Madison Symphony
Orchestra Program Notes
May
3-4-5, 2024
98th Season /
Subscription Program 8
J.
Michael Allsen
This lively work, Moncayo’s most popular
piece, is based upon the
folk music of Veracruz.
José Pablo Moncayo
Born: June
29, 1912, Guadalajara, Mexico.
Died: June
16, 1958, Mexico City, Mexico.
Huapango
•
Composed:
1941.
•
Premiere:
August
15, 1941 in Mexico City, by the Orquestra Sinfónica de Mexico, under the direction of Carlos
Chávez.
•
Previous
MSO Performances: This is
our first performance of the work.
•
Duration:
9:00.
Background
Though he had a
lamentably short career, composer José Pablo
Moncayo became one of Mexico’s leading musical figures.
Moncayo
trained in Mexico City, and became a protégé of the
great Mexican composer Carlos Chávez, but was closely
associated with the more
radical Silvestre Revueltas as well. Moncayo also studied
briefly with Aaron
Copland in the United States. While still a student in
Mexico City, he started
his career as a percussionist in Orquestra Sinfónica de Mexico
(Symphony Orchestra of Mexico), and he would eventually
succeed Chávez as
conductor, leading the orchestra from 1949-1954. In the
1930s, Moncayo was part
of the “Group of Four”—an influential group of like-minded
young nationalist
composers who stated aim was to forward the cause of
classical works based on
Mexican musical material. By far his most popular work is
the Huapango,
composed in 1941 for a
commission by Chávez. Moncayo completed the work that
summer while attending
the Tanglewood Festival near Boston, at the invitation of
Copland and conductor
Serge Koussevitsky.
What You’ll Hear
The fast-paced
opening and closing sections are based upon a pair
of songs from Veracruz, and the more relaxed middle
section adapts a third.
The title Huapango
refers to a folk dance associated with the son
huasteca—the lively folk music of the Mexican
coastal state of Veracruz. The
huapango is
traditionally danced on a
low wooden platform, so that the dancers’ footwork can
provide a percussive
counterpoint to the son.
There is a
large repertoire of traditional sones,
but good singers—huasteceros—will
seldom
sing a son huasteca
the same
way twice: changing melodies at will and inserting topical
references and
joking asides to their audience. In 1940, Moncayo and his
friend Blas Galindo
took a folk song collecting trip to the coastal city of
Alvarado in Veracruz,
and Mocayo transcribed versions of three songs that he
later adapted in his Huapango. The
bold opening section is
based on two songs, El
siquisiri an El
balajú, with the lively alternation
between duple and triple meters that characterizes much of
Mexican folk music. A
slightly slower, more stately contrasting section adapts El gavilán, but the tempo soon ratchets up
for a wild reprise of
the opening music.
This colorful work by Spanish composer
Manuel de Falla is
inspired by the music and sights of his native region,
Andalusia.
Manuel de Falla
Born: November
23, 1876 Cádiz, Spain.
Died:
November 14, 1946, Alta Gracia, Argentina.
Noches en los
jardines de España (Nights in the
Gardens of Spain)
•
Composed:
Between
1909 and 1915.
•
Premiere:
April 9, 1916 in Madrid, with piano soloist José
Cubiles.
•
Previous
MSO Performances: 1954
(Joyce Hilary) and 1987 (Grant Johannesen).
•
Duration:
23:00.
Background
Among the leading
Spanish composers of his generation, Falla
spent years in Paris absorbing the most progressive French
styles, but his
music remained firmly rooted in Spanish style and
sensibility.
Born in the
southern Spanish port city of Cádiz, in the heart of
Andalusia, Manuel de Falla
never forgot his musical roots. By 1900, he had moved to
Madrid, and took part
in the vigorous musical life of the capital, taking
lessons at the
conservatory, and forming close bonds with like-minded
young composers like
Isaac Albeníz, Enrique Granados, and Joaquin Turina. In
1907, he moved to
Paris, then the artistic capital of Europe and a magnet
for ambitious young
musicians. While he eagerly absorbed the newest French
styles, his music
remained firmly grounded in Spain. His first great
successes, the opera La
vida breve (1913) and the drama (later a ballet) El
amor brujo
(1915) are both set in Andalusia, and both are filled
with references to
Andalusian and Roma/Gypsy music. When war broke out in
1914, he returned to
Madrid, beginning what would the most successful period
in his career,
producing, among many other works, the intoxicating Nights
in the Gardens of
Spain.
This work
was initially sketched out while was in Paris. In
January 1909, Falla wrote home asking his family to send a
copy of Jardins d’Espanya:
a deluxe set of reproductions of landscape paintings of
Spain’s most famous
formal gardens, by the Catalan artist Santiago Rusiñol.
With Rusiñol’s
paintings as an initial inspiration, he set to work on a
set of piano pieces
that would become Nights
in the Gardens
of Spain. What began as a set of four nocturnes
went through many revisions
until he settled on three-movement set of “symphonic
impressions” for solo
piano and orchestra, completed in 1915, after he had
returned to Madrid.
What You’ll Hear
The piece is
three movements, with descriptive titles:
• En el Generalife begins
quietly
and maintains a relaxed feeling throughout, with a flashy
overlay from
the piano.
• The brief
Danza
lejana is based upon a flamenco song form, with the
piano imitating the
strumming of a flamenco guitar. This leads directly into
the finale.
• En los jardines de la Sierra de
Córdoba
is forceful and passionate, ending
When the
work was premiered at Madrid’s Royal Theatre in
1916 Falla wrote that: “The author
of these symphonic impressions for piano and orchestra
considers that, if his
aims have been successful, the simple listing of their
titles should be
guidance enough for their listeners.” He also notes: “Bear
in mind that the
music of these nocturnes does not try to be descriptive,
but rather simply
expressive, and that something more than the echoes of
fiestas and dances has
inspired these musical evocations, in which pain and
mystery also play a part.”
Despite
Falla’s note, a little bit of explanation just might be needed
for those of us not
intimately familiar with Spanish dances and famous Spanish
gardens. The first
movement, En el
Generalife (At
the Generalife) refers to the
astonishing 14th-century Moorish palace and gardens that
are a part of the
Alhambra in Granada. The music is based upon the
Andalusian jaleo,
a highly expressive song
accompanied by clapping. The opening is hushed and
atmospheric, and when the
piano enters, it weaves a sinuous counterpoint around the
main idea. According to
Falla, a second idea heard in the piano near the middle of
the movement was
borrowed from a blind fiddler who played it on the streets
of Madrid. There are
occasional bursts of stronger rhythm in this movement, but
the music always
returns to the quiet, moody character of the opening. The
second movement, Danza
lejana (Distant Dance), is filled
with whirling fragments of the malagueña,
an emotional flamenco
song form.
Throughout the movement the piano imitates the strumming
sound of the Spanish
guitar. A sudden upward sweep at the end of the movement
leads directly in the
third moment, En los jardines de la Sierra de
Córdoba (In the
Gardens of the Sierra de Córdoba), inspired by the
gardens of the
14th-century Alcázar de los Reyes Cristianos
(Palace of the
Christian Monarchs) in
Córdoba. Here, Falla paints a picture of a zambra
gitana, a party where Roma musicians provide the
entertainment. The
movement is set as a copla, an
Andalusian form where a refrain alternates with
improvised verses. The forceful
main idea alternates here with impressionistic
contrasting material provided
mostly by the piano. This eventually winds down to a
quiet and reflective
ending.
This work is an adaptation of a film score
by Revueltas,
assembled 20 years after his death.
Silvestre Revueltas
Born: December
31, 1899, Santiago Papasquiaro, Mexico.
Died: October
5, 1940, Mexico City, Mexico.
La noche de las Mayas (The
Night of the Mayas), arr. José Ives Limantour
•
Composed:
1939.
•
Premiere:
This
music was originally written for a 1939 film. The suite
heard here was prepared
by José Ives Limantour in 1960. Limantour also directed
the first performance
on January 30, 1961, by the Orquestra Sinfónica de
Guadalajara.
•
Previous
MSO Performances: This is
our first performance of the work.
• Duration: 26:00.
Background
Revueltas was a
radical—musically and politically—and created a
style that was influenced by both Mexican music and
European modernism. This
clearly heard in his score to La noche de
las Mayas, which was among his final works.
Born into an
artistic family in the Mexican state of
Durango, Silvestre Revueltas trained as a violinist,
composer, and conductor in
Mexico and the United States. In the late 1920s he became
a protégé of Mexico’s
leading musical figure, Carlos Chávez. When Revueltas was
not yet 30, Chávez
invited him to become assistant conductor of Orquestra Sinfónica de Mexico.
After a promising start, the end of his career was much
darker. He broke with
Chavez in 1936, and briefly directed a rival national
orchestra. In 1937,
Revueltas left for Spain to lend his support to
anti-fascist forces in the
Spanish Civil War. He eventually fled back to Mexico when
Francisco Franco’s
fascists seized total power in Spain. Though he continued
to compose, his last
few years were marked by increasing depression, poverty,
and alcoholism. He
died of pneumonia at age 40. Though relatively little
known for many years
after his death, Revueltas’s unique music has enjoyed a
resurgence in the past
few decades.
As a
composer, Revueltas was much more interested in
contemporary European styles than most of his Mexican
contemporaries. His
orchestral and chamber music was often a blend of
modernist techniques with a
huge array of Mexican musical influences. He brought this
same approach to
several film scores written between 1935 and 1939. The
last of these was for
the 1939 film La
noche de las Mayas,
directed by Chano Uruete. This was a drama centering on an
isolated community
of Maya Indians in Mexico’s Yucatán jungle, and the
disastrous result of their
encounter with modern culture, in the guise of a white
explorer who finds the
tribe. Revueltas’s score uses a variety of indigenous
melodies, and a range of
percussion instruments from the region. Revueltas died
before he could create a
concert version of this music. German composer Paul
Hindemith created a concert
suite from selections from Revueltas’s score in 1946.
However, the 1960 version
by conductor José Ives
Limantour is how the score is usually heard today.
Limantour took a very free hand in arranging over 30 of
Revueltas’s brief
musical cues for the film into a large four-movement
suite. The suite uses a
fairly standard orchestra but an enormous percussion
battery in the final
movement, requiring twelve players. It calls for several
indigenous
instruments, including caracol (conch
shell), sonajas
(metal rattles), teponaxtles
(large hollow wooden “slit
drums”), and huehuetl
(a large bass
drum).
What You’ll Hear
This concert
suite, arranged by José Ives
Limantour, is in four
movements:
• Noche de los Mayas begins
and
ends calmer episode in the middle of the movement.
• Noche de los Jarana
is more lighthearted, set above a dance rhythm.
• Noce de Yucatán is
a
calm piece of “night music” with hints of darkness.
• Noche de
encantamiento is
where Limantour unleashes the full percussion battery.
Most of the movement is
a series of variations on a theme heard at the opening.
The opening
movement, Noche
de los Mayas,
begins with a
threatening fanfare—1930s “movie music” of the most
dramatic kind. This is
followed by a more relaxed episode and quietly repetitive
music from the
woodwinds that evokes indigenous melodies. The movement
ends with a reprise of
the opening music. Noche
de los Jarana
is a much lighter scherzo. (Jarana is
slang for a drunken party.) The frantic forward motion
never stops, as music
flits between various meters. The strings act as
timekeepers, as brass and
woodwinds interject contrasting ideas: a mournful
conch-shell call from the tuba,
a brief attempt to upset the strings’ rhythm, and a
slightly tipsy but
quick-footed dance from the brass. Noce
de Yucatán begins with lyrical and sometimes tense
music, evoking the
surrounding jungle. This is interrupted briefly by a short
interlude for solo
flute and drums: an indigenous melody borrowed by
Revueltas. The opening mood
returns at the bend, but is shattered by a sudden
percussive crack that begins
the last movement, Noche
de encantamiento
(Night of
enchantment). The oboe lays
out a theme used throughout the movement, followed by an
angry response from
the strings and brass. The rest of the movement is a set
of four increasingly
ferocious variations on the opening theme, dominated
entirely by the
percussion. These percussion parts, meant to sound
improvised, were added by
Limantour, and are not part of Revueltas’s film score. The
movement ends with a
savage coda.
________