(Sp.).
A couple-dance in triple metre and lively tempo, accompanied by a guitar and castanets or palmas (hand-clapping). It is considered the most widespread of Spain's traditional dances. The sung fandango is in two parts: an introduction (or variaciónes), which is instrumental, and a cante, consisting of four or five octosyllabic verses (coplas) or musical phrases (tercios), sometimes six if a verse (usually the first) is repeated. Its metre, associated with that of the bolero and seguidilla, was originally notated in 6/8, but later in 3/8 or 3/4.
Its origins are uncertain, but its etymology may lie in the Portuguese fado (from Lat. fatum: ‘destiny’); in early 16th-century Portugal the term esfandangado designated a popular song. The earliest fandango melody appears in the anonymous Libro de diferentes cifras de guitarra (E-Mn M.811; 1705), while its earliest (albeit brief) description is found in a letter dated 17 March 1712 by Martín Martí, a Spanish priest. The term's first appearance in a stage work is in Francisco de Leefadeal's entremés El novio de la aldeana (Seville, early 1720s). By the late 18th century it had become fashionable among the aristocracy as well as an important feature in tonadillas, zarzuelas, ballets and other stage works.
Various suggestions have been made about the fandango's origins, including that it is related to the soléa, jabera and petenera (Calderón); that the Andalusian malagueña, granadina, murciana and rondeña are in fact fandangos accompanied by guitar and castanets (Ocón); that its forebears include the canario and gitano (Foz); that it is derived from the jota aragonesa (Larramendi, Ribera), although Ribera also proposed an earlier Arabic origin; and that the Arabic fandûra (guitar) may be a possible etymological source (Pottier). Yet the two prevailing theories point to either a West Indian or Latin American origin (Diccionario de Autoridades), although Puyana strongly suggests that the fandango indiano came from Mexico; (see also Osorio); or a North African origin (Moreau de Saint-Méry).
One must distinguish between the varied provincial forms that the classical fandango assumed through multi-regional Spain during the 18th and early 19th centuries, and its role in Flamenco, in which it approaches cante jondo, with its florid and non-metric performance, in contrast to the fandanguillo of cante chico (see Cante hondo).
Numerous travel accounts of the 18th and 19th centuries were highly critical of the overtly sensual fandango wherever it was performed (see Etzion). A threatened ban by the church resulted in a trial during which the pope and cardinals witnessed a performance of a fandango and saw no reason to condemn it. This event, reported in a letter by P.A. Beaumarchais dated 24 December 1764, provided the subject for late 18th-century Spanish comedias, and much later for Saint-Léon's ballet Le procès du fandango (1858). The Spanish fandango, like the bolero and cachuca, enjoyed great popularity in Parisian theatres in the 19th century; Arthur Sullivan wrote a cachuca for the chorus ‘Dance a cachucha, fandango, bolero’ in the second act of The Gondoliers (1889).
From the 18th century fandangos have been incorporated by composers into both stage works and instrumental pieces. Notable examples include Rameau's ‘Les trois mains’ (Nouvelles suites de pièces de clavecin, c1729–30); Domenico Scarlatti's Fandango portugués (k492, 1756), ‘Fandango del SigR Scarlate’ (attribution doubtful; see Puyana) and an unedited fandango (see Alvarez Martínez); part 2 no.19 of Gluck's Don Juan (1761); the third-act finale of Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro (1786); the finale of Boccherini's String Quartet op.40 no.2 (1798); Antonio Soler's Fandango for keyboard (late 18th-century; attribution doubtful); Adolphe Adam's opera Le toréador (1849); Gottschalk's Souvenirs d'Andalousie op.22 (1855); Rimsky-Korsakov's Spanish Capriccio (1887); Albéniz's Iberia (1906–9); Granados's ‘Fandango de Candil’, Goyescas no.3 (1911); Falla's El sombrero de tres picos (1919); Ernesto Lecuona's song Malagueña (1928); and Ernesto Halffter's ballet Sonating (1928). Ravel's original choice for the title of his Bolero (1928) was Fandango. Beethoven's sketchbook of 1810 also contains a fandango theme.
See also Spain, §II, 4.
MGG2 (M. Woitas)
Diccionario de la lengva castellana (Madrid, 1726–37/R1963 as Diccionario de autoridades) [pubn of the Real Academia Español]
P. Minguet e Irol: Breve tratado de los pasos de danzar a la española que hoy se estilan en seguidillas, fandangos y otros tañidos (Madrid, 1760, 2/1764)
F.M. López: : Variaciones al Minuet afandangado (late 18th century) E-Mn M.1742), ff.1–6
M.L.E. Moreau de Saint-Méry: Danse (Paris, 1798)
B. Foz: Vida de Pedro Saputo (Zaragoza, 1844/R)
E. Calderón: Escenas andaluzas (Madrid, 1847)
E. Ocón y Rivas: Cantos españoles (Málaga, 1874, 2/1906)
M. de Larramendi: Corografía o descripción general de la muy noble y muy real Provincia de Guipúzcoa (Barcelona, 1882)
‘La jota y el fandango’, La correspondencia musical, iv/198 (1884), 2–3
J. Ribera y Tarragó: La música de la jota aragonesa: ensayo histórico (Madrid, 1928)
M.N. Hamilton: Music in Eighteenth-Century Spain (Urbana, IL, 1937)
P. Nettl: The Story of Dance Music (New York, 1947)
B. Pottier: ‘A propos de fandango’, Les langues néo-latines, xlii (1947), 22–5
A. Gobin: Le flamenco (Paris, 1975)
J. Crivillé i Bargalló: El folklore musical (Madrid, 1983)
M.R. Alvarez Martínez: ‘Dos obras inéditas de Domenico Scarlatti’, RdMc, viii (1985), 51–6
E. Osorio Bolio de Saldívar: ‘El códice Saldívar: una nueva fuente de música para guitarra’, España en la música de occidente: Salamanca 1985, 87–91
R. Puyana: ‘Influencias ibéricas y aspectos por investigar en la obra para clave de Domenico Scarlatti’, ibid., 39–49
J. Blas Vega: ‘Fandango’, Diccionario enciclopédico ilustrado del flamenco (Madrid, 1988), 284–5
J. Etzion: ‘The Spanish Fandango from Eighteenth-Century “Lasciviousness” to Nineteenth-Century Exoticism’, AnM, xlviii (1993), 229–50
J.-M. Sellen: ‘Langage du fandango: de la poétique musicale au sens poétique du cante jondo’, AnM, 1 (1995), 245–70
ISRAEL J. KATZ