In its original meaning, "intrada" denotes the music that accompanies a character's entrance on the stage or that signals the beginning of another work. Employed extensively in Spain, it was adopted by composers in other countries as well.

Arthur Honegger, who like a number of other French composers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries took an interest in Spanish music, adopted and adapted the intrada into an independent chamber form. The present work opens with a cadenza for the trumpet, as though summoning the listener to the bullring. A second, chorale-like section with a Spanish melodic flavor leads into a virtuosic Allegretto in which both instruments are allowed a virtuosic display. A short reprise of the solemn middle section brings the work to a dignified conclusion.



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