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PROGRAM NOTES, written by Brian Head. Click below for shortcut to:
Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741), Venitian (Italian)
Sonata No. 3 in A minor for violoncello and basso continuo, RV 43 (1725) Arr. Brian Head
I-Largo (Broadly), II-Allegro (Lively), III-Largo, IV- Allegro
The opening piece on today’s program is the third of a group of nine sonatas written by Antonio Vivaldi, composed for cello with unharmonized (unfigured) bass accompaniment. Basso continuo was favored throughout the baroque era in part because it allowed the accompanying player(s) the freedom to harmonize and activate the texture as they saw fit. In Vivaldi’s time it was not uncommon for the bass to be rendered by a theorbo (a particularly large and loud lute), though sometimes instead a harpsichord would play a thicker texture or simply a second cello might play the line relatively unadorned. In our case, I’ve chosen a variety of textures to match the affects of the four movements. Vivaldi is well-known for his wildly pictorial and virtuosic violin concertos known as the Four Seasons. In fact, he was a prolific composer who wrote an astonishing number of concertos and sonatas for all manner of instruments. Even Vivaldi’s German contemporary J.S. Bach admired him greatly and arranged a number of his works.
Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959), Brasilian
Aria from Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5 (1938) Arr. Brian Head
The Brazilian composer, Heitor Villa-Lobos, loved the music of J.S. Bach above all others. In homage, he wrote a series of Bachianas brasileiras that fused baroque processes with his own idiosyncratic language. These works, nine in all, are each scored for vastly different forces, and the fifth employs the unusual combination of eight cellos and soprano. As a teenager around the turn of the 20th century, Villa-Lobos played in choro bands in Rio de Janeiro and he internalized this rhythmic and harmonic architecture which became a foundational element of his mature style. You can hear the choro subsumed into the rhythmic structure of this aria. Villa-Lobos himself wrote a beautiful, abridged A-B-A version for solo guitar and soprano, and this is well-known to guitarists. However, the harmonic richness of the original version begs for a more complete rendering for guitar and soloist, and so I have re-set the work in its full form, A-A-B-A, restoring some of its original depth of color and texture. In my arrangement, the cello primarily takes the part of the voice while the guitar adapts the cello lines.
John Dowland (1563-1626), English
Coranto (“Were Every Thought an Eye”) D185
Adieu for Master Oliver Cromwell (Resolution) D13 arr. Brian Head
The Right Honourable Robert, Earl of Essex, His Galliard D42
John Dowland was among the most acclaimed musicians of the Elizabethan and Jacobean era in Renaissance England and is best known for his lute songs of which he composed nearly 100. He tended to publish his songs in multiple formats, often in cleverly designed books with individual parts at right angles to one another to facilitate reading by four (or more) singers or players sitting together at a table. Dowland arranged and rearranged his works for madrigal groups of singers, for consorts of viols, for voice and lute, for solo lute, and for lute and viol. The instrumental Coranto and Earl of Essex Galliard from today’s selection are both also found as songs, “Were every thought an eye” and “Can she excuse my wrongs?”. The lute, a pear-shaped relative of the guitar was the preeminent Renaissance instrument, while viols came in various sizes and were fretted relatives of violins, violas, cellos and basses. Our current adaptation for cello and guitar is a modern equivalent of a bass viol and lute duet. The other work in this set, the Adieu for Oliver Cromwell, is in the form of an instrumental pavane, slow and contemplative. The dedicatee was a patron and friend of King James at whose court Dowland was the chief lutenist. The infamous English revolutionary Oliver Cromwell was his nephew and godson.
Dušan Bogdanović (born 1955), Serbian-American
Quatre pièces intimes (1979)
Prière (prayer), Mouvement (movement),
La Harpe de David (David’s harp), Chant (song)
An early work by Dusan Bogdanovic, written in Geneva where he studied composition with Alberto Ginastera, the “Four intimate pieces” are characteristic of the arresting emotional directness that has been a hallmark of his prolific musical output. A virtuoso guitarist, Bogdanovic already here displays his restless stylistic language which here fuses jazz harmony with Balkan modality and metrical angularity, at times asking the cellist to adopt guitaristic textures. In later works his stylistic eclecticism often manifests as complex polymetrical counterpoint that recalls Conlon Nancarrow or Georgi Ligeti, but here the faster movements flow as straight groove. Shortly after writing this work, Dusan moved to California where he began to refine and formalize his structures, though never losing the sense of improvisation that is a throughline in even his most complex music. I suspect this composition was in turn inspired by Frank Martin’s “Quatre pieces breve”, a gorgeously fragile solo guitar work written in 1933, also in Geneva.
Manuel de Falla (1876-1946), Spanish
Suite Populaire Espagnole (1914. arr. 1951)
arr. for cello by Maurice Maréchal and arr. for guitar by Emilio Pujol/Brian Head
El Paño Moruno, Asturiana, Jota, Nana, Canción, Polo
Manuel de Falla is a towering figure in Spanish music and was a central to the elevation of the status of Spanish folk music, particularly flamenco, in the early 20th century. He was also greatly influenced by French music, and he spent the seven years preceding the First World War in Paris where he became friends with Debussy, Ravel and Stravinsky. Falla wrote his Siete canciones populares espanolas for soprano and piano in his last few months in Paris before the war forced him to return to Madrid. Many transcriptions of the songs followed, often with the melody taken by cello or violin. Two prominent guitarists, Miguel Llobet and Emilio Pujol arranged the set for voice and guitar in consultation with Falla, returning many of the idiomatic renderings to their origins. In fact, all of the song forms stylized in this set are most commonly found with guitar accompaniments. Each song is characteristic of a different region of Spain from Murcia to Asturias in the north, to Aragon, to Andalusia. Though Falla is best known for his opera La vida breve and his ballets El amor brujo and El sombrero de tres picos, his kinship with the guitar is undeniable, and he is credited as well with having written in 1920 the first “modern” guitar work by a non-guitarist, the “Homenaje pour le tombeau de Claude Debussy”, published in the Paris La Revue Musicale shortly after Debussy’s passing.
Notes by Brian Head
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