COULD BE FLORENCIO LAHOZ THE AUTHOR OF THE ARAGONESE JOTA THEMES USED BY GLINKA AND LISZT?

Abstract

The Aragonese jota themes used by Glinka and Liszt after their respective trips to Spain between 1844 and 1845 appear in a previous work, published for the first time in 1840, Nueva jota aragonesa by Florencio Lahoz, an Aragonese composer from Alagón who became full professor at the Royal Conservatory of Madrid. However, it had to be Pauline Viardot-García, after her artistic journey through Spain in 1842, who spread this work in Paris, through her own arrangements and transcriptions, which were not published until 1876. The existence of the same theme in a Julien Fontana’s earlier work, La Havanne, published by Schlesinger, Chopin’s publisher, in 1845, confirms the work’s transmission in Parisian high culture circles. Subsequently, Lahoz’s Aragonese jota themes were used by other composers during the second half of the 19th century —Gottschalk, White, Iradier,
Saint-Säens, Falla— until his last appearance in Mahler’s Third Symphony, who might have known the work through Busoni’s orchestral arrangement of Liszt’s Rhapsodie Espagnole.