| Celebrating Hispanic heritage |  |  | | | | Silvestre Revueltas | | | 1899-1940 | | |
Silvestre Revueltas
Redes (Nets), Suite from the Film Score
“Inside me there is a very peculiar idea of nature: Everything is rhythm.“
Silvestre Revueltas
Mexican composer, conductor and violinist Silvestre Revueltas began his musical career as violinist, studying and working both in the United States and Mexico. As a composer, however, he was mostly self-taught, using Mexican street music as a model. In his early works he incorporated the traditional music of indigenous populations and popular folk tunes into loosely structured, highly rhythmic compositions. Later, he adopted a more dissonant style, experimenting with serialism and atonality, earning him a reputation as a “Mexican Charles Ives.” Throughout most of the twentieth century his music was little known outside his country, but today it is experiencing a resurgence, particularly the folkloric Sensemayá and Redes.
In 1929 Revueltas became assistant conductor for Carlos Chávez’s Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional de Mexico. Chávez, the orchestra’s director, was revolutionizing the reactionary Conservatory in Mexico City with atonality and promoting Mexico’s indigenous music, eventually becoming the country’s most important composer. In 1934, Chávez invited photographer and cinematographer Paul Strand to collaborate with him on a film, Pescados (Fish). When Chávez fell out of favor with the new Mexican director of fine arts, Revueltas was given the commission instead, and the project a new title, Redes.
Redes was the first of seven scores Revueltas composed for Mexican films. The quasi-documentary presented the plight of fishermen in their struggle against corrupt politicians and businessmen whose technique of divide and conquer kept the fishermen fighting among themselves. Only after the their leader is killed, do the fishermen unite and triumph. At first the film was not a success, but Revueltas’s score was, and he extracted a suite from the film that includes the music from five scenes. Redes the film is now regarded as a masterpiece in its wedding of cinematography and music, along with the more famous collaborations between the Russian director Sergei Eisenstein and Prokofiev (Ivan the Terrible and Alexander Nevsky).
One of the fascinating aspects of Revueltas’s score is how frequently it calls to mind the music of other composers. In addition to the folk melodies, there are hints of Stravinsky (The Rite of Spring and Petrushka), but also of Copland, who composed El Salón Mexico two years after, and even Bernstein’s On the Waterfront (1954).
The Suite consists of five scenes.
1. “The Fishermen:” A trumpet fanfare  introduces a subdued march over a plodding ostinato. The effect is of drudgery and resignation.
2. “The Child’s Funeral:” An ostinato pulse in the lower strings accompanies a monotonous motive suggesting the numbness of fresh grief.
3. “Setting Out to Fish:” The melodies for this section draw on indigenous Mexican folk music. The impression, one of busy activity, even cheeriness, forms a sharp contrast with the first image of the fishermen.
4. “The Fight:” An ominous introduction in the cellos and basses precedes the intensely syncopated fight. Suddenly, the dirge motive blares out in the brass, signaling another senseless death.
5. “The Return of the Fishermen with Their Dead Friend:” A snarling, but barely audible, ostinato accompanies the funeral march with solo trumpet playing a variation of the opening fanfare, which here is a proper theme. The volume increases very gradually and the Suite concludes with an anguished repeat of the dirge motive.
In 1937 Revueltas joined the Republican foreign brigades of the liberal and leftwing faction in the Spanish Civil War as the general secretary of the League of Writers and Artists. He returned from Spain in 1938 to settle in Mexico City and died there two years later of alcoholism and pneumonia – literally in a gutter.
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| | | Astor Piazzolla
Concerto for Bandoneón
Everyone knows that it takes two to tango, but no one can agree on where the dance originated: African-Argentinean slave percussion instruments? Andalusia? Gypsy? Cuba? Cataluña? For 150 years this characteristic Latin rhythm has been shaped and adapted to nearly every Spanish-speaking national culture.
The arrabal, the squalid immigrant slums of the late nineteenth century outside Buenos Aires, bred its own version of the tango. This was a popular song, laced with bitter urban protest, which by the 1930s had developed into an expression of pessimistic fatalism and a melodramatic outlook on love and life. It was into this world that the parents of Astor Piazzolla arrived in Buenos Aires from Italy. And it was the music of the arrabal that shaped Piazzolla’s entire career.
During the Depression, Piazzolla’s family moved to New York, where he learned piano and the bandoneón, a type of concertina with 38 notes that had become the central instrument in the tango ensembles of his native Argentina. After a stint in Paris, studying composition with no less an eminence that Nadia Boulanger (tutor and muse to two generations of American composers), Piazzolla returned to Argentina to form his first Tango Octet and later his renowned Tango Quintet, featuring bandoneón, violin, piano, electric guitar and bass.
Influenced by his studies in Paris and by classical forms, Piazzolla’s compositions – which he called the “nuevo tango” (new tango) – were a cut above the traditional tangos. No longer dance music, they had been transformed into concert music, although for the nightclub rather than the auditorium. Over the decades, Piazzolla has been inseparably associated with the tango. While the standard tangos popular here in the 1920 to 50s have a certain sameness, Piazzolla’s tango-based compositions, by contrast, achieve infinite variety through his use of complex syncopation and abrupt tempo shifts. Nevertheless, the psychological intensity and sophistication of his music so infuriated tango traditionalists that he was repeatedly physically assaulted and even threatened with a gun to his head during a radio broadcast.
Piazzolla has not only taken his influences from classical, folk and jazz music but has also been an inspiration to such jazz artists as Jerry Mulligan and Chick Corea. His tangos have been arranged for classical violinist Gidon Kramer and for the renowned eclectic Kronos Quartet.
The Concerto for Bandoneón, composed in 1979, demonstrates Piazzolla’s ability to blend the world of the tango with that of classical music. It combines the insistent drive of Latin rhythm with the abstract melodic vocabulary of the contemporary concert hall, punctuated by nightclub riffs.
The first movement is the least melodic, beginning by using melodic fragments rather than full themes that emphasize, even on the solo instrument, the tango rhythm in combination with other Latin beats. In a sense, the bandoneón is used more as a percussion instrument here than as a melodic one. Nevertheless, the movement is in classic sonata form. The rhythmic ostinato becomes hypnotic, persisting as a rhythmic undercurrent as the soloist finally breaks free with a sultry melodic solo that takes us into the nightclub.
The Moderato second movement is a nostalgic melody for bandoneón that opens with a minimal two-note rhythmic ostinato accompaniment. Its lyric flow contrasts sharply with the complex rhythms and irregular phrasing of the preceding movement. The bandoneón embarks on a set of free variations, subtly expressing different aspects of the same emotion as filtered through the haunting melody. Each variation is accompanied by a different orchestral soloist. The middle section brings in the rest of the orchestra with a counter-melody.
A true tango, the final movement, presto, is a high-spirited energetic tour de force. Once again, the bandoneón is used more rhythmically than melodically, but it eventually rises over the orchestra with more melodic strains. As in the first movement, the momentum of suddenly comes to halt to let the bandoneón hold forth with a lyrical melody. The movement ends with a slow repetitive rhythmic buildup, adding volume and instruments for the climax. |
| | |  | | | | Gabriela Lena Frank | | | b.1972 | | |
Gabriela Lena Frank
Three Latin American Dances
American composer and pianist Gabriela Lena Frank was born in Berkeley, California, to a widely mixed background: Her mother is of mixed Peruvian/Chinese ancestry and her father of Lithuanian/Jewish descent. A graduate of Rice University in Houston and the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, Frank traveled extensively in South America drawing on its folk culture as inspiration for her compositions. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2009, she is currently composer-in-residence with the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra. She is also is a member of the multi-cultural Silk Road Ensemble directed by cellist Yo Yo Ma.
Although Frank had always loved and identified with Peruvian music, her “vision” as a composer occurred on her first visit to Peru and her mother’s family. “I had a visceral reaction just to that sound – and for me that’s the greatest argument I can make for some sort of genetic memory of culture...” I welded my love of Peruvian music to all this hard-core musical training I got. We were like athletes, what they did to us. We trained for like 8-9 hours on an instrument every day. And then we were studying all these pieces, picking them apart…We just got skills, but it doesn’t mean anything if you don’t have a vision.” Frank also identified with both the indigenous idioms and the hybrid music of the country’s diverse immigrant ethnic communities and keeps binders filled with musical ideas and transcriptions.
Frank composed Three Latin American Dances in 2004 for the Utah Symphony. It is a work replete with traditional rhythms and harmonies of specific regions of South America. In her remarks about the work, she credits Leonard Bernstein, Mexican composer Alberto Ginastera and Belá Bartók as having provided inspiration. The dances feature a fully loaded percussion section, including, a whip, clave, timpani, conga drums, tambourine and chimes.
1. Introduction: “Jungle Jaunt”
The short recurring motive that opens this movement alludes to Bernstein’s Symphonic Dances from West Side Story. & The movement is a collection of complex rhythms from Amazonian dances, and is structured as a classical rondo with a refrain and two episodes based on new melodies. &
2. Highland Harawi
Frank regards this movement as the heart of the piece. “It evokes the Andean harawi, a melancholy adagio traditionally play by a single bamboo quena flute to accompany a dancer.” The opening is as ethereal as the thin Andean air, recalling some of Bartók’s melodies based on his research of the ethnic music of Central Europe. The dance builds very slowly in volume and intensity, like an approaching storm, accentuated with timpani, harp and chimes. When the storm finally breaks, the tempo increases into the faster middle section; Frank conjured the image of a great spinning top of Illapa, the Inca weather god of thunder, lightning, and rain.
3. The Mestizo Waltz
Frank writes: “As if in relief to the gravity of the previous movement, this final movement is a lighthearted tribute to the "mestizo" or mixed-race music of the South American Pacific coast … In particular, it evokes the "romancero" tradition of popular songs and dances that mix influences from indigenous Indian cultures, African slave cultures, and western brass bands.” A Spanish trumpet and tambourine fanfare opens the movement. The syncopated percussion attenuates the waltz meter.
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| | | George Gershwin
Cuban Overture
In 1924, George Gershwin gained entry into the classical music world with his groundbreaking Rhapsody in Blue. A flood of prestigious commissions followed, including the Concerto in F in 1925 and the Second Rhapsody in 1932. Following the premiere of the Rhapsody, Gershwin and some friends went for a two-week vacation in Havana. Gershwin was fascinated by the small dance orchestras with their novel percussion instruments and exciting, complex rhythms, especially the rumba. He brought home local bongos, gourds and maracas that feature prominently in an Overture he at first wanted to title “Rhumba.” He completed the work in August, just in time for the first all-Gershwin concert at the Lewisohn Stadium in New York, attended by about 18,000 people. According to the composer, “…I endeavored to combine the Cuban rhythm with my original thematic material. The result is a symphonic overture which embodies the essence of Cuban dance.”
As his iconic song reminds us, Gershwin was a devote of “fascinating rhythms.” Like any proper Latin dance bandleader, he lays out syncopated melodies in elegant combinations and permutations. There are classical elements as well in the Overture, particularly Gershwin’s use of contrasting themes and orchestration. One of the themes is a dialogue between oboe and trumpet, the latter’s voice borrowed from south of the border. After a polytonal combination of the themes, a languid clarinet solo ushers in the long, sultry middle section featuring the other upper woodwinds. Gershwin even adds a North American jazz element to the mix – an American in Cuba. A return to a variant of the opening rumba concludes the piece.
Sadly, Gershwin died of a brain tumor in 1937, entitling him to membership in the disproportionately large “club” of composers who never saw their 40th birthday.
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| | |  | | | | Alberto Ginastera | | | 1916-1983 | | |
Alberto Ginastera
Estancia, Op. 8a, Suite from the Ballet
Throughout most of his career, composer Alberto Ginastera attempted to find a synthesis of the indigenous music of his native Argentina and the techniques of the twentieth century. His works, especially his ballets, often feature the fantastic, mysterious and magical stories and symbolism of the native Indian and pre-Columbian cultures. In 1958 he embraced serialism, blending it successfully with the native rhythms.
Ginastera was a world traveler. While he spent many years teaching in his native country, the unsettled political situation, especially the rise to power of Juan Perón, interfered with his academic duties. He was forced to spend many years abroad, mostly in the USA and Europe. In 1971 he settled permanently in Geneva but continued to travel extensively. In September of that year the Opera Society of Washington staged Ginastera’s opera Beatrix Cenci as the inaugural production of the opera house of the new Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington DC.
Ginastera’s earliest works date from the early 1930s, but he destroyed most of them. His Opus 1 is the ballet Panambi, whose orchestral suite, premiered in 1937, established his national reputation. Following the staging of the full ballet in 1940, he received a commission from Lincoln Kierstein to write a ballet with an Argentine setting for the American Ballet Caravan with choreography by George Balanchine (The company, whose goal was to remove ballet from the French/Russian tradition, had premiered Aaron Copland’s Billy the Kid.) The result was the ballet Estancia (The Ranch), but unfortunately Kierstein’s troupe disbanded before it could be staged. The four-movement suite from the ballet was first performed in 1943 and became Ginastera’s most popular work. The complete ballet was finally staged in 1952 at Argentina's Teatro Colón, with choreography by Michel Borowski and sets by Dante Ortolani.
The ballet describes a single day on a large ranch and tells of a city boy’s romance with a ranch girl, the exuberance of the gauchos and the beauty of the landscape. Each movement has its own characteristic rhythm and the music suggests a blend of Stravinsky and de Falla. The four movements of the Suite extracted from the ballet are:
“Los trabadores agricolas” (The Land Workers): This movement features a vigorous rhythm – but virtually no melody – evoking South American dance rhythms. Subtle changes in the basic rhythm create variety and tension.
“Danza del trigo” (Dance of the Wheat): A serene dance evoking the peacefulness of the surrounding landscape fading into the horizon. Here the traditional Hispanic melody provides a sharp contrast to the emphasis on beat in the preceding movement.
“Los peones de hacienda” (The cattlemen): A wild heavy-footed stomp. Musically speaking, these Argentine ranchers are not far removed from Stravinsky's primeval Russians tribesmen. The catch is that Ginastera has drawn from authentic ethnic rhythms, while Stravinsky created his musical image from his own imagination in The Rite of Spring.
“Danza final (Malambo)” (The final dance): Malambo is a machismo dance with energetic steps, The final proof of manhood; it continues until only one man remains standing. Accordingly the dance, which starts quietly with only a few instruments, becoming wilder and faster until the crashing climax. It contrasts the monotonous drive of the other movements with a changing array of rhythms unified by a constant beat. & & |
| | | | Copyright © Elizabeth and Joseph Kahn 2010 |
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