“Tant que les revolutions ressemblent à cela”: L’avant-garde musicale espagnole sous Franco

Historiography has retained that the coming to power of Franco sounded the death knell for Spanish musical creation. This would have resumed gradually thanks to a young generation of composers, including Cristóbal Halffter and Luis de Pablo. Their avant-garde style alone constitutes an act of resistance. As for the dictator, he would have displayed only indifference to new aesthetics. Drawing on unpublished archives and documents, Igor Contreras Zubillaga reveals a more complex reality. He shows that the regime not only accompanied the establishment of a network of musical institutions, but that it also set out to gain international legitimacy by turning to the avant-garde and closely associated this music with its ideology, from the 1960s. For their part, the composers oscillated between claiming their Hispanic character and the desire for international recognition. Especially since they had access to the most advanced experimental research thanks to the support of private patronage, linked to the regime. By reconstructing the history in many tumultuous ways of the Spanish musical avant-garde under Franco, this book sheds new light on the cultural and political history of this period.