Rhythm and Beauty - January 15, 2022
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Arturo Márquez
Danzón No. 2
The danzón, the official dance of Cuba, originated in Haiti and is popular throughout the Caribbean and all along the gulf coast of Mexico, especially in the state of Veracruz. It has been an inspiration for Mexican composer Arturo Márquez, the son of a mariachi musician, since his childhood. Márquez is best known for his interdisciplinary works, blending music with theater, dance, cinema and photography. His series of eight Danzones composed in the 1990s explore popular twentieth century urban music and social dance, its rhythms and melodies, incorporating them into Classical structures.
Márquez studied piano, violin and trombone in Mexico, and later composition in France. In California on a Fulbright Fellowship, he received an MFA in composition at the California Institute of the Arts. For ten years he taught composition at Mexico's Escuela Nacional de Música.
Danzón No. 2, composed in 1994 on a commission from the National Autonomous University of Mexico, gained instant popularity, and is sometimes referred to humorously as Mexico's second National Anthem. The inspiration for the work came to Márquez from a visit to a ballroom in Veracruz. The composer wrote, "I discovered that the apparent lightness of the danzón hides a music full of sensuality and rigor," and added: "...it is a personal way of expressing my admiration and feelings towards real popular music."
Marquéz's use of the term "rigor" should be taken seriously in this piece. It is based on a brief rhythmic figure, known in Spanish as a clave, the glue that holds
the entire piece together. Over the clave there are three melodic themes. The first opens the piece.
and is followed by a little refrain, usually played by one or two instruments.
The second, more percussive
motive
is repeated many times
until a true melody emerges from it.
Variations on this motive occur throughout the piece.
&
The opening
theme
returns to neatly tie things up into the formal ternary
(ABA)
form that is used for many popular songs as well as classical symphony movements.
Joaquin Rodrigo
Concierto de Aranjuez
Like his fellow Spanish composers Enrique Granados and Manuel de Falla, Joaquín Rodrigo traveled to Paris to study composition and piano. Although he had lost his eyesight to a severe illness at age three, he became an accomplished pianist and a star composition student of Paul Dukas (composer of The Sorcerer's Apprentice). In the early 1930s Rodrigo had to return to Spain when the family's wine business went bankrupt, but he succeeded in obtaining a scholarship and returning to Paris for further studies. During the Spanish Civil War he traveled extensively in Europe, especially through France and Germany, finally returning home in 1939 to settle in Madrid. The premiere in 1940 of his Concierto de Aranjuez catapulted him to world recognition. In 1947 the Manuel de Falla chair was created for him at Madrid University where he composed and taught for the rest of his long life.
Rodrigo's style is far removed from the major currents of European musical development in the twentieth century. Rather, it reflects Spain's classical and folk music, art and literature, frequently using old Spanish melodies as his themes. His harmonic language is so conservative that the eighteenth-century composer to the Spanish court, Domenico Scarlatti beats him hands down in the use of dissonance and adventurous harmonies. Rodrigo composed about 170 works, including eleven concertos, 60 songs and music for the ballet, theater and film.
The Concierto de Aranjuez has remained Rodrigo's most popular work. While he maintained that there was no program implied, the title refers to a famous royal enclave on the road to Andalusia on the Tagus river near Madrid. According to the composer, the music "...seems to bring to life the essence of eighteenth-century court life, where aristocratic distinction blends with popular culture. ...The Concerto is meant to sound like the hidden breeze that stirs the treetops in the parks; it should only be as strong as a butterfly and as delicate as a veronica [a pass with the cape at a bullfight]."
The guitar solo that opens the Concerto sets up a series of strummed chords that promise, but delay, the arrival of the principal theme.
Only a full minute later, after the orchestra has repeated the pattern, does the
theme
actually appear, played by the violins with the orchestra and soloist engaging in a musical dialogue.
The Adagio is truly the heart of the Concerto, capturing for the concert hall the brooding Flamenco strains in a late-night bar. Here a mournful, modal theme is introduced by that most
quintessentially melancholy instrument, the English horn.
But it is the guitar that sinuously, even lovingly, embellishes the melody like an example of fine decorative Moorish calligraphy.
The melody has morphed into everything from elevator music to the award-winning jazz recording for trumpet and flugelhorn by Miles Davis.
The final movement comes like a splash of cold water on a smoldering sunburn. Again the guitar soloist begins the movement in accordance with the usual classical concerto structure.
The movement is a series of
free variations
based on a lively sixteenth-century folksong. The transformations of the theme become the topic of discussion between the soloist and various members of the orchestra, as well as a vehicle
for some charming orchestral color. Just as it had the first word, the lone voice of the guitar has the last one.
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Symphony No. 4 in F minor, Op. 36
In the roster of Russian nationalist composers at the end of the nineteenth century, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was an oddity. Although an ardent nationalist, he did not espouse the Nationalist movement in music, symbolized by such composers as Modest Mussorgsky, Aleksander Borodin, Mily Balakirev and Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov. Despite the many folk elements in his music, his great melodic gift enabled him to develop his own themes and only occasionally use borrowed melodies. Instead of nationalistic themes, his music usually was a vehicle to express his personal anguish and erratic mood swings.
The son of a mining engineer, Tchaikovsky had an economically comfortable but unsettled childhood, as his father relocated from one post to the other. He was a precocious child with a gift for words, reading French and German at age six; the seven-year-old started to write a biography of Joan of Arc.
The family recognized Tchaikovsky's musical talents, but in 1852 he was entered into St. Petersburg's School of Jurisprudence, which he attended for seven years. It was there that he first became aware of his homosexuality; he took its negative social implications seriously, especially the effect it could have on his family. His emotional conflict exacerbated extreme mood swings with frequent bouts of deep depression and self-doubt that dogged him from childhood until his death.
The School of Jurisprudence provided a well-rounded education, including music, and Tchaikovsky also availed himself also to the many cultural opportunities of the city. After graduation he was assigned a job in the Ministry of Justice, but music became more and more the center of his cultural life.
His serious musical studies began in 1861; a year later, he was accepted into the first class of the newly opened St. Petersburg Conservatory, graduating in 1865. His principal teacher was pianist and composer Anton Rubinstein, whose strong personality instilled in Tchaikovsky compositional discipline: to sketch quickly to the end of a work, then score; work every day, and hold to music as a sacred calling.
After graduation, Tchaikovsky was recruited by Nikolay Rubinstein, Anton's brother, for the new music conservatory in Moscow. But he was not a good teacher, ever dogged by feelings of insecurity. He also resented the time it took away from composing.
Things were actually looking up for Tchaikovsky during the early part of 1877. He had his first contact with Nadezhda von Meck, the wealthy widow of a railroad builder, who fell in love with Tchaikovsky's music and arranged to pay him a large annual stipend. The only stipulation she attached to her generous help was that they never meet in person, although they corresponded voluminously. In May he started work on the Fourth Symphony, but in July came his disastrous marriage to one of his students, Antonina Milyukova, who had fallen madly in love with him and had written to him confessing her devotion. Although Tchaikovsky, who was homosexual, didn't even remember the girl, he hoped the marriage would still the rumors about his sexual preference. Instead he fled Antonina after two weeks. In total despair, he made a pathetic attempt at suicide (he walked into the Moskva River, hoping to die of pneumonia) and ended up with a complete mental collapse. To recuperate, his brother took him to Switzerland and Italy, where he picked up work on the symphony, finishing it in January 1878.
Of course my symphony is programmatic, but this program is such that it cannot be formulated in words. That would excite ridicule and appear comic. Ought not a symphony - that is, the most lyrical of all forms - to be such a work? Should it not express everything for which there are no words, but which the soul wishes to express, and which requires to be expressed?
In Tchaikovsky's last three symphonies, motivic unity among the movements was to take an increasingly more prominent role. The symphony opens with a sinister fanfare-like
theme
by the brass, which recurs as the movement unfolds.
The anxiety-laden main theme, which Tchaikovsky develops on the spot, strives towards a resolution that continually seems to elude it.
The relief comes with the second theme, one of Tchaikovsky's inimitable melodies, a waltz for solo clarinet,
and a third played in
counterpoint
with the clarinet theme by the strings and timpani.
The development, based exclusively on the main theme and the fanfare, begins quietly, slowly ramping up the emotional tension. After the recapitulation, the fanfare announces a long two-part coda with a
new theme set contrapuntally against the main theme to resolve the movement on a more positive note.
But just as we are starting to sit back and relax, the fanfare returns to blast us back into Tchaikovsky's stormy reality.
The second movement, by contrast, opens with a plaintive melody on the oboe, accompanied by pizzicato strings.
The oboe theme is answered by a more intense second theme in the strings.
The pace picks up as the composer adds a dance-like melody.
Typical Tchaikovsky anxiety mounts,
until he returns to the gentle oboe theme now in the violins, adorned with feathery ornaments in the winds recalling the accompaniment to the clarinet theme in the first movement.
The third movement, Pizzicato ostinato, is a playful diversion.
It is a typical scherzo and trio. The Trio
consists of a medley of tunes, the first for a pair of oboes,
the second, slightly mournful Russian folk tune, also for the upper winds,
and a playful brass riff with staccato
playing to match the pizzicato strings from the Scherzo.
The movement ends with a medley of the various themes and instrumental combinations.
While one hears subtle references to musical from the first movement in movements two and three, Tchaikovsky explicitly unifies the Symphony in the Finale.
This last movement is the most "Russian" of Tchaikovsky's symphonic movements and is something of a musical battle between the festive and the melancholic.
After a festive opening theme,
the oboe and bassoon introduce an authentic Russia folk-song (for which he was roundly condemned by his academic colleagues and the critics).
Once again, however, a sprightly mood turns negative,
and it is hardly surprising that the movement is brought up short towards the end by the reappearance of the grim fanfare from the opening movement - the specter at the feast.
An energetic coda, however, tips the balance towards positive territory.
