Manuel Barrueco: Program Note

Art of the Guitar Series: Barrueco program notes

Bradley Colten

MILÁN: Seis Pavanas (1536) Luis de Milán (c. 1500—1561) was a Spanish Renaissance composer and vihuela player of considerable renown. Notably, Milán was one of the first composers in history to articulate tempo indicators in his music, and he was the first composer to publish music for the vihuela de mano — a vihuela that is plucked. (In contrast, the vihuela de arco is bowed.)

The six pavans programed tonight are from his groundbreaking 1536 publication entitled Libro de Musica de Vihuela de Mano Intitulado El Maestro, which is often referred to simply as El Maestro (The Teacher) — an indicator of Milán's pedagogical impulse. El Maestro contains not only these now-famous six pavans, but also a variety of other solo vihuela works (40 fantasias and four tentos) and many songs with vihuela accompaniment (four romances, twelve villancicos and six sonetos).

These pavans are almost universally thought of as archetypical examples of the processional, dignified and elegant dance-form that dates from the Renaissance era. However, these pieces were not intended to be danced; Milán made explicit in his introduction that they were essentially fantasias in the style of the Italian pavan and were to be performed in a improvisatory manner as they, “proceed from the imagination and industry of their author.”

ANGULO: Cantos Yoruba de Cuba (1977) Héctor Angulo (1932—2018) was a Cuban composer whose works fuse forward-thinking compositional techniques and methods with traditional Cuban folklore. Angulo studied music first in his native Cuba, continued his education in New York City, and then returned to Cuba to study with guitarist/composer/conductor Leo Brouwer.

Angulo was a major artistic force within and beyond Cuba. His career and output were both excellent and varied and included compositions for a variety of ensembles and genres. Angulo was musical adviser to the National Puppet Theater in Havana. Interestingly, Angulo is responsible for teaching the American folksinger Pete Seeger the traditional Cuban song, Guantanamera. Pete Seeger, along with others, would make Guantanamera a famous call to action for peace during the Cuban Missile Crisis. (Coincidentally, the version of Guantanamera that Angulo taught Seeger was created in part by Julián Orbón, whose Prelude and Dance is also on tonight’s program.)

Cantos Yoruba de Cuba (Songs of the Cuban Yorùbá) is comprised of nine brief and contrasting works. Its title references the Yorùbá people, who are originally from what is now Nigeria. Many Yorùbá were taken from their homeland to be slaves in Cuba. The work conjures Africaninspired melodies, rhythms and textures that recall those the Yorùbá people brought to Cuba and contributed to the culture and soundscape.

CERVANTES: Selections from Danzas Cubanas (1875-1895) (El Velorio, La Celosa, Mensaje, Adios a Cuba, Los Tres Golpes) Ignacio Cervantes (1847-1905) expertly blended creole music and culture with Cuban traditional music and other styles, offering a unique and forward-looking sound. A child prodigy on the piano, Cervantes studied first in his native Cuba, notably with the prominent Cuban composer Nicolás Ruiz Espadero and then with visiting American pianist and composer Louis Moreau

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Art of the Guitar Series: Barrueco program notes

Bradley Colten

Gottschalk. Later, he traveled to Europe where he met Franz Liszt and Gioachino Rossini, both of whom admired Cervantes’s playing.

Upon his return to Cuba, Cervantes gave concerts to raise money for political purposes, but in 1875, he decided to leave the country under the threat of political prosecution. His self-exile (the first of two) allowed for a career abroad as pianist and composer that focused particularly in Mexico and the United States.

Danzas Cubanas, by many accounts Cervantes’s most famous work, is composed of 45 stylized dances for piano. The imaginative and evocative pieces (with titles like Lost Dreams, Don't Touch Me, Cold Showers, and Pst!) are all brief — some lasting less than a minute. The pieces are light but expressive — at times reflective, humorous, melancholy and serene. Gottschalk’s influence can be heard in this music (as can Chopin’s, perhaps).

Mr. Barrueco has programed El Velorio (The Wake), La Celosa (The Jealous Woman), Mensaje (Message), Adios a Cuba (Farewell to Cuba), and Los Tres Golpes (The Three Strikes).

ORBÓN: Preludio y Danza (1951) Julián Orbón de Soto (1925—1991) is perhaps the perfect demonstration of tonight’s programatic thread — an illustration of the Spanish-Cuban connection and cultural exchange.

Born in the Asturias region of Spain, Orbón moved to Cuba with his family as a young teenager where his father co-founded the eponymous Orbón Conservatory in Havana. It was at this conservatory that Julián Orbón began his formal study of the piano in 1932. Upon his father’s death in 1944, Orbón assumed the role of conservatory director. Just a year later, Orbón received a scholarship to study composition at Tanglewood with American composer Aaron Copland, who referred to Orbón as “Cuba's most gifted composer of the new generation.”

While not fully appreciated in Cuba, Orbón’s works became admired throughout Latin America.

His earlier output was influenced by the Spanish style and composers such as Manuel de Falla.

In later works, Orbón found inspiration in the music of Carlos Chávez (Mexico), Heitor VillaLobos (Brazilian) and Aaron Copland (USA).

Preludio y Danza is a brief (roughly 5 minute), evocative work with well-defined, recurring motivic elements and strong rhythmic profiles. The prelude is sonorous and reflective — a brooding, perhaps searching tableau. The dance starts abruptly and with high contrast from the prelude, and contains invigorating strumming and virtuosic, short bursts of melody.

GRANADOS: La Maja de Goya, from 12 Tonadillas in ancient style (1914) A la cubana, Op. 36 (c. 1914) Enrique Granados Campiña (1867—1916) was a Spanish composer and pianist (born to a Cuban father) who was closely associated with the Nationalism trend in music during the late Romantic era.

La Maja de Goya was inspired by the iconic La maja desnuda (The naked beauty), a work by the great Spanish painter Francisco Goya. When discovered during the Spanish Inquisition, Goya’s

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Art of the Guitar Series: Barrueco program notes

Bradley Colten

painting was considered obscene and the painter was interrogated and reprimanded (though not prosecuted) for his depiction of the naked female form.

Granados' inspired and referential, La Maja de Goya — originally for voice and piano — has become a centerpiece in the Spanish guitar repertoire. A quintessentially ‘guitaristic’ arrangement, with the inclusion of pizzicato and harmonics effects, maestro Miguel Llobet was first to adapt this work for the solo guitar.

A la cubana (In a Cuban style), like La Maja de Goya, is a masterful arrangement for the instrument. This piece, originally for solo piano, is composed of two distinct sections. The first in E-flat major, is a languid allegretto with a hint of habanera accompaniment. It seems the archetype of Spanish nonchalance and ease. The second section, denoted with its own heading and Roman numeral, contains contrasting texture, rhythm and tonal center (C minor), then returns at its end, in a reminiscent way, to the first section’s material.

ALBÉNIZ:

Selections from Suite Española, Op. 47 (1886/1911) (Castilla, Aragón, Cuba, Asturias) Evoking Spain in all its stylized glory, Isaac Manuel Francisco Albéniz y Pascual’s Suite Espanola was originally for piano. Like Granados, Albéniz (1860—1909) never wrote for the guitar. However, considering the instrument’s close association with Spanish music and Albéniz’s central importance in Spain’s Romantic Nationalism output, these arrangements for the guitar are a perfect fit.

The suite of eight dance-inspired, miniature tone-poems loosely depicts various regions of Spain.

The original 1886 edition contained only four works — Granada, Cataluña, Sevilla and Cuba.

Four additional pieces — Aragón, Asturias, Cádiz, and Castilla — were included in a 1911 publication. (It’s interesting to note that, when this work was composed, Cuba was a territory of Spain.)

Mr. Barrueco will perform the final four pieces from the 1911 edition, though in a re-arranged order. Castilla constitutes a seguidilla dance, spritely and in triple meter; Aragón is in the form of a fantasia, an improvisation-inspired form; Cuba is a capricho that conjures a carefree and lilting feel, with an introspective bent, perhaps; and finally, Asturias (also often referred to as Leyenda) demonstrates a publisher’s prerogative as it is a prelude borrowed from an entirely different work of Albéniz’s and included in the 1911 Suite Española.

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