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570948 bk Ohana 31/7/09 18:21 Page 4 ancient Roman winter festival in tribute to Saturn. The metallic scale runs and varied rhythmic patterns. The central motif of this evocation is a fast and frenzied two-part chords are at one point rendered with the top dance. But between these manifestations of explosive voice in harmonics. Towards the end the chords have OHANA energy, calmer episodes predominate, such as the become three-part in places and are marked as opening, suggesting moonlight, reflection and ‘sustained’ and ‘held back’ to evoke an atmosphere of meditation on things past. pastoral calm. The title Jondo (profound) is a reference to the art Finally the music of Candil, from the Latin candere Music for Ten-String Guitar of Spanish flamenco, music of both celebration and (to shine or be white hot). This piece initially represents lament. This piece is divided into the chordal and the a popular and traditional texture of guitar music, a more intricately embellished scalic and arpeggiated melody with a bass accompaniment. It is only in the Tiento • Si le jour paraît... • Cadran lunaire elements of Andalusian art. Ohana is not interested in final stages of the work, marked ‘rapid, tumultuous’, imitating or replicating aspects of flamenco, but in that Ohana’s more characteristically dissonant moods keeping his distance and expressing emotions return reviving the tensions implicit in the earlier Graham Anthony Devine appropriate to the subject through a somewhat different movements. musical vocabulary once again entirely his own. Sylva brings us to the landscape of fields and forests Graham Wade often associated with Pan, believed to be the son of Saturn. The recurring motif here is to be found in two- (Grateful acknowledgement is due to Dr. Caroline Rae’s part chords of intervals of fourths and fifths, separated The Music of Maurice Ohana, Ashgate, 2000.) by sharply contrasting devices, including ornamentation, Graham Anthony Devine Graham Anthony Devine was born in England and began his musical studies at Chetham’s School of Music in Manchester, studying the guitar with Gordon Crosskey. He moved to Brazil when he was nineteen and became an established teacher and performer there, giving many recitals and master-classes throughout South America. In April 2002 he won first prize at the Alhambra International Guitar Competition held in Alcoy, Spain, repeating this success one month later at the Emilio Pujol International Guitar Competition in Italy. He is the only English guitarist to win either of these competitions. He records for Naxos and his 2005 Naxos release, British Guitar music (8.557040), was chosen as disc of the week on America’s NPR radio station. Currently much in demand as a recitalist, concerto soloist and international competition jury member, he has given master-classes at festivals and musical institutes throughout the world. His wide repertoire ranges from the Renaissance to most major twentieth-century works written for the guitar, including rarely performed masterpieces such as Maurice Ohana’s compositions for ten-string guitar. Graham Devine currently teaches at Trinity College of Music in London. www.grahamdevine.com 8.570948 4 570948 bk Ohana 31/7/09 18:21 Page 2 Maurice Ohana (1913-1992) Enueg (or in Catalan enuig) meaning ‘complaint’, at his wife’s hair but found that the tresses had been Tiento • Si le jour paraît... • Cadran lunaire was a genre of lyric poetry practised by the troubadours stolen. However, the court astrologer, Conon took him expressing protest and a sense of vexation. This to view the stars. There between the constellations Maurice Ohana, though born in North Africa in 1913, together and the piece ends on a dominant pedal-point translates into Ohana’s music with an initial explosion Canes Venatici, Bootes, Leo and Virgo was a mass of preferred to claim his birth date as 1914 because of his with an insistent drum-like beat. of strummed chords played glissandi achieved by distant stars, no other than the lovely hair of Berenice superstition about the number 13. Of Gibraltarian and Si le jour paraît... (1963-64) takes its name from sliding a piece of wood, ‘covered or not with thin spread through the heavens by Zeus himself, displaying Andalusian lineage, he spent his childhood in Morocco, Goya’s 71st Capricho, Si amanece vamos (If day leather’, up and down. Angular arpeggio figurations, its glories for all to see. The king was pleased with this Spain and the Basque region, and studied in both Paris breaks, we shall go). By including dots after the title the performed ‘metallically’ close to the bridge, tambora, a and Berenice overjoyed that Aphrodite had honoured and Barcelona. Ohana throughout his life researched composer reflects a sense of suspension of action, a special drumming effect, and other diversely original her. The piece is dedicated to the Croatian composer, various aspects of flamenco, African and medieval hesitation in itself enigmatic. The music includes not sonorities such as percussive sounds on the string with a Ivo Malec (b. 1925), a pupil of Messiaen. music, and was especially influenced by Debussy and only a range of sonorities very different from most tuning fork or strip of metal, are also featured. The sixth movement, Jeu des quatre vents (‘Game of Falla. His compositions include many works for the guitar pieces but also many innovative techniques. Maya-Marsya was written in memory of Ramón the Four Winds’) may seem at first a relatively stage as well as a quantity of orchestral, vocal, chamber The seven movements are diverse, some being Montoya (1880-1949), one of the greatest of flamenco straightforward impressionistic depiction of the subject and instrumental pieces, and a Concerto, Three Designs expressive tone poems, others impressionistic or, in one guitarists. The opening three-eight tempo and the matter. But the piece could also be considered as a for Guitar and Orchestra (1950-57), dedicated to the instance, prompting remembrance of a specific rhythmic structure, with its repeated notes, present a kind homage to Debussy with special reference to the Prélude Spanish guitarist, Narciso Yepes. historical event. The overall mood of the composition is of distillation of the bulerías, the fastest and most exciting in Book 1, No. VII, Ce qu’a vu le vent d’Ouest (What the Ohana’s guitar music, though indebted to Spanish sombre, presenting images of introspection and of Andalusian forms. But between such episodes, slower, west wind saw). Ohana marks his music Animé, culture, is far removed from any stereotypical Iberian melancholy. The suite is deeply influenced by more reflective moods are introduced, including one tumultueux, commencez un peu au-dessous du aspects and, with the exception of Tiento, was written Debussy’s Préludes, an aspect which extends in the passage of brilliantly guitaristic scales. In the second half mouvement (Animated, tumultuous, begin a little below for the ten-string guitar as played by Yepes. Inspired by score to placing titles at the end of each movement. of the work enigmatic strummed dissonances precede a the tempo), the exact words used by Debussy on the the possibilities of this newly developed instrument, Equally significant are implicit elements of flamenco lively coda where the original tempo is transformed into opening pages of his score. But apart from these elements Ohana’s imagination created an absorbing landscape of guitar, including rasgueado (strummed chords), clusters varied patterns of rhythm and syncopation and a final of tribute, Ohana’s music remains entirely his own. profound resonances, allusions and inventiveness. of rapid scalic patterns, arpeggiated chords, and the use rasgueado effect marked ‘furiously’. The final piece in the sequence, Aube (Alba) Immense demands are made on both player and listener of percussive devices. Such ingredients, however, are 20 Avril (Planh) has been described by Caroline Rae (Dawn), is a meditative expression of a subject popular for the composer’s expectations of the guitar are intensely refined and at a considerable distance from the as ‘the expressive heart of the work’. This commemorates among composers. The central aspects here are uniquely his own. Within these works the contemporary more obvious melodic and rhythmic absorption of the execution on 20th April 1962, of a political prisoner represented by episodes of two part writing, leading in developments of twentieth century modernism are fully Andalusian music in composers such as Albéniz, Falla, by the Franco régime. Planh (the troubadour’s term for a some instances to three voice dissonant chords, which represented in all their challenging complexity. Turina or Rodrigo. funeral lament), recalls Miguel Llobet’s guitar culminate each time in varying patterns of single notes, The tiento was originally the Spanish version of the The title of the first movement, Temple, according to arrangement of the Catalan folk-song, Plany (Naxos the exception being the final bars characterised by toccata, though of a more inward and expressive nature Caroline Rae, the foremost authority on Ohana’s music, 8.557351). The work has two predominant textures, the gentle discords. than the customary showy brilliance of the toccata style. ‘refers to the preparation or tuning-up of a singer’s voice slow opening chords, marked ‘distant, muffled’, and Cadran lunaire, written 1981-82, had its première It is both a flamenco dance and a feature of the prior to commencing the melismatic improvisations of passages of fast demisemiquavers to be played ‘rapidly in Rome on 9th December 1982 with Luis Martín repertoire for the sixteenth-century vihuela, a type of the Cante jondo’ (the ‘deep song’ of flamenco). The with violence’, both elements being juxtaposed in the Diego, the dedicatee and editor for the work. The title is courtly guitar. Ohana’s Tiento (1957) can be described piece begins with a quasi-improvisatory section leading final moments.