PROGRAM NOTES by ERIC BROMBERGER
Malambo from Dances from Estancia, Opus 8a
ALBERTO GINASTERA Born April 11, 1916, Buenos Aires Died June 25, 1983, Geneva
Alberto Ginastera achieved success at a very early age. His ballet Panambi, composed when he was twenty, brought him international attention, and in 1941 Lincoln Kirstein asked the young composer to write a score for his American Ballet Caravan, specifying only that it should have its setting in rural Argentina. Ginastera set to work immediately and completed the score for Estancia (“Cattle Ranch”) by the end of that year. Set in the countryside of the Argentinian ranchos, Estancia is full of gauchos and beautiful girls, and Ginastera incorporated the local folk- music idiom and dance rhythms into the score, which alternates evocative slow movements with blazing dances. The story is simple but timeless: a young gaucho meets a girl, but she in uninterested–only when he proves his skills as a horseman is she won over. The American Ballet Caravan disbanded before they could perform Estancia, and the ballet had to wait a decade for its premiere in August 1952 in Buenos Aires. But as soon as he had completed the ballet score, Ginastera drew a suite of four dances from it, and this suite– premiered by the orchestra of the Teatro Colón on May 12, 1943–has always been one of his most popular works. This concert opens with the last of these dances–this Danza final has become the most famous part of Estancia. In the form of a malambo, an ancient Argentinian dance, it has been coyly described as “a demonstration of masculinity” by the triumphant young gaucho. Ginastera begins with a shower of sparkling sounds, and soon the dance–built on very short phrases and rushing along above a busy accompaniment–gathers energy and begins to pick up speed. That energy continues without pause as this strident dance drives the suite to its fiery close.
Intrada 1631
STEPHEN MONTAGUE Born March 10, 1943, Syracuse, New York
Though he was born and educated in the United States, Stephen Montague has for the last forty years lived and worked in England, where he is considered a British composer (he holds dual citizenship). Montague studied piano and composition at Florida State University and later earned his DMA from Ohio State University. He received a Fulbright Fellowship for two years of study in Poland in 1972-74 and since then has been based in London. Montague has been a guest professor at the University of Texas and the University of New Zealand, and as a performer he has appeared in London, at Carnegie Hall, at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, Vienna, Mexico City, and in many other countries. Montague has cited the American experimental composers–Ives, Cowell, Cage–as his inspiration, and he has composed a great deal of music that falls outside traditional categorization. He has written electronic music, spatial compositions, works intended for outside performance, theater pieces, and–with the sculptor Maurice Agis–a series of work that combine music and sculpture. One of his most imaginative pieces is a Horn Concerto for Klaxon Horn and an Orchestra of Autos (this and other works by Montague may be heard and seen on youtube). In the printed score, Montague has prepared a program note for Intrada 1631: Intrada 1631 was inspired by a concert of early South American liturgical music directed by Jeffery Skidmore at the Darlington International Summer Music School in the summer of 2001. One of the most moving and memorable works in the programme was a Hanacpachap cussicuinin, a 17th century Catholic liturgical chant written in Quechua, the native language of the Incas. The music was composed by a Franciscan missionary priest called Juan Pérez Bocanegra who lived and worked in Cuzco (Peru), a small village east of Lima in the Jauja Valley during the early 17th century. Intrada 1631 uses Bocanegra‟s 20-bar hymn as the basis for an expanded processional scored for the modern forces of a symphonic brass choir with field drums. The first complete performance of Intrada 1631 was in Bath Abbey, England, 1 June 2003. It was the opening processional for the late-night multi-media event called Abbey Mode: A Sonic Light Event commissioned for the finale of the 2003 Bath International Music Festival. The long shadows of the darkened Abbey were illuminated by special lighting effects (James Loudon) on the giant arches while multiple video projections (Kathy Hinde) on the high ribbed vaulting gave the illusion of a roof open to the night sky
with flying creatures overhead. The 120 performers were masked and in special costume.
Oceana
OSVALDO GOLIJOV Born December 5, 1960, La Plata, Argentina
In 1996 Helmuth Rilling, music director of the Oregon Bach Festival, asked four different composers to write what Rilling called “Cantatas of the Americas.” He hoped to create works composed in the spirit of Bach yet reflecting their origin in the New World. One of those commissioned was Osvaldo Golijov, whose own heritage made him an ideal composer for such a work. Born in Argentina to Jewish parents, Golijov had his early training in Buenos Aires, where he came to know not only classical music but the tango as it was being reinvented by Astor Piazzolla. Golijov studied in Israel, then came to the United States, where he has since made his career (he is on the faculty of Holy Cross College). Golijov accepted Rilling‟s commission and quickly set to work: Oceana, as the new work was named, was premiered at the Oregon Bach Festival on June 27, 1996, under the direction of Maria Guinand. For his text, Golijov turned not to the Bible but to a New World writer, the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda (1904-1973), drawing his texts from Neruda‟s Cantos Ceremoniales and choosing poems that celebrate the many faces of the ocean. The composer was specific about the reasons for his choice of texts and his feelings of connection to Bach: “My aim in Oceana was, like Bach, to transmute passion into geometry, to transmute water and longing, light and hope, the immensity of South America‟s nature and pain into pure musical symbols.” In Neruda‟s poems, the ocean–in its vastness and variety–is a metaphor for all of life. The different movements of Oceana celebrate that variety: the ocean becomes by turn lover, intoxicating wine, enveloping darkness, and even the stones and shells that litter its depths. Golijov scores Oceana not for the orchestra that Bach might have used in Leipzig, but for one more appropriate to the sounds and language of the New World. He asks for a “Brazilian jazz-style vocalist,” a child treble, a double chorus, and a relatively small orchestra: piccolo, three flutes, alto flute, percussion, two guitars, and strings. The music does not speak with the dignity and contrapuntal complexity of Bach‟s cantatas but instead explodes with the sounds, rhythms, instruments, and passions of South American street music.
Oceana is in seven movements that span about half an hour. The opening Call does indeed call the piece to order on the sound of waves, guitars, and the soprano, who–taking the role of goddess of the sea–declaims/sings a wordless text. This flows seamlessly into First Wave, which erupts on the vigorous singing of the double chorus: “Oceana nuptial, cadera de las islas.” A brief instrumental interlude drives the music into the Second Wave–“Quiero oir lo invisible”–just as vigorous as the first chorus and here evoking the sea as a sweeping, intoxicating force. The Second Call–for vocalist, guitars, and flutes–is once again on a wordless text. The chorus returns for the driving Third Wave, and Oceana concludes with two somewhat longer movements. Over guitar and percussion accompaniment, the vocalist sings the Aria, full of longing but sometimes overflowing with energy and with what might be called wordless meditations. Under high string harmonics and the sound of water, the chorus returns for the concluding Chorale of the Reef, which takes us beneath the surface of the sea into a vista of strange and magical shells. The poet‟s wonder is evoked in music of great calm, and finally– after so much seething energy–Oceana fades into silence.
Choros No. 10 “Rasga o coração”
HEITOR VILLA-LOBOS Born March 5, 1887, Rio de Janeiro Died November 17, 1959, Rio de Janeiro
As a young man, when he should have been preparing for medical school, Heitor Villa- Lobos spent much of his free time playing with groups of streets musicians in Rio de Janeiro. He never got into med school, but he did learn a great deal about Brazilian popular music, and he fell in love with a particular form of this, the choros. This was a body of dances and serenades, often of European origin, that were performed by groups of street musicians in Brazil. The choros became popular in Rio after 1870, and it developed a distinctly Brazilian accent, taking on local rhythms and the sound of street instruments. In 1923, Villa-Lobos moved to Paris, and there–far from home–he returned to this form of his youth and wrote a series of fourteen choros across the decade of the twenties. These were conceived for various forces, from solo instruments through small chamber ensembles and on to works for chorus and orchestra. Villa-Lobos brought a mature compositional technique to this popular form, and he described his method in detail: “The Chôros represent a new form of
musical composition in which different modalities of Brazilian Indian and popular music are synthesized, having as its principal elements rhythm and some typical melody of a popular nature, which appears in the work every now and then, always modified according to the personality of the composer. The harmonic procedures, too, are almost a complete stylization of the original. The word „serenade‟ can give an approximate idea of what „choros‟ means.” Scored for chorus and a very large orchestra, Choros No. 10 is the grandest of the series, and it has a complex and interesting genealogy. In 1896 the Brazilian composer and conductor Anacieto de Medeiros composed a brief dance–described variously as either a polka or a schottische–that he titled Yara. Eleven years later, the Brazilian poet and composer Catullo de Paixão Cearense wrote a text for that little dance tune and in the process transformed it into a popular song that he called Rasga o coração; that title has been translated as either “Rend Your Heart” or “It Rends Your Heart.” This tune and text became the starting point for Villa-Lobos when he composed his Choros No. 10 in Paris in 1925-26. The composer led the premiere in Rio de Janeiro on November 11, 1926, it was a huge success on that occasion, and the Choros No. 10 has remained one of the most popular of the series. In addition to what might be described as the standard symphony orchestra, Villa-Lobos calls for a large and varied percussion section that includes a number of native South American instruments, among them the caxambú, réco-réco, and zucalho (both metal and wood). These instruments give the Choros No. 10 an exotic sound, a sound crucial to Villa-Lobos‟ intentions–he wants this music to take an audience far, far into Brazil‟s distant past. The Choros No. 10 falls into two sections that span about a quarter-hour. The first part transports us back into a primordial world, one as yet untouched by “civilization.” This is a world of rhythmic energy, exotic instrumental solos, and birdsong–listeners may well be reminded of Stravinsky‟s Rite of Spring at moments here, though Villa-Lobos‟ music does not approach that level of violence. The music drives to a grand pause, and the chorus makes its entrance on hard- edged rhythmic syllables. These are wordless–there is no “text” here–and the voices at first function almost like yet one more percussion instrument. In Villa-Lobos‟ original version, the chorus begins to take up Cearense‟s text for the popular song, and it is on this song–presented with ever-mounting energy by the massive orchestra and spirited chorus–that the Choros No. 10 drives to its powerful conclusion.
SIDENOTE ON THE PRESENT EDITION: The Choros No. 10 may have been a success from the moment of its premiere, but it also got Villa-Lobos in trouble. The descendants of Catullo de Paixão Cearense sued Villa-Lobos for copyright infringement, and he was forced to pull the text out of this music–he substituted wordless syllables in their place. Though Villa-Lobos was eventually able to restore the original text, the Choros No. 10 is heard at these concerts in the revised version, in which simple syllables replace the words of Cearense‟s text.
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