The Alegrías' Compás

The soleá's twelve counts and five accents, count for count, carried into a major key — where the cadence swings between the tonic and its dominant seventh.

The cycle, count by count

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3accent
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6accent
  7. 7
  8. 8accent
  9. 9
  10. 10accent
  11. 11
  12. 12accent

Twelve counts, printed from 1; five are accented: 3, 6, 8, 10 and 12. Laid out from 12, the accents group the cycle as 3+3+2+2+2.

The alegrías' cycle read three ways, each laid out from count 12: where each reading's groups begin, and which of the five accents land there.
Reading Groups begin on Accents it explains
3+3+2+2+2, from the accents 12, 3, 6, 8 and 10 5 of 5
In twos (2+2+2+2+2+2) 12, 2, 4, 6, 8 and 10 4 of 5
In threes (3+3+3+3) 12, 3, 6 and 9 3 of 5

Only the count in twos puts a downbeat on 8 and 10; only the count in threes puts a downbeat on 3. Three of the four downbeats counted in threes carry an accent, against four of the six counted in twos: the accents favour the count in threes.

Every accent lands on a downbeat of one even count or the other.

Read from 12, the palo's own grouping is the count in threes for its first six counts and the count in twos for the last six.

The soleá and the bulerías accent the same twelve counts. Started from count 8, this cycle becomes the seguiriya's.

Played in a major key, por arriba: the home chord's root on the sixth string, which on a guitar tuned EADGBE puts it on E.

Counts as printed in Alegrías (Wikipedia): 1 2 [3] 4 5 [6] 7 [8] 9 [10] 11 [12], the bracketed counts accented. Tonality from Alegrías | Flamenco Guitar Form (Jonathan Richter, richterguitar.com): "in a major key (typically E major or A major)".

The cadence, in E

  1. E
  2. B7
  3. E

Three chords, ending on E. This is the key the por arriba position plays in with no capo; any other key is the same shapes with the capo moved.

As printed in Alegrías and Cantiñas – major key cantes (John Moore, UC San Diego): E B7 E in E (tonic, dominant, tonic).

The alegrías comes from Cádiz, and its name means joys. It belongs to the cantiñas, a family of lively, major-key palos, and it is one of the most danced of all. Its compás is the soleá’s, count for count: twelve counts, printed from 1, with the same five accents. What changes is everything the count carries — the key, the tempo and the mood.

The same cycle, a different palo

Because the accents fall on the same counts as the soleá’s, every reading in the table above comes out the same as it does there: the same grouping read from 12, the same accents explained by the count in threes and by the count in twos, the same accents that only one of the two catches. That is not a coincidence the page is pointing out; it is the declaration. Its source prints the alegrías’ accents exactly where it prints the soleá’s, and the shared-cycle line above is worked out from the two declarations rather than typed.

What the count alone cannot show is tempo. The alegrías is played noticeably faster than a soleá, and a dancer’s alegrías has sections of its own laid over the same cycle. A clapper who can hold the soleá’s twelve counts can hold these; they will just need to hold them quicker.

The cadence

The alegrías is in a major key, not in the flamenco mode, and its source gives E major or A major as the usual keys. This page opens in E, the key of the por arriba position, where the home chord’s root is the open sixth string. The cadence is the swing its source prints for the major-key cantiñas: from the tonic to the dominant seventh and home again. Pick another key and the same three chords are realised there, the way a guitarist with a capo would meet a singer; the cycle above stays exactly where it is.