Leo Brouwer

DUETS ACROSS GENRES

May 14, 2019

DUETS ACROSS GENRES

by Jayant S

While the classical guitar is well-established as a solo instrument, with substantial serious repertoire having accumulated particularly since the second half of the twentieth century, it remains relatively unrepresented in ensemble music. Of course, there is some guitar music for duos and upwards, and a number of outstanding concertos, but there remains substantial opportunity for more material, particularly that featuring other instruments.

The combination of the piano and guitar is a case in point. Until the establishment of high-quality amplification for a classical guitar, it would have been extremely difficult to balance these instruments within their optimal sonic and expressive ranges. The guitar has a comparatively limited dynamic range which can be completely drowned out by a piano. I’ve been preoccupied for some years with the search for repertoire that combines the best of both instruments, without much luck. Of course, there are several good guitar concertos which can be played with their piano reductions, and Rose and I have performed three of these, but they don’t represent real piano-guitar music and well, concertos can be a bit long. The last one we performed – Nikita Koshkin’s Megaron Concerto – was all of forty minutes.

I recently discovered the Fantasia for Guitar and Piano (1953) by the Italian composer Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco. Within two movements that last only ten minutes in total, the Fantasia encompasses substantial textural space which brings out multiple possibilities in the combination of both instruments. The music is quite “visual” in expression, unsurprisingly so, considering that Castenouvo-Tedesco wrote music for over 200 MGM films in his career.

Some concertos, of course, are not all that long, and can also feature very well-considered piano reductions that actually sound like parts written for the piano. Leo Brouwer’s celebrated Concerto Elegiaco (1985) is a fine example. Dedicated to Julian Bream, this is a sombre piece of music in three movements, and provides substantial expressive opportunities for both instruments.

Rose and I do happen to be essentially jazz musicians, which probably inspires us to bring some irreverent and unapologetic eclecticism to our classical performances. Trying to work in both broader genres can be interesting – my improvisational approach on the guitar and the bass has become quite exacting in terms of note choices, timbre and technical control, and I seem to approach classical music with improved sonic awareness. Well, most of the time anyway.

We will be performing the Fantasia and the Concerto Elegiaco for the first part of a concert in July. The second half will feature jazz, mostly mainstream, mostly piano and upright bass, but we just might throw in a few surprises.

The Pune Guitar Society will present Rose E and Jayant S in performance at the Mazda Hall, Pune, on 10 July 2019. Many thanks are due to the Poona Music Society for their continued support.

Some notes on Leo Brouwer’s music

September 15, 2017

Kuldeep Barve

It was while watching those beautiful black and white films like ‘Lucia’, ‘Memories of Underdevelopment’, ‘Histoire de Revolucion’ and others in the Film and Television Institute of India and National Film Archives that i heard Leo Brouwer’s music for the first time. I was not aware of his work then or knew that he was a guitarist-composer of great repute. But i do remember that those soundtracks had something special in them. They had made a sonic impression on me which is as fresh today as it was then.

Later on, as me and a few friends became more and more interested in classical guitar repertoire and western classical music in general, his music was always discussed amongst some friends and fellow musicians. The works that attracted me most at the time were the ‘Preludios Epigramaticos‘(1981 – Epigrammatic Preludes). This is a set of short preludes; each prelude has a title which is taken from the ‘Poemas de Amor’ by the great Spanish poet Miguel Hernandez. It is interesting when one looks at some of the elements of form and structure used in these preludes and associate the poetry with the piece. I have come to understand this work now more as an impressionistic sketchbook. The first prelude has the title (loosely translated) ‘Ever since the dawn wanted/wished to be, you are mother’. Is the B and D ‘ostinato’ in Prelude No.1 a design element used to convey the eternal and perennial? Brouwer breaks the ‘ostinato’ with piercing rhythmic motives which provide the contrast and take the narrative forward creating an impressionistic texture.

Miguel Hernández

One of Brouwer’s most famous solo guitar work, the ‘El Decameron Negro‘ (1981) is based on some ethnic African folk tales collected in the 19th century by Leo Frobenius, a german ethnologist and archeologist. If one looks at Brouwer’s range of works, it is evident that Brouwer was taking inspirations from different art forms such as poetry, folk tales etc. It’s important to recognise the strong musical and cultural connections between Africa, Cuba and Latin America which go back to the slave trade and migrations to be able to contextualise and appreciate this music. The deep rooted relations between Africa and Cuba were studied and articulated by the ethnomusicologist and afro-cuban culture scholar Fernando Ortiz in the 1920s. From that period on, there was a school of thought in Cuba which looked to go to the roots of Cuban culture and identity. On the other hand, there was another school of thought which felt the need to look for universality in Cuban music without destroying its essential cuban character. These musical discourses must have influenced the musical climate in Cuba when Brouwer was growing up and does help contextualising some of his musical thought processes.

Brouwer in various phases of his work has drawn heavily on the folk musics of these regions. His music has deep connections with Spanish, Latin American, African and European music. European classical music from the early 20th century and popular music from the 60’s onwards seems to have been a constant influence. It is important to recognise Brouwer as a pivotal figure at the crossroads of all these musical influences and cultures. It is vital to note the proximity of Brouwer to various types of popular music from the Beatles(Brouwer re-harmonised some Beatles songs) to Eddie Van Halen(‘Paisaje cubano con campanas‘ is said to be a tribute to Van Halen). Brouwer seems very interested in creating sonic textures which stretch the guitar’s sonic palette and possibilities. Much of his music seems dramatic and narrative with powerful rhythmic motives which weave together the themes and motifs in a very effective way. He seems very involved with the ‘visual’ aspect in music and this is not only because he has composed a lot of great film, theatre and opera music. The ‘visual’ character in Brouwer’s music is a subject which maybe deserves a detailed study on its own. His musical output is vast; he has written many concertos, chamber works as well as a great number of solo guitar works and it is very difficult to make any easy generalisations about his output. Having said this, his music does have his characteristic sound, sometimes evident through his motifs, sometimes through his angular rhythms and at other times when he paraphrases his own music in a completely different context.His contribution to guitar pedagogy cannot be overstated. The 20 studies for guitar have become standard repertoire for guitar students and concert performers alike. The ‘Etude Simples‘ are great studies and have great musical expression as well.

Leo Brouwer

Rederences –

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Brouwer

The Emergence of Leo Brouwer’s Compositional Periods: The Guitar, Experimental Leanings, and New Simplicity – Kim Nyugen Tran

LEO BROUWER : A Tribute Concert on 6th October 2017 | Mazda Hall, Pune

September 11, 2017

by The Pune Guitar Society(PGS),

There are less than four weeks to go, and even as the music begins to take shape, so do a plethora of support activities. Preparing for this, for all of us, has been a lot like mobilising ourselves for a revolution, though admittedly one not quite as tectonic as the CubanRevolution which shaped much of Leo Brouwer’s circumstances and his music.The program has evolved organically to include two of the Maestro’s concerti, one movement from a suite, and two solo pieces. It would take an entire week of concerts toput across even a cross-section of Brouwer’s prodigious output and multiplicity of styles. Ina little over an hour of music we hope to introduce audiences to a small fraction of his material. The performers include Kuldeep Barve, Kabir Dabholkar and Jayant S on the guitar and Meghana Dharap, Rose E and Tuhin Rao on the piano.

The two featured concerti – the Elegiaco and the Toronto – are contrasting works. The Elegiaco lives up to its name by being sombre in a very abstract manner, while the Toronto is a complex, bright and largely optimistic work, with its fabric woven through with multiple thematic statements and motifs. For me, preparing for both of these has almost required assuming two different personas.The first movement of Retrats Catalan will be included: with its references to several Catalan folk songs. This is a quiet movement, with the orchestral section expressing some unexpected harmonies.The two solo pieces were the most difficult to choose from the extensive oeuvre of the composer. It would have been tempting to include one of the longer works, such as El Decameron Negro or the Sonata, but we took a conscious decision to have short pieces, essentially to start and punctuate the program.

The concerti and the Catalan will feature piano reductions. This continues the efforts of the PGS to bring other instrumentalists into our programming – and the experience is very rewarding and musically enriching. Formally-trained pianists have a very different, structured approach to the learning of unfamiliar repertoire which is inspirational to watch and participate in. It would have taken me several months to learn music of this complexity, placed in their position. As it is, the role of the piano here has emerged as not that of a mere accompanist: the selected works are sonically closer to being piano-guitar duets and their original orchestral textures have not required more than a fleeting reference at best.

We hope that this forthcoming concert will build some local interest in Leo Brouwer’s work, as one of the foremost modern composers for the guitar, and also incite more musicians to work on collaborative ideas with us. There is a lot of potential in working with Pune-based pianists and this is a format which could yield several more concerts of challenging and engrossing repertoire. Watch this space!

Recollections: Leo Brouwer

December 3, 2015

by Jayant S

DEDICATION: LEO BROUWER AND BILL EVANS.

My first exposure to Leo Brouwer – the name and the music – happened sometime in 1981 when I heard the German guitarist Wolfgang Condin performing at the India Habitat Center in Delhi. At that time, I had been a largely rock-preoccupied guitar player for a few years, with only a vague idea about the world of the classical guitar. Yes, we knew it existed out there, like a luxury yacht wafting disdainfully past us mere scruffy fishing boats, bestowing upon us only a whiff of its grand being. At that time, very little recorded music was available at all, and sheet music was almost completely inaccessible in Darjeeling where I grew up.

My experience with classical guitar repertoire till then was limited to studies of easier Spanish and Italian pieces, and the odd Bach transcription, all of which had been laboriously hand-copied for me by my brother Jeta. My cousin Anmole was a frequently pestered source for sheet music to copy, as well as for advice on guitar matters in general. Fortunately for me, I did have some listening exposure to Western classical music as such through a few dedicated, knowledgeable and well-intentioned music teachers at school. To be able to decipher written music at all, I had to repeatedly ask my sister Jaya for help, as she had been through several grades of piano at school. For me, then, “reading music” involved painfully counting staff lines and using an intuitive (and glacially slow) algebraic method to count time. But actually being able to memorize and play through these pieces was enough to tell me that yes, there is actually a bespoke luxury yacht out there in the dark open waters. And that you must have a footstool to even get a look-in.

Condin commenced his recital with Leo Brouwer’s Canticum.

I was transfixed, as was much of the audience, though almost certainly not for the same reasons. I looked around me. The well-dressed, elite cream of Delhi’s cultural circuit seemed appalled. Deeply appalled. This wasn’t what a harmless little guitar concert was supposed to deliver?

For me, listening to Canticum was curiously reassuring. I realized in a flash that classical guitar music was not only about the plink-a-plonk Carcassi and Carulli studies which I already detested then, or the sparse and clinical counterpoint of Bach, or even necessarily about the footstool (though Condin did use one). Classical guitar music – indeed, all real music – was about sonic texture.

Condin went on to assuage ruffled sensibilities by playing fluffy staples such as Fernando Sor’s Variations on a Theme of Mozart. I’d stopped paying attention by then, wondering who Leo Brouwer was.

In subsequent years, I continued to play the guitar, generally preoccupied with jazz styles, with substantial exposure to rock and pop performances on the side. Somewhere out there, the classical guitar yacht still cruised on. Sheet music remained near-impossible to buy, but the Xerox Corporation did make hand-copying redundant in 1980s India. I made the occasional attempt to play repertoire pieces when I could find and photocopy them, including works by Agustin Barrios. La Catedral and Gavota al Estilo Antiguo were played with due seriousness on a Hobner H120 steel-strung acoustic guitar – for at that time I didn’t own, or could source, a real nylon-strung classical guitar (it was rather strange to discover, long after, that Barrios recorded frequently with steel strings). My brother made me a wooden footstool which was a big help.

Then, one day, a friend showed up with a photocopy of Leo Brouwer’s Elogio de la Danza.

I played through it. It displayed everything I then expected a Brouwer work to be – dissonance, dynamism, complex timing – visceral texture. I was intrigued with the indication for the second movement – obstinato and not ostinato. It seemed that Maestro Brouwer had a sense of humour, after all.

I’ve studied several pieces from Brouwer’s oeuvre since then – El Decameron Negro, Hika: In Memoriam Toru Takemitsu and Cuban Landscape with Bells for the Trinity College LTCL and ATCL recitals, Sonata and Preludios Epigramaticos which were featured at a recent PGS recital, Variations on a Theme by Django Reinhardt, Canticum itself, Tarantos, many of the Estudios Sencillos, Cuban Landscape with Sadness, Un Dia de Novembre, and a few more. I’ve not even really touched the tip of the iceberg that represents his prodigious output and makes him a quintessential figure in the history of the classical guitar. Leo Brouwer began his career as a composer-guitarist in his teens. An injury stopped his performing career, but as a composer and orchestral conductor he has continued to remain extremely active. His compositional style itself has evolved, passed through transitions which continue even today, and has created a tremendous body of work, bristling with unique tonal innovations, which provides guitarists with a lifetime of study.

I’ve been very fortunate to have had a handful of lessons with Adam Khan and Veet Ohnemus, who have both studied with Brouwer. These sessions were helpful in providing essential insights into interpretation. My first meeting with Adam was marked by an enthusiastic handshake, during which I couldn’t help exclaiming “I’m so happy to shake the hand that must have shaken that of Brouwer’s!”

While Brouwer’s solo work is well known and regarded in guitar circles, his ensemble writing is relatively less noted by guitar players. This is despite the fact that he has prolifically composed for films, has written for guitar ensembles and has 11 Concertos to his name. The first work I heard representing this facet of Brouwer was the Concerto de Toronto as recorded by John Williams in 1998 with the London Sinfonia, Stephen Mercurio conducting. This Concerto, written in 1987, is marked by a relative absence of dissonance and complex timekeeping and reverts to an almost classical-period sensibility which makes it very accessible to listeners unfamiliar with Brouwer’s repertoire.

I obtained the sheet music for Concerto de Toronto out of sheer curiosity, including a piano reduction of the orchestral score by Daniel Toussiant. Since then, I’ve played through the guitar parts, been astonished by the sheer finger-friendliness of Brouwer’s writing, and wished that I could find a pianist who would agree to play the piano reduction to actually perform the work. I even tried to sequence some of the piano score as a MIDI file just to hear what was intended, and realised that it needed a real pianist.

I welcome the opportunity that has finally arisen to perform the work with a pianist, with the kind support of the Poona Music Society. This blog will capture moments and changing perspectives from the musical journey that has now commenced, to culminate in the recital on 14 January, 2016.

And, my classical guitarist friends might well ask, why Bill Evans? He is known for his contribution to jazz piano, right?