Overview
Introduction
The basic question is not when the Fandango in D minor was written, but whether Soler was the composer. Period scholars (early Classical period, of Iberian concentration) remain divided about its authenticity, although no one disputes the work's brilliance or prodigies of invention, given that it lasts 10-12 minutes, depending on the performing artist. Samuel Rubio and Frederick Marvin assigned it a catalog number: S. 146 and M. 1A, respectively. But Rubio stated in his 1980 catalog that "we doubt seriously the paternity of Soler," citing as evidence "a substantially identical ostinato" by another (albeit obscure) composer, "in a Fandango with variations for the fortepiano."
Although pianists have and do play Padre Soler's Fandango (the Escorial owned at least one early fortepiano while Soler lived and worked there), the work was virtually unknown to twentieth century listeners until Rafael Puyana featured it on a Philips stereodisc of Baroque harpsichord music. Various colleagues followed suit. In 1963, furthermore, Anthony Tudor choreographed a ballet to the music that entered the American Ballet Theatre repertoire two decades later. The virtual craze subsided in time, but not the power of a work that obeys the basic rules of a quick-moving, minor-key folk dance in triple-meter, with alternating measures of tonic and dominant harmony in the bass line, above which the melody is elaborated. The nature, extent, and expressive intensification, however, are what make Soler's version singular.
The fandango first appeared in the early eighteenth century, later on with regional derivations -- the malagueña, granadina, murciana, and rondeña, named for their places of origin. But flamenco was the taproot, since fandangos could be sung as well as danced. What Soler may have done was borrow or adapt an existing bass line. Pianist Santiago Rodriguez, who has played the work often as well as recorded it, remembers that it sounded "vaguely familiar" when he first studied the music -- "a walking bass, similar to a street musician's, simple without being provocative." The right-hand elaboration, however, is genius. Soler stated the principal subject after a page of accompaniment that ends in a double-bar, and thereafter elaborated it at extraordinary length (not as a theme and variations, which Rubio and some others have postulated, but rather as a fantasia), with a brief F major section in the middle, before D minor returns. At this point the notation becomes a steady series of sixteenth notes -- a developing frenzy, in effect, during the last four pages -- that ends in a clearly defined coda. Rodriguez has likened this to flamenco dancers starting oppositely and finally meeting, with an implicit sexual tension expressed in both tempo and rhythm.
