and dedicated to the widow of his friend, the composer Ernest Chausson, whose death in 1899 in a bicycle accident he had found particularly distressing. The first piece, Evocacion, is gently evocative, identifiably Spanish yet recognizably in the spirit of French music of the period. Marked Allegretto espressivo, its first theme is set over a syncopated accompaniment and leads to a secondary theme of clearer Spanish connotation. El Puerto takes its name from El Puerto de Santa Maria, a fishing-port near Câdiz. It is represented by a characteristic Spanish dance, with allusions to the technique of the guitar. The first book ends with Fête-Dieu à Séville, generally given in later editions as El Calpus en Sevilla, inspired by the Corpus Christi celebrations in Seville. The procession is heard approaching, with its band and the cries of its penitents, before it passes, leaving the street deserted, to the sound of distant church bells.

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