How a City Sings from November to November

Illuminates the place of music in the life and poetry of Federico García Lorca.

“Yo ante todo, soy músico,” Federico García Lorca once remarked: “Before all else, I am a musician.” Whether seated at the piano, collecting folksongs on his travels through Spain, or composing music for his plays, few poets have lived music so deeply. For Lorca, songs were “living creatures.” How a City Sings from November to November: Lorca on Music brings together for the first time in English the poet’s writing on music and musicians. In these pages, through lectures, letters, and interviews, Lorca celebrates the musical seasons of Granada, “a city enclosed by mountains and made for music”; the sources of cante jondo (flamenco deep song); the haunting melodies of Spanish cradle songs; and the dance of La Argentina. He describes learning the guitar, staging Spanish ballads in Buenos Aires, and listening to spirituals in New York. In bed with a fever, he compares it to a “delicate tempo rubato of Chopin.” Based on recent archival research, edited and newly translated by noted Lorca scholar Christopher Maurer, this collection offers an intricate and enjoyable counterpoint to Lorca’s poetry and theater.