Fantasía para un gentilhombre

Fantasía para un gentilhombre (Fantasia for a Gentleman) is a concerto for guitar and orchestra by the Spanish composer Joaquín Rodrigo. The concerto is Rodrigo's second most popular work after the famous Concierto de Aranjuez.

The four movements were based on six short dances for solo guitar by the 17th-century Spanish composer Gaspar Sanz, taken from a three-volume work (1674, 1675, 1697) now commonly known as Instrucción de música sobre la guitarra española (Musical Instruction on the Spanish Guitar) (Donis 2005:75). Most of the movements retain the names that Sanz originally gave them. Rodrigo expanded on Sanz's themes to produce a work lasting more than 20 minutes.

Rodrigo composed the concerto in 1954 at the request of guitarist Andrés Segovia, who was evidently the gentilhombre referenced in the title. Segovia took the solo part at the premiere performance on March 5, 1958, in San Francisco. The San Francisco Symphony was conducted by Enrique Jordá.

The first movement opens with the melodic Villano that passes back and forth between the solo guitarist and the orchestra repeatedly. This is the form of the other movements of the work. The music also hints subtly at themes used in the subsequent movements. The second part of the first movement, called Ricercare, is a short piece contrasting with Villano and entirely based on a two-bar phrase, repeated in the form of a complex fugue or ricercare.

The second movement returns to a more lyrical theme with the Españoleta, which has a particularly haunting tune with rich accompaniment of the strings. The contrasting middle section of this movement, Fanfare de la Cabellería de Nápoles (Fanfare for the Cavalry of Naples), brings in rapid, discordant drum beats along with the accompaniment of the guitar and spectral fanfares for trumpet and flute. The Españoleta is then reprised to conclude the movement.

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