Piano suite from Madrid to Aranjuez

In 1989, the staff of Madrid Railway Museum discovered in an antique shop a score for piano entitled El Camino de Madrid to Aranjuez by Hippolytus Gondois. It waspublished in 1851in the press of Casimiro Martin. It was a suite with the following numbers:

Locomotive - Grand galop
Madrid, the pier - Polka
Getafe, first station - Polka
Pinto, second station - Polka schotis
Valdemoro, third station - Polka schotis
Ciempozuelos, fourth station - Polka mazurka
Aranjuez, the landing - Polka mazurka

The finding was picked up by the music magazine Scherzo, indicating that the musicologist Francisco Asenjo Barbieri Gondois cites Gondois as author of operettas and the fellow scholar José Subirá cites him as a conductor. The finding was also picked up by the Spanush newspaper ABC in an article by Leopoldo Hontañón. The same year of its discovery, the suite was recorded by the pianist Raquel Martín Moreno.

In the accompanying study, Luis Fernando Carvajal descrives this work as "lounge music", frivolous and carefree, which was fond of Queen Isabel II, and indicates:

One of the composers who was favored by the Royal Family was Hipólito Gondois. The activity of our illustrious forgotten develops between Barcelona and Madrid, alternating composition with conducting. Unfortunately few details we know about him, but from the application of a musician in the Royal Chapel of Isabel II can draw a sketch, not personal, but musical. In view of such a request, we know Gondois was "composer of the Academy of Paris" and director of the orchestras of two Madrid theaters.

The record case is illustrated with an engraving that represents the opening ceremony of the railroad from Madrid to Aranjuez by Queen Isabel II on February 9, 1851.

So the first movement of the suite sounds like this:

Retiro Station. Buenos Aires.

Retiro Station in Buenos Aires belongs to Argentinian national heritage. It was used in some scenes of the film The Secret in Their Eyes (2009, El secreto de sus ojos) directed by Juan José Campanella following a screenplay based on the novel The Question of their eyes (2005, La pregunta de sus ojos) by Eduardo Sacheri. The station is the localization of endless waits of the victim's husband in order to find the murderer, the travels of main caracter and the perfect and emotive farewell scene on the platform. The scene can be seen on Youtube.
The film, which won the Oscar for best foreign film 2010, used as a stage the central nave, in which a train was maked up to 1974 liverie, and the lobby, that was tricked to the appearance of the year of  the action.

The Ghost Train (1926, El tren fantasma)

El tren fantasma (1926, The Ghost Train) by Gabriel García Moreno tells the story of a young engineer chased by a gang of criminals who had sabotaged the railway and kidnapped the beautiful Helen, daughter of the chief of the station. The movie contains scenes of danger on trains without control. We can find in its scenario reminiscences of the American productions of that era. The film can be viewed online at the website of the film library of Mexico UNAM.

New issue of Des Rails

The new issue of Des Rails, the French web magazine on railway literature, is available on its website from April 15th 2013. Includes stories, poems and photographs. It can be read or downloaded here.

Railways and carriages

The British National Railway Museum in York offered, from 22th July to 30th September 2012, the opportunity to enjoy an exhibition of Japanese art that reflected the introduction of railways in this country. The collection of illustrations on wood proceeded from Modern Transportation Museum in Japan that is based in Osaka.

One of the draws by Kunimasa IV is entitled Train and pedestrians in Takanawa (1873). In it, a train follows its path by the sea while pedestrians, carriages and rickshaws drive on the road and the bridge over the road.

This image bears a strong thematic and visual similarity with some American and European contemporary works. One of them is the 1871 drawing of J. C. Russell entitled On The Road To Bedford Range: A Consignment by The 8:00 a.m. Train preserved in the Nova Scotia Museum of Cultural History (USA).

The other one is the Bineleau's French engraving Le Chemin de Fer Paris-Rouen (1845), that confronts the new railway and the old road in the crossing point.

The common theme of the three artists is obvious: the contrast between the slow, winding and heavy traditional means of transport and the straight, uniform, inexorable and rapid rail. In Japanese and American illustrations, train and carriage enter in competition, a struggle that inevitably win the new environment; otherwise, in the French illustration, the carriage moves defeated, can not compete in capacity with the iron horse, seems resigned to a change of era.

Tracks on the cover

The railroad tracks burst on the cover at its base and converge at the middle or top area. In some of them we can see the destination, in other the pathway fades in the horizon. Sometimes there is a station or a human figure waiting for the train or perhaps regreting his departure. After this kind of covers, we hope to find novels about the flow of life, a personal story, a fate inescapable. The tracks spread always the feeling that the future is written, you can not get out of the rails of your fate... unless you want to star an heroic story, and this is the field of literature.