Serenata Morisca

During my first year of accompanying dance classes at the Martha Graham school, I made a special effort to attend modern dance performances and take in the style, choreography and music. The first performance I saw was by the school’s student company, Graham 2, and I was so overwhelmed that I just had to come the next day and see the exact same show again. I was spellbound - something about it drew me in right away, and the music was so strange yet powerful and evocative. I began to take stock of the Graham choreography I had seen and the composers who created music for her famous works, in the hope that I could demystify the magic and penetrate this mysterious art form.

The task proved to be surprisingly difficult, harder than I first imagined. In recent years live music has become a rarity for modern dance performances, and as a result, some scores remain obscure and unavailable. For many of Graham’s lesser known works, recordings of the music are also not publicly available. Such was the case with one of the solos I had seen at that first performance, titled Serenata Morisca. This flamboyant, orientalist dance was choreographed around 1916 by early modern dance pioneer Ted Shawn and was performed by Martha Graham during the 1920s, while she was a member of the Denishawn Company prior to forming her own company. Much later, in the 1980s, Graham revived and reconstructed the solo as part of an effort to preserve the legacy of her early career. It is still performed today by the Martha Graham Dance Company - link.

Xin Ying, Soloist, The Martha Graham Company

Martha Graham in the original costume, circa 1916:

I was intrigued by the music for this piece and really wanted to check it out for myself. I knew it was credited to Mario Tarenghi, an obscure Italian composer, but I didn’t have a proper recording to work off of and the sheet music didn’t seem to be available anywhere. After arduous research and several failed attempts, I finally managed to find an old score for a piece called Celebre Serenata in Fa Minore, by Tarenghi, for sale on Ebay in Italy. When it arrived at last, I was delighted to find that it was, indeed, the music for Serenata Morisca, but that the version used for the dance was significantly cut and edited from the original. The old score, in Italian but from a German publisher, seems to be from the 1920s and includes arrangements for both solo piano and small orchestra (see picture above).

So, this is not my own transcription, but in a way getting a hold of this music was a much more difficult endeavor than transcribing it by ear. I remember showing the original score to Reed Hansen, Martha Graham’s legendary accompanist who toured and performed with the company for many years, and seeing his shocked reaction and wonder that I ever managed to find the music. Based on the original score, I identified the cuts that had been made for Serenata Morisca and have made this “ready-to-play” version - just what I was looking for five years ago when I first heard it! I sincerely hope that I managed to save some time and effort for even one other musician, and that this resource will be used, studied and appreciated by dance and music lovers.