March 10 & 11, 2024

From the Twentieth Century

Heitor Villa-Lobos
String Quartet No. 2

Tōru Takemitsu
And Then I Knew t’was Wind (after E. Dickinson)

Gerald Finzi
Five Bagatelles for Clarinet and String Quartet

Maurice Ravel
Introduction and Allegro

Sunday, March 10, 3 pm * Round Hill Community Church * 395 Round Hill Road, Greenwich
Monday, March 11, 7:30 pm * Greenwich Arts Council * 299 Greenwich Avenue, Greenwich

Program Notes

The music of Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959) established and epitomized the “sound” of art music from Brazil as Copland's music did for the United States and Sibelius' did for Finland. Villa-Lobos’ 600-1000 works (depending on who is counting) were championed by the likes of Arthur Rubinstein, performed by the Boston Symphony, sung by massive Brazilian choirs with (not a misprint) 40,000 participants, and applauded on Broadway! And he was an autodidact.

This may be why Villa-Lobos was able to compose music that captures the character of Brazilian music, with roots in the clashing cultures of indigenous peoples, European colonists, and enslaved Africans. The tools of a conservatory education would be too narrow to encompass this. Rather, to capture the essence of Brazil's vast cultural mélange, a composer would need a ready ear, curiosity, and direct experience with each genre. There was a lot to learn. And the young Villa-Lobos started to learn it – all of it.

It began with classical cello and clarinet lessons with his father. Then, after his father’s death in 1899, it continued with playing guitar with chorões (which are Rio de Janeiro street musicians), followed by playing cello for movie houses and cafes, and, beginning in 1905, experiencing the music of Brazil’s indigenous peoples while traveling throughout the country.

As a result, for Villa-Lobos, “The map of Brazil was my harmony textbook,” and composing became a “biological necessity,” in which Villa-Lobos combined the low, the high, the urban, and the folk into music that embodied Brazil’s unique musical cultures. Perhaps the best examples of this fusion were the Bachianas Brasileiras, in which Villa-Lobos blended the ethos of J.S. Bach and folk music.

Villa-Lobos composed the second of his seventeen string quartets in 1915, and it premiered in 1917. In four movements, it showed the influence of contemporary French composers such as Debussy and Ravel. Rather than imitating conventional models, Villa-Lobos “utilize(d) the eternal processes of variation to create continuity,” and applied it to the compositional technique using recurring themes advocated by the French composer Vincent D’Indy. Particularly interesting is the second movement “whose harmonies involve a syncopated melody in a context that suggests small bamboo rustic flutes … (used) by the Pareci Indians.”

Like Villa-Lobos, the Japanese composer Tōru Takemitsu (1930-1996) was essentially self-taught, developing his musical vision by experiencing a wide range of disparate musical influences (American popular music, jazz, Western classical music – especially Debussy, Schoenberg, and Messiaen – and traditional Japanese music) and fusing them into a unique personal expression. The difference: while Villa-Lobos melded North and South, Takemitsu melded East and West.

Takemitsu spent his childhood in Manchuria, and returned to Japan when he was 8 years old. But Takemitsu found himself living in a militarized Japanese culture, a culture he rejected after being drafted into the Japanese army in 1944 at age 14. Even though the military outlawed Western music, Takemitsu managed to hear taboo recordings and, while working on an American military base after the war, became smitten with Western music (both classical and popular) after obsessively listening to American occupying forces radio. As a result, Takemitsu, at age 16, decided to dedicate his life to music even though he had no musical training or technique – he couldn’t even play an instrument.

But Takemitsu was undeterred and got to work, taking a few lessons, but later saying “My teachers are Duke Ellington and nature.” Four years later he heard the first public performance of his music – Lento in Due Movimenti for solo piano. A flood of pieces in a dizzying array of styles followed – orchestral and chamber pieces, jazz charts, electronic music, arrangements of popular songs, and plus radio, TV, stage, and (over 90) film scores. With such a wide range, it is tempting to ask what the music has in common.

They all share Takemitsu’s desire to mine the essence of his influences in accord with his sensibility. While the young Takemitsu had rejected Japanese culture, he returned to his roots after meeting and hearing the music of John Cage, allowing Takemitsu to combine the techniques of the West with the sensibilities of Japan. “Maybe it can be said that I am rather a gardener, not a composer. I don’t like to construct sounds as great architecture the way Beethoven did. … I set up a place where sounds meet each other. I don’t construct but create some order which makes my music quite close to the idea of a Japanese garden.”

And Then I Knew ‘Twas Wind was composed in 1992. In one movement, it uses the same instrumentation as Debussy’s late Sonata for Flute, Viola, and Harp from 1915. Both works exploit the ensemble’s striking, almost tactile, coloristic possibilities and structure the music as a mosaic or, perhaps more aptly, a Japanese garden. Takemitsu used a line from a poem by Emily Dickenson as the music’s title, invoking her ability to find the extraordinary in the ordinary, saying his music “has as its subject the signs of the wind in the natural world and of the soul, or unconscious mind (or we could even call it ‘dream’), which continues to blow, like the wind, invisibly, through human consciousness.”

The early life of English composer Gerald Finzi (1901-1956) was a bitter one. His father, three brothers, and composition teacher and surrogate father, Ernest Farrar, (1885-1918) all died before Finzi turned 18. He eventually found purpose by moving to the country (his orchard saved several English heirlooms apples from extinction), delving deeply into English poetry and literature (his library held 3000 volumes), and devoting himself to composing.  Finzi focused on the 20th century revival of English music, concentrating on setting English poetry, especially that of Thomas Hardy, to music that “unerringly found the live centre of his vocal texts, fusing vital declamation with a lyrical impulse in supple, poised lines." Unsurprisingly, the bulk of his compositions, large and small, is vocal. Surprisingly, his most popular piece is an instrumental one that he considered small change.

In 1941, Finzi wrote one of his few purely instrumental compositions - three short pieces for clarinet and piano for clarinetist Pauline Juler. In 1943, he added a fourth movement for the premiere, and, in 1945, added a fifth in time for the music’s publication as Five Bagatelles, Op. 23, for Clarinet and Piano. Finzi chose the title carefully as he considered the pieces to be “only trifles” that were composed using “20-year-old bits and pieces.” Ironically, the sheet music (later arranged for clarinet and string quartet) sold so well that Finzi seemed a little resentful. “[They are] not worth much, but got better notices than my decent stuff.”

Finzi may have considered the Bagatelles to be trifles, but, if they are, they are trifles worth hearing and demonstrate Finzi’s skill at making the clarinetist sing as beautifully as the human voice.

The French composer Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) was no autodidact. His rigorous French Conservatoire education gave him compositional chops that he used to try to achieve “technical perfection. … Art, no doubt, has other effects, but the artist, in my opinion, should have no other aim.” Achieving this aim took time.  “When the first stroke of a work has been written … the severe effort toward perfection proceeds by means almost intangible.” Ravel was so fastidious that Stravinsky (unflatteringly) described him as a “Swiss watchmaker.” And, like any skilled artisan, Ravel, the composer, took the time necessary to get things right.

Well, usually he did. One exception was the Introduction et Allegro pour Harpe avec accompagnement de Quatuor à Cordes, Flûte et Clarinette, which was commissioned in 1905 by Albert Blondel to promote the Erard instrument firm’s double-action pedal harp. The commission came at a tumultuous time in Ravel’s career, just after a national scandal (L'affaire Ravel) that followed Ravel’s disqualification from the first round of the Prix de Rome competition, and just before a seven-week cruise on the Rhine River with the press magnate Alfred Edwards, one of Ravel’s strongest supporters during L'affaire Ravel, and Edwards’ wife, Misia Godebska, one of Ravel’s oldest friends. It was Ravel’s first major commission, and he agreed to complete it by August. Unfortunately, the cruise set sail in June! Channeling his inner undergraduate all-nighter faculties resulted in “A week of frantic work and 3 sleepless nights (that) enabled me to finish it, for better or worse.”

We are definitely the better for it. In one concise movement, the piece starts with a brief 12 measure slow introduction that includes all the material used in the following Allegro. It features, as befits its title and purpose, Ravel’s prodigious use of harp techniques while demonstrating Ravel’s amazing ability to extract the maximum spectrum of color from his unusual ensemble.

© 2024 Ubaldo Valli