San Francisco Chamber Orchestra

"The Devil Made Me Do It" Program Notes

April 20,21,22 - 2007

Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887 – 1959)

American concert-goers seldom get to experience the colorful and imaginative works of Brazil’s best known classical composer, Heitor Villa-Lobos. Villa-Lobos wrote operas, ballets, and immense amounts of choral, orchestral and chamber music, including 17 string quartets. He is best know for his Bachianas Brazileiras, eight diverse pieces written in homage to his favorite composer, Johann Sebastian Bach.

Born in Rio de Janeiro in 1887, young Heitor was taught cello by his father, an avid amateur musician. The cello was to remain his principal instrument, although he taught himself to master the guitar as a young man. He also taught himself to improvise and compose music, hanging out with his bohemian friends in vibrant Rio instead of attending to his academic studies. In his early twenties, Villa-Lobos traveled throughout Brazil and as far as Barbados, jotting down folk melodies and observing popular Brazilian folk culture.

Back in Rio, Villa-Lobos tried to apply himself to serious studies in musical composition, but dropped out of the National Music Institute, earning his living playing the cello in small groups in cafes and cinemas. A concert in 1915 presented several of Villa-Lobos’ early compositions; gradually his name became known around town and his gifts recognized. In 1923, with the help of the Brazilian government, he was able to travel to Europe, where his music was immensely successful with Paris avante-garde.

Returning to Brazil in 1930, Villa-Lobos dedicated much of his life to transforming his country’s musical educational system. He wrote many choral works to be sung by children in the public schools. In the role of conductor, he often led programs of his own works, and became immensely popular as a musical personality. Much as Bartok was doing in Eastern Europe, Villa-Lobos successfully reconciled his native folk music with European “art” music, in a highly individualistic and distinctive manner. His colorful compositions were now introducing Brazilian rhythms and melodies to concert-goers around the world.

After World War Two, Villa-Lobos’ international success was assured. His Eleventh Symphony was commissioned by the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1955; Andres Segovia received a guitar concerto; Villa-Lobos even wrote for Hollywood, penning the soundtrack for the MGM film “Green Mansions” starring Audrey Hepburn and Anthony Perkins.

Igor Stravinsky (1882 – 1971)
One of the towering musical figures of the 20^th century, Stravinsky’s 1913 Le Sacred du Printemps (“The Rite of Spring”) was a musical “shot heard ‘round the world”, decisively changing the course of music history. A riot broke out at its Paris premiere; Harold Schonberg wrote in the New York Times “’Le Sacre’, with its metrical shiftings and shattering force, in near-total dissonance and breakaway from established canons of harmony and melody, was a genuine explosion”. A Boston listener wrote the following to the Boston Herald in 1924:

Who wrote this fiendish Rite of Spring?
What right had he to write this thing,
Against our helpless ears to fling,
It’s crash, clash, cling clang, bing bang bing!

Stravinsky was born in Oranienbaum (renamed Lomonosov in 1948), Russia and brought up in Saint Petersburg. Although his father was a professional singer, but music was considered a hobby and Stravinsky was sent to university to study law. By 1905, however, he was composing music under the tutelage of the great Rimsky-Korsakov. In 1909 came his “big break”, when the choreographer Sergei Diaghilev heard Stravinsky’s music and asked him to write music for an original ballet entitled “The Firebird (1909)”. Instantly catapulted into international success, Stravinsky followed with another folklore-inspired ballet, “Petrouchka (1911)”, and then the “explosion” of “Sacred du Printemps”.

Leaving Russia in 1910, Stravinsky spent the next twenty-nine years living in France and Switzerland. His music took a “neo-classical” turn, as Stravinsky wrote for smaller ensemble, based on the classical forms of Bach, Mozart, and others. Both his L’Histoire du Soldat (“The Soldier’s Tale”) (1918) and his Dumbarton Oaks Concerto (1938) are masterpieces from this neo-classical period.

Later, Stravinsky turned to serial music – following the 12-tone innovations of Arnold Schoenberg and others, and his music became more complex and compact. Emigrating to the United States in 1939 as war broke out in Europe, he remained active as a composer, writer, and performer until his death in 1971. Stravinsky was a true “man of the world” and collaborated with many of the leading artists of the century – not only Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes, but also Pablo Picasso (Pulcinella, 1920) , Jean Cocteau (Oedipus Rex, 1927), a lasting association with choreographer George Balanchine, jazz clarinetist Artie Shaw (Ebony Concerto, 1945), and many others. He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6340 and posthumously received the Grammy Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1987.

L’Histoire du Soldat (“The Soldier’s Tale) (1918)

Stravinsky’s “neo-classical” music looks back to the music Bach, Mozart, and others through the prism of 20^th century techniques. Much like a Cubist painting, classical elements are broken up, rearranged, and re-ordered; dissonant harmonies and fresh rhythmic elements add modernistic elements to the mix.

From this period are the three symphonies: the Symphonie des Psaumes (Symphony of Psalms) (1930), Symphony in C (1940) and Symphony in Three Movements (1945). Apollon Musagete (1928), Persephone (1933) and Orpheus (1947) return us all the way back to ancient Greek mythology. Stravinsky’s sole opera, The Rake's Progress, is a neo-classical masterpiece. Completed in 1951 it was premiered by New York’s Metropolitan Opera in 1953.

Following his three ballets with Diaghilev, Stravinsky was seeking a practical concept for his next musical project. A simple theatrical work, involving few instrumentalists and actors, able to be mounted on a portable stage, sparked his imagination. He worked out the libretto with the Swiss writer Charles Ferdinand Ramuz, and composed a series of brilliant “set pieces” for the reduced forces of clarinet, bassoon, trumpet, trombone, violin, double bass, and percussion. A narrator relates most of the story; in the original production, several actors mimed, danced, spoke the few lines given Soldier, Devil, and Princess.

L’Histoire successfully combines a “naïve” folk tale with Stravinsky’s wonderfully subtle and sophisticated neo-classical music. A soldier, on leave from the army, is tramping back to his village to visit his sweetheart and aging mother. Waylaid by the Devil, our hero is persuaded to hand over his violin in return for a mysterious book, which promises him everything he desires. “Come with me for just three days”, coaxes the Devil. “You can teach me how to play the violin, and I will teach you how to read your book”. What happens next? Watch and see!