Heitor Villa-Lobos - Symphonies Nos.1 and 2

Heitor VILLA-LOBOS (1887–1959)

Symphony No. 1 ‘O Imprevisto’

Symphony No. 2 ‘Ascensão’

Sao Paulo SYmphony Orchestra

Isaac Karabtchevsky

Recorded 13-23 February 2017 at the Sala Sao Paulo, Brazil

 

When composing his Symphony No. 1 in 1916 Villa-Lobos did not bite off more than he could chew, nor did it amount to a bout of creative elephantiasis aimed at forcibly winning over the concert world of Rio de Janeiro in the 1910s. It was the first test of his ability to produce a symphonic work that fitted into a Central European tradition. It came about in the wake of a series of Brazilian symphonies, written from 1880 onwards, which were to some extent created by their composers as an attempt to establish a ‘national’ symphony.

The first symphony composed on Brazilian soil by a renowned composer was probably the Funeral Symphony (1790) by the priest José Maurício Nunes Garcia. In fact this is a kind of single movement overture that does not appear to have had immediate successors, in a century dominated by religious music and opera. More significantly—at least for Villa-Lobos, it seems—was Leopoldo Miguez’s Symphony in B flat (1882), Alexandre Levy’s Symphony in E minor (1888), Alberto Nepomuceno’s Symphony in G minor (1893)—a work with a strong Germanic accent, and very probably the greatest symphonic work produced in 19th-century Brazil—and, above all, Henrique Oswald’s Symphony (1910), a work that Villa-Lobos admired and went on to conduct.

Nepomuceno and Oswald, both as composers and in their pedagogical and institutional roles, were highly influential figures during Villa-Lobos’s youth. Oswald was director of the National Music Institute between 1912 and 1931, a period when he enjoyed extraordinary prestige in music circles; Villa-Lobos referred to him as ‘our most admirable composer’. His Symphony only premiered in 1918 (according to some sources 1917), around a year before the premiere of Villa-Lobos’s Symphony No. 1. There are therefore doubts about how the two different works intersect: could it be that Villa-Lobos knew Oswald’s piece before composing his Symphony No. 1? What we do know is that the French model was prevalent in the Brazilian music scene of the 1910s; and Villa-Lobos, by adopting it in his first symphonies, thus presented himself as an enfant du siècle.

If Oswald’s work is often compared to that of Fauré, then another comparison frequently drawn, and which has yet to be studied in greater depth, is that between Villa-Lobos and Vincent d’Indy (1851–1931). D’Indy´s work is virtually unknown today, but his Cours de Composition Musicale, published in 1912, apparently provided Villa-Lobos with his core grounding in composition. D’Indy’s course is considered a defence of Germanic values and the cyclical form—a formal process in which the same themes are re-worked throughout all the movements of a composition. This formal model was adopted by a more resourceful Villa-Lobos in several works from his youth, such as the Trio No. 3 (1918), Symphony No. 2 (1917–44) and, in a more flexible way, Symphonies Nos. 3 and 4, written in 1919, but it is virtually non-existent in his mature works, including his symphonies from No. 6 onwards.

This formal proposition is just a minor part of a very interesting musical theorisation. A staunch conservative, both in music and politics, in 1894 Vincent d’Indy founded the Schola Cantorum, to promote a return to the scholastic study of Renaissance counterpoint which, according to him, had been forgotten by the Paris Conservatoire. His Cours de Composition Musicale consists of a systematic study of the elements of Gregorian chant and folk song; it dissects the harmonies chord by chord and analyses the relationship between each of them, and modes of scales and tonality; it provides a historical overview of the theories of harmony and counterpoint; it deals in detail with musical forms, deducing the cyclical form from Beethoven’s later style.

There is reason to believe that Villa-Lobos had diligently studied Vincent d’Indy’s book, which made a great impact at the time. Rather than mere repetitive training, the Frenchman’s work may very well have provided the basis for traditional and consistent musical thinking, seen from an unsuspected angle—a thinking that would find its fullest expression in the Bachianas Brasileiras and can already be seen in his Symphony No. 1 ‘O Imprevisto’ (‘The Unforeseen’).

Another aspect of D’Indy’s book seems to have resonated in Villa-Lobos’s highly active mind: an exalted, cosmic vision of the nature of the artist, which surfaces in the words Villa-Lobos wrote under the pseudonym Epaminondas Villalba Filho, and which serve, in an obscure way, as a script for this symphony. In a style that seems more reminiscent of a book about the occult, he explores the reverberations of cosmic forces that unfurl before the eyes of the Soul of the Artist and also delves into his encounter with old Conscience, who awakens the artist from his lethargy in order to confront the Reality of Humanity and, thus, discover the Substance of Things. The listener does not need to read the entire script, since the symphony does not remotely appear to follow it, and to consider it to be a programmatic work is verging on the absurd. However, it must be pointed out that this dominant mood of egomania and mysticism in the early 20th century—one only has to think of Scriabin, Holst or Mahler—is also an important part of the ‘Brazilianness’ of Villa-Lobos, who gradually transformed it into a pantheistic vision of the Brazilian landscape and sought to translate it into musical terms.

Even the most sceptical are immediately won over by the ‘luminous vision of the Other World’ in the second movement of Symphony No. 1, with its cello solo that blossoms into a sumptuous, darkly coloured sonority. Villa-Lobos does not succeed in maintaining the same sense of enchantment throughout, but the building of atmosphere, his forte, can already be seen here in all its glory. The ‘unforeseen’ is not so much the rather awkward attempt to create an aesthetic theory, but the fact that Villa-Lobos is already presenting himself as the finished product in his first large-scale symphonic work.

The first movement is subdivided into three sections that explore different aspects of an extremely angular theme, introduced right at the beginning in an imitative way. The second section, which begins as a pizzicato on the strings, is a little reminiscent of the melodic breadth of Sibelius.

The third movement establishes one of the most frequent features of the music of Villa-Lobos: the scherzo in the style of Beethoven, full of ideas that move around freely in counterpoint, with impressionistic orchestration and a swagger that, in the light of his subsequent output, we interpret as a characteristic of ‘Brazilianness’. The last movement, which makes very free use of a theme from the first, is the closest to the conventional symphonic rondo form, with its martial themes that alternate with lugubrious passages and build up to a feverish final climax.

Just as the script only defines the form of this work if we use our imagination, it is difficult to read it as a vision of a conventional symphony. The symphony appears to dialogue with other narrative works, such as Rimsky- Korsakov’s Scheherazade. A large part of Villa-Lobos’s signature in the majority of his mature works, including the finale precipitato that ends in unison, is already present here. We can safely say that Symphony No. 1 is a surprising success story within the oeuvre of an as yet inexperienced composer, but one who is making notable strides with every new work.

 

Symphony No. 2 ‘Ascensão’ (‘Ascension’) is dated 1917—before the composer had heard any of his works performed by a professional orchestra. However, its premiere in 1944 suggests that at least part of it may have been written much later. Whatever the truth may be, the listener would be surprised by a work in which Villa-Lobos is already so recognisable or by his ability to replicate in the mature phase of his career, his style as a fledgling composer.

The subtitles of several of his symphonies would lead us to believe that Villa-Lobos’s vision for the symphonic genre was predominantly programmatic or descriptive, following in the French tradition of Berlioz or Liszt. This is one of the sources of controversy because, with the exception of Symphonies No. 3 ‘A Guerra’ (‘War’), No. 4, ‘A Vitória’ (‘Victory’), and No. 10 ‘Ameríndia’, the subtitles may give the listener a clue and set the scene, but do not determine the form and content.

Notes on Symphony No. 2 indicate that the subtitle, Ascension, describes the composer’s state of mind at the time it was composed; it may also suggest the ascendant moment in the composer’s trajectory. More concretely, the main themes in all four movements of Symphony No. 2 have an acute ascendant profile. An assiduous student of D’Indy in the 1910s, as we have seen, Villa-Lobos constructed his work in accordance with the cyclical principle, in which ideas taken from the first movement return, sometimes transfigured and sometimes as reminiscences, in the subsequent movements, giving the work formal cohesion and expressive continuity.

In the case of Symphony No. 2, the main recurrent idea, D–F–E, is introduced by the double basses and cellos, in a violent, ascendant sequential movement, absorbed by the horns and trombones, which will return at various moments as punctuation or counterpoint. A characteristic method of symphonic construction is already in operation here: the elaborate initial chord gives way to the main motifs and an ostinato, which probably sprang from the composer’s imagination but which to our ears sounds like a folk rhythm, serves as a backdrop for a succession of new ideas, brought together in clearly delineated thematic groups, which alternate between contemplation, lyricism and frenetic activity.

A myriad of influences and quasi-citations are filtered, like in a magic spell, by Villa-Lobos’s ability to put his personal stamp on a piece with his distinctive harmonic vocabulary and his imaginative orchestration, inherited from the French tradition, from D’Indy to Debussy. The third motif of the first thematic group is reminiscent of Chopin’s Prelude No. 20, Op. 28. The second thematic group could have come, like many other sections of this symphony, from a ballet by Tchaikovsky. The intricate counterpoint and the way the motifs are developed constitute a laborious attempt to emulate Germanic symphonies. The lyrical theme of the third thematic group is a reflection of Villa-Lobos’s experiences of Puccini’s operas. He also attempted, in this early stage of his career, to adhere to the academic process of development and re-exhibition, but the result is inevitably tempered by his impetuosity.

The second movement also pieces together, in rapid succession, slightly discordant elements. Echoes of Dukas, Mussorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakov give way to a rather old-fashioned waltz, framed by typical flourishes of Russian ballet music. A virtuoso clarinet passage heralds the return of the ‘ascension’ motif in different guises and also a contrasting episode.

Generally, in his symphonies, Villa-Lobos reserves his greatest originality for the sinister or painful atmospheres of the slow movements. The slow movement of this symphony seems to herald the kind of serenade-like melancholy that would later become the trademark of his Bachianas Brasileiras. Once again he introduces the return of the ‘ascension’ motif, which unites the four movements.

The same motif, now transformed, introduces the final movement. In the form of a ballad, and less frenetic than those of Symphony No. 3 and Symphony No. 4, but undoubtedly created with greater expertise, the movement features the same element as Brahms’s or Mahler’s Symphony No. 1, in which the fragmented, restless and tragic introduction gradually reveals a brighter scenario. Here Villa-Lobos gradually travels through a profusion of nostalgic and bitter sections, until a more lively rhythm gradually leads the orchestra through immense technical difficulties to reach a succession of increasingly intense climaxes, sometimes interrupted by a sullen, rather Wagneresque dialogue between the bass clarinet and the percussion, sometimes by a meditation shared by the solo viola, flute and clarinet, until the final episode culminates in a combination of the ‘ascension’ motif and that of Chopin’s Prelude.

The fact that the orchestration of this Second Symphony is distinctly similar to that of the First suggests that most of it must have been composed in the 1910s. However here we have the portrait of the artist as a young man, a much more ambitious Villa-Lobos willing to apply all his expertise in a work of comparable proportions to the Germanic symphonies of the early 20th century, a format that he would go on to revisit, dramatically reformulating it, from his Symphony No. 6 (1944) onwards.

Fábio Zanon

Translation: Lisa Shaw