Program Notes
Cuarteto Latinoamericano: Friday, April 3, 2020: 7:30 pm
Gustavo Campa was born in Mexico City in 1863; studied piano with Felipe Larios and Julio Ituarte, and composition with Melesio Morales at the Mexico City Conservatory (1880-83). Part of the so-called "Group of Six" with student colleagues, including Ricardo Castro, Felipe Villanueva and Carlos Meneses, Campa served as government inspector of studies and as director and professor of composition of the Mexico City Conservatory. He edited the Gaceta Musical, and his publications include Artículos y Críticas Musicales. His compositions include Himno sinfónico, Le roi poète, several piano pieces and songs; he died in Mexico City in 1934.
His Trois Miniatures for string quartet, written in 1889, is one the oldest known works for quartet written in Mexico. It was composed during the Porfiriato (1876-1910), the long dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz, who was eventually overthrown by the Mexican Revolution. During this regime, Mexico's bourgeoisie and ruling class were still nostalgic for the brief reign of Maximilian (1864-1867), when French language, music and food swept through the country. Written over thirty years after the ill-fated emperor was executed, these three short pieces not only carry a French title, but also a French atmosphere, perfumed by Mexican salon music. The first Miniature is a very classic Menuet, the second one is a delicate Gavotte written in canon, and the third is a Thème varié.
Manuel M. Ponce (1882-1948) is, along with Revueltas, Mexico’s most renowned composer. His work as a composer, music educator and scholar of Mexican music connected the concert scene with a usually forgotten tradition of popular song and Mexican folklore. Many of his compositions are strongly influenced by the harmonies and form of traditional songs. In 1812 he wrote the song Estrellita (Little Star), which quickly became famous, and subject to numerous arrangements for different instrumentations, and was even borrowed by Ponce himself, becoming the subject of the slow movement of his Violin Concerto (1943). This arrangement for string quartet, made by Alvaro Bitrán, is based on the transcription of Estrellita that Jascha Heifetz made (and recorded), for violin and piano. The Gavota was written in 1943, for piano, and this string quartet arrangement was made by Mexican violinist César Quirarte Ruiz.
Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos is one of the most prominent composers ever to come out of Latin American. His seventeen string quartets span his lifetime, and are a clear marker of his development as a composer. String Quartet No. 1 was written in 1915 and was laid out by the composer as a sort of popular suite in six movements in which fast and slow tempos alternate. The writing is very traditional, with strict adherence to classical rules, and there is still no evidence of the composer’s experimental tendency; instead of the search for new sounds and tone colors than characterizes his later quartets, we find here a basic concern with melodic and harmonic matters. The last movement bears the title Saltando como um sací (Jumping like a sací). In it the composer refers to the mythical Brazilian figure of the so-called Sací pereré, a kind of leprechaun of the rain forest that goes about jumping on his only leg. In this movement’s rhythmic pattern, Villa-Lobos has tried to whimsically imitate the sací’s irregular hopping. The First Quartet by Villa-Lobos was premiered on February 3rd, 1915, in Nova Friburgo, Brazil at a private concert in the home of Homero Barreto.
Volver and Por una cabeza are probably two of the world’s most famous classical tangos. Both written by the great Argentinean singer and tango master Carlos Gardel (1890-1935), with texts by Alfredo LePera, these two transcriptions are quite literal; there are totally loyal to the original tangos, both in form and harmony, and the language is therefore very romantic. The arrangements were made in the 1970s by Enrique López, an Argentinean violist who emigrated to Chile.
Francisco Paulo Mignone (September 3, 1897–February 2, 1986), son of the Italian immigrant flutist Alferio Mignone, is one of the most significant figures in Brazilian classical music, and one of the most significant Brazilian composers after Heitor Villa-Lobos. In 1968 he was chosen as Brazilian composer of the year.A graduate of the São Paulo Conservatory and then of the Milan Conservatory, Mignone returned to São Paulo in 1929 to teach harmony, and in 1933 took a post in Rio de Janeiro at the Escola Nacional de Música. Mignone was a versatile composer, dividing his output nearly evenly between solo songs, piano pieces, chamber instrumental works, orchestral works, and choral works. In addition, he wrote five operas and eight ballets.Much of Mignone's music is strongly nationalistic in flavor; influenced by the nationalistic movement of his former schoolmate and teacher, the musicologist and writer Mário de Andrade, Mignone uses the folk and popular melodies and forms of his native Brazil as a basis for his compositions.
Mignone's String Quartet No. 2, written in 1957 is noted for its lyricism, colorful instrumentation, and improvisatory style, and it is one of the composer's last works written in a mostly tonal language, with strong reminiscences of Brazilian popular and folk music. In the late 1950s Mignone drifted away from the nationalistic music and toward the then-current trends in academic concert music- polytonalism, atonalism, and serialism - composing works such as his 1958 Piano Concerto. However, he returned to nationalistic writing toward his last few years. - Cuarteto Latinoamericano 2020
His Trois Miniatures for string quartet, written in 1889, is one the oldest known works for quartet written in Mexico. It was composed during the Porfiriato (1876-1910), the long dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz, who was eventually overthrown by the Mexican Revolution. During this regime, Mexico's bourgeoisie and ruling class were still nostalgic for the brief reign of Maximilian (1864-1867), when French language, music and food swept through the country. Written over thirty years after the ill-fated emperor was executed, these three short pieces not only carry a French title, but also a French atmosphere, perfumed by Mexican salon music. The first Miniature is a very classic Menuet, the second one is a delicate Gavotte written in canon, and the third is a Thème varié.
Manuel M. Ponce (1882-1948) is, along with Revueltas, Mexico’s most renowned composer. His work as a composer, music educator and scholar of Mexican music connected the concert scene with a usually forgotten tradition of popular song and Mexican folklore. Many of his compositions are strongly influenced by the harmonies and form of traditional songs. In 1812 he wrote the song Estrellita (Little Star), which quickly became famous, and subject to numerous arrangements for different instrumentations, and was even borrowed by Ponce himself, becoming the subject of the slow movement of his Violin Concerto (1943). This arrangement for string quartet, made by Alvaro Bitrán, is based on the transcription of Estrellita that Jascha Heifetz made (and recorded), for violin and piano. The Gavota was written in 1943, for piano, and this string quartet arrangement was made by Mexican violinist César Quirarte Ruiz.
Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos is one of the most prominent composers ever to come out of Latin American. His seventeen string quartets span his lifetime, and are a clear marker of his development as a composer. String Quartet No. 1 was written in 1915 and was laid out by the composer as a sort of popular suite in six movements in which fast and slow tempos alternate. The writing is very traditional, with strict adherence to classical rules, and there is still no evidence of the composer’s experimental tendency; instead of the search for new sounds and tone colors than characterizes his later quartets, we find here a basic concern with melodic and harmonic matters. The last movement bears the title Saltando como um sací (Jumping like a sací). In it the composer refers to the mythical Brazilian figure of the so-called Sací pereré, a kind of leprechaun of the rain forest that goes about jumping on his only leg. In this movement’s rhythmic pattern, Villa-Lobos has tried to whimsically imitate the sací’s irregular hopping. The First Quartet by Villa-Lobos was premiered on February 3rd, 1915, in Nova Friburgo, Brazil at a private concert in the home of Homero Barreto.
Volver and Por una cabeza are probably two of the world’s most famous classical tangos. Both written by the great Argentinean singer and tango master Carlos Gardel (1890-1935), with texts by Alfredo LePera, these two transcriptions are quite literal; there are totally loyal to the original tangos, both in form and harmony, and the language is therefore very romantic. The arrangements were made in the 1970s by Enrique López, an Argentinean violist who emigrated to Chile.
Francisco Paulo Mignone (September 3, 1897–February 2, 1986), son of the Italian immigrant flutist Alferio Mignone, is one of the most significant figures in Brazilian classical music, and one of the most significant Brazilian composers after Heitor Villa-Lobos. In 1968 he was chosen as Brazilian composer of the year.A graduate of the São Paulo Conservatory and then of the Milan Conservatory, Mignone returned to São Paulo in 1929 to teach harmony, and in 1933 took a post in Rio de Janeiro at the Escola Nacional de Música. Mignone was a versatile composer, dividing his output nearly evenly between solo songs, piano pieces, chamber instrumental works, orchestral works, and choral works. In addition, he wrote five operas and eight ballets.Much of Mignone's music is strongly nationalistic in flavor; influenced by the nationalistic movement of his former schoolmate and teacher, the musicologist and writer Mário de Andrade, Mignone uses the folk and popular melodies and forms of his native Brazil as a basis for his compositions.
Mignone's String Quartet No. 2, written in 1957 is noted for its lyricism, colorful instrumentation, and improvisatory style, and it is one of the composer's last works written in a mostly tonal language, with strong reminiscences of Brazilian popular and folk music. In the late 1950s Mignone drifted away from the nationalistic music and toward the then-current trends in academic concert music- polytonalism, atonalism, and serialism - composing works such as his 1958 Piano Concerto. However, he returned to nationalistic writing toward his last few years. - Cuarteto Latinoamericano 2020