Federico García Lorca: música y poesía : la problemática del cante jondo

Resumen

The topic of my essay is the musical work of Federico García Lorca and the effect of
music on poetry. The aim is to present an objective image of García Lorca, the
musician, disregarding his reputation as poet and dramatist.
In this extract, I discuss the theory of cante jondo. The differences between Lorca’s
and later experts’ results are presented from the perspective of modern flamencology.
The first disputed aspect is stylistic categorisation – while the poet makes a distinction
between cante jondo and cante flamenco, flamencologists consider cante jondo as a
subtype of flamenco. The origin of the genre is even more problematic, and, in the
absence of written documents, the debate between the representatives of the
Andalusian and the gypsy origin is still unclosed. Considering the place of origin of
cante jondo Lorca did not state his opinion, therefore, based on some references, I try
to clarify if he shared his teacher’s, Manuel de Falla’s opinion, which is different from
what experts claim today.
Only part of the analysis of Poema del cante jondo is published here, but after the
in-depth examination of the volume it can be stated that despite the disputability of
his theory, the poet could recreate the emotions and thoughtfulness of “deep song”.