Folklore, Serialism, and Clicking Keys: a Brief Survey of the Literature for Unaccompanied Flute from Latin America

Folklore, Serialism, and Clicking Keys: A Brief Survey of the Literature for Unaccompanied Flute from Latin America The mid-20th century saw the growth of a struggle throughout Latin America to reconcile local or regional influences within the framework of European formalism—and particularly to serve the sonic possibilities of the unaccompanied solo flute. by John L. Walker ince 1938, Latin America’s composers have turned repeatedly to the !ute as a vehicle not only to explore its artistic and technical possibilities but also as a way to push the boundaries of their compositional styles when applied to a medium Sas intimate as that of the solo wind instrument. !e Historical Background Although there was virtually no interest in concert music for the !ute until the "rst decades of the 20th century, the pronounced partiality for the !ute that began some 78 years ago may be due to three historical factors. First, although it is di#cult to make sweeping generalizations about the music of indigenous populations prior to the Spanish conquest, !ute-like instruments were not only used throughout that region but were probably highly respected; evidence suggests that in many pre-Conquest cultures the !ute was “considered the closest representation of the human voice.”1 Second, Catholic missionaries undertook an enormous e$ort to evangelize the indigenous population of Latin America by establishing missions and schools where they taught the indigenes to play the !ute and other European instruments. During the mid-16th century in Ecuador’s San Andrés School, for example, the indigenous musician Juan Bermejo rose to such prominence as a !utist and keyboardist that “upon his reaching maturity the cathedral dra%ed him as organist and chapelmaster.”2 Lastly, the !ute continued to be cultivated in Latin America during the late 18th century and into the 19th, principally by musicians of European origin, such as Juan Daniel Ericourt, who from 1783 to 1814 was not only a highly respected !utist in Lima, Peru, but also trained many "ne students; and later, by peripatetic musicians such as Francisco Pennella, who advertised his services as an instructor of !ute, piano, and harp in the newspapers of Curaçao, Guayaquil, Ecuador, and San Francisco, California (and perhaps in other areas as well) from about the mid-1840s until around 1860. Seeking an Authentic Voice Although the beginning of the 20th century witnessed the incorporation of the !ute into various chamber music compositions—one of the most important of these is Heitor Villa-Lobos’s Sexteto místico (1917, Mystic Sextet)—it was the German-born composer and !utist Hans Joachim Koellreutter (1915–2005) who introduced the concept of writing for the !ute as a solo instrument to Latin America. Because his own family denounced his engagement to a Jewish woman, in 1937 he was exiled to Rio de Janeiro, where the following year he began teaching in the Brazilian Conservatory of Music. His work for unaccompanied !ute, Improviso (1938), however, came on the heels of a period of stylistic reorientation in instrumental composition in Latin America. Indeed, not long a%er the "rst examples of this kind of music began to appear, from about 1915 until 1945, Latin American composers began to look for ways to disassociate themselves from European music and create an authentically Latin American musical language. &is movement manifested itself in several di$erent ways. For example, many of the early works of Brazilian Villa-Lobos (1887–1959) relied on folklore, ambient sounds particular to Brazil’s !ora and fauna, and urban street music that he combined with Western classical music. Another Brazilian composer, Luciano Gallet (1893–1931), “was particularly concerned with de"ning the exact nature of his country’s folk and popular music and of devising an adequate manner for utilizing their characteristics in his compositions.”3 In other parts of Latin America, composers developed an indigenist style by using elements that they believed had been used before the Spanish conquest. In the Andes, for example, a number of composers followed in the footsteps of the Peruvian Daniel Alomía Robles (1871–1942), who, a%er transcribing more than 600 melodies while visiting remote settlements throughout Peru, proceeded to blend these melodies into his own compositions. Another common feature of this music is the incorporation of ostensibly autochthonous resources, such as in Xochipilli-Macuilxóchitl, una música azteca imaginaria (1940), by Mexican composer Carlos Chávez (1899–1978). In this work, Chávez directs all three woodwinds—piccolo, !ute, and E-!at clarinet—to reproduce only the sounds Aztec !utes were capable of producing and the trombone to 4 approximate the timbre of a blown seashell. FALL 2016 THE FLUTIST QUARTERLY 41 NFAONLINE.ORG No single approach has com- &erefore, no single approach has completely disappeared; rather, one of the strengths of Latin American composition— pletely disappeared; rather, and why it is so singularly positioned in the world—is that its syncretism consists of many di$erent in!uences. one strength of Latin American With this in mind, and to better illustrate these stylistic tendencies, I have selected seven published works by the composition is that its syncretism aforementioned composers that will be brie!y described below. Although works for unaccompanied !ute were printed throughout consists of many influences. the period 1938 to 2011, from 1950 to 1972, editions were not available in the United States. Nevertheless, in the hope that these Meanwhile, in addition to Koellreutter, during the 1930s Latin may soon become available, an appended table of these titles, as America began to receive European immigrant composers well as the more than a dozen as-of-yet unpublished compositions, escaping famine or persecution. By playing an important role as follows this survey. luminaries, they in!uenced not only their contemporaries but also future generations in their adoptive countries. Camargo Guarnieri, Improviso No. 1 (1941) In 1929, several years a%er arriving in Argentina, eclectic Russian &is work reveals an intermixture of folkloric and neoclassical composer Jacobo Ficher (1896–1978) cofounded the neo-classical in!uences. (See example 1.) On the one hand, the melodic and anti-folklore–oriented Grupo renovación (Renovation Group), design of the "rst two measures is strongly suggestive of the which “fought to open the ears and minds of Argentineans to the sort of popular song the composer might have heard in a social new tendencies that were boiling in the European and American setting or on the radio. &is melody also contains a falling half 5 centers of creation.” Like-minded movements arose in other step motive that recurs throughout the "rst and third sections of countries, such as the Agrupación tonus (Tonus Group) in Chile the composition. and Música Viva (Living Music) in Brazil. &e former, which was &e second section, with its rapid !ourishes and use of !utter led by Austrian composer and !utist Esteban Eitler (1913–1960), tongue, is cadenza-like. On the other hand, the work has a “rather produced “mostly dodecaphonic music with a tendency towards imprecise tonal orientation,”7 and the constantly changing meters 6 microformal structure.” and borrowed subdivisions in many measures create a sense of In 1939, Koellreutter founded the Música Viva group. &rough rhythmic instability that is not typically found in folk or popular this association he strongly in!uenced Brazilian composers, such music. &is characteristic may be challenging for some players. as Camargo Guarnieri (1907–1993), in the procedures of 12- Tristamente (e=100) (e=e) tone composition. Similar to the Argentine group, they issued 3 œb œœ. œb . œ a manifesto in 1946 that declared their opposition to folkloristic 4 J œ œ œb 3 4 œb œœ. œb œb œ. œn œ œb œ œ 5 œb œb &4 3 4 4 J œ œb J œ 8 œ œb nationalism and, because of this, many people viewed the group p as an anti-national campaign. Example 1. Guarnieri, Improviso No. 1, mm. 1–5. Reproduced by arrangement &e tension between modernist and nationalist composers with Broude Brothers, Ltd. erupted in 1950 in an open letter penned by Guarnieri, vigorously defending the nationalist movement while at the Willy Corrêa de Oliveira, Gesang des Abends (1973) same time warning younger composers about the dangers of From the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s, Corrêa de Oliveira was the 12-tone technique. “stimulated by aleatory techniques applied to sonic collage During the 1950s, as more and more Latin American of borrowed materials from Western music and combined composers travelled to Europe and North America for advanced with controlled passages.”8 His Gesang des Abends (1973) was instruction, external in!uences produced either new mixtures composed as an homage and testimony to Robert Schumann. of indigenous elements with contemporary techniques or Divided into two parts, the "rst is dedicated to Florestan’s gestures composers altogether abandoned local in!uences—folklore, and the second to Eusebius (these were the names of Schumann’s two ambient sound sources, etc.—in favor of styles bearing little, if personalities). &e work features contemporary notational symbols, any, national or regional association. Examples of the former such as three kinds of fermatas, feathered beaming for changes include the Peruvian composer Enrique Pinilla (1927–1989), in tempo, and four square note heads, each of which represents a who as an ethnomusicologist was one of the "rst in his country harmonic center. &e excerpt reproduced below is followed by to study the music of the Amazon River basin. On the other six measures directing the !utist to play a barrage of second- and hand, a%er an initial but short-lived period of writing folkloric- third-octave staccato 16th notes as quickly as possible.

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