Spain -- Description and travel; Spain -- History; Spain -- Social life and customs
and painted windows in the cathedrals is excellent, especially that of
Toledo and of Leon; but this art was undoubtedly learned from foreign
workmen, and only became naturalized in Spain. Of carvings in wood and
marble and ivory we have already sufficiently spoken. In textile fabrics
and embroidery, especially in lace, Spain was formerly very rich. The
mantillas of the ladies, the dresses of the sacred images, the copes of
the clergy, gave full opportunity for the production of this fabric; but
the chief effort is now directed to the manufacture of the best foreign
laces, all of which are most successfully imitated by hand-workers in
Valencia and Murcia, where they can be produced at a lower cost than is
possible in colder and more northern climes. Everything in Spain, even
the common use of colour and of flowers by the Andalusian peasants,
shows a natural feeling for art; and its production is hindered more by
indolence, and by the mischievous economical conditions of almost all
Spanish industry, than by any want of talent in the native workman or
artisan.
Though, perhaps, there is no country in Europe in which music is more
appreciated or practised than in Spain, it is singular that she has
produced no really great master. She has many composers of "zarzuelas,"
a species of lighter opera; her traditional dance and ballad tunes are
some of the most inspiriting possible; and her guitar playing is
renowned, but more for the romantic sentiment of the words and the
occasion on which it is used than for the music itself. Well-nigh the
only name for which even Spaniards claim equality with the great
European masters in serious music is that of Don Manuel Doyague, of
Salamanca (1755-1842). His _Miserere_, _Te Deum_, and various _Masses_
are said to equal those of any master of his time.
_Literature._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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