Categoría: the bulls in English

One evening, a full moon shone brightly over the bay at Cullera. It was in the spring of 1989 and on a platform outside the restaurant the local brass band sat waiting. In a few days Antonio Ruiz ‘Soro II’ would be promoted to full matador and tonight, after a gala dinner,  they were to perform a pasodoble written in his honor. Among the musicians, ready to play his part, sat his brother Vicente Ruiz ‘El Soro’, the popular Valencian matador and, surprisingly, a gifted trumpet player. Some years later I was invited to a music festival in the village of Buñol, not far from where maestro Manuel Penella wrote his very taurine opera ‘El Gato Montés’. At a concert in the local theater the magnificent philharmonic orchestra ‘La Artística de Buñol’ performed the pasodoble Vicente Barrera. However the highlight of the evening was the world premiere of ‘¡Oreja! ¡Escucha!’ a piece of taurine music by the Dutch composer Jan Bus and dedicated to me.  All these musical events took place in the Spanish province of Valencia which has a long and outstanding tradition and it is universally acknowledged that the best Spanish musicians (especially those on woodwinds) come from around these parts. Joaquín Rodrigo, the composer of the well known ‘Concierto de Aranjuez’, was born in the village of Sagunto, only 18 miles to the north of the...

Some days ago, and to my surprise I received an envelope that on opening, contained the  book Schönheit und Schrecken, Vom Sinn der Corrida (Beauty and horror, The meaning of the corrida), an almost scientific approach to the corrida in the German language written by the eminent Martin Jurgens from Berlin.  I know the author, albeit vaguely. I think he was one of the initiators of the taurine website stierkampf-corridadetoros.de. In the past he bought one of my books and I remember meeting him and his family once in La Malagueta (I think) during an August feria in Malaga. According to the information in his new book the author was born in 1944 in Berlin and after a doctorate on the late work of Robert Walser and an art-sociological habilitation (‘Modern and Mimesis. Proposal for a theory of modern art’) dr. Jurgens worked as a university lecturer until 2002. After that he had teaching assignments, at the (among others) University of the Arts in Berlin in the course ‘scenic writing’. He has worked for the theater since 1981 mainly as a director of more than 30 stage productions. Martin Jurgens saw his first corrida in Nimes in September 1963. An event with a legendary line-up of Diego Puerta, Santiago Martin El Viti and the newly promoted Portuguese matador Amadeo dos Anjos (who took over from an injured Paco Camino). The bulls came from the renowned ganadero Felipe...