Bachianas Brasileiras No.9 for strings

Prelúdio (vagaroso e mistico)

Fuga (poco apressado)

Bachianas Brasileiras No.8 for orchestra

Prelúdio

Aria (Modinha)

Toccata (Catira batida)

Fuga

A composer dedicated to creating, single-handed, a national musical tradition out of nothing except his country’s folk and popular music needs not only genius but faith too. After demonstrating his genius in Paris for seven years, Villa-Lobos    returned to Rio de Janeiro in 1930 to undertake just that mission for Brazil, finding inspiration in his long-term devotion to J.S. Bach and his mystic faith that “the music of Bach comes from the astral infinite to infiltrate itself in the earth as folk music.” Extraordinary notion though that is, there are in fact stylistic parallels between the music of J.S. Bach and the densely polyphonic improvisations of the Brazilian street musicans, the chorões, just as there are similarities between the rhythmic figurations of Brazilian dance music and those of baroque instrumental music. Certainly, those likenesses, such as they are, furnished Villa-Lobos with the means to complete between 1930 and 1944 a series of new fewer than nine Bachianas Brasileiras for a variety of instrumental and vocal ensembles. Immensely prolific composer as he was, he made hundreds of other contributions to the cause of developing Brazilian music, not least the 14 Choros based on the music of the chorões, but the Bachianas Brasileiras remain, at least by European standards, his major achievement.

Villa-Lobos’s usual practice in the Bachianas Brazileiras was to give each movement a formal title such as Bach might have used and add a vernacular (Portuguese) subtitle indicating what form of Brazilian popular or folk music or what feature of Brazilian life he is bringing into association with a baroque form. The most famous example is the last movement of the second in the series, which presents a ride in a little steam train as a toccata. The ninth and last, which was written for an unaccompanied chorus before it was re-arranged for strings, is a very much more serious conception with little that is obviously Brazilian about it. While both movements have subtitles in Portuguese, they are directions to the performers rather references to anything specifically Brazilian.

Subtitled vagaroso e mistico (languorous and mystic) the Prelúdio is a meditation on the melody which, after the emphatically dissonant opening, slowly weaves its way through increasingly dense string harmonies without, at this stage, getting involved in counterpoint. But when that melody is transformed at the beginning of the second movement into a vigorous new theme with a distinctively Bach-like rhythm, counterpoint flourishes abundantly in a six-voice fugue, the intensity of which is relieved from time to time by non-fugal but still contrapuntal episodes. Although this Fuga movement is in a restless 11/8 time and bears the direction poco apressado (rather hurried), an expressively sustained melody is carried expansively over the fugal turmoil at its climax .

Also written in 1944, the eighth of the Bachianas Brazileiras, scored for the whole orchestra and constructed in four movements, is a much bigger work than the ninth. It has been described as a concerto for orchestra but, in its concern for content rather than colour, it is not far from qualifying as a symphony. Colour is by no means lacking but it is more likely to be put to structural than to decorative use.

In the opening Prelúdio – which shares certain features of the Bachian chorale prelude – there is a clear distinction between, on the one hand, the characteristically winding theme introduced and developed by the strings and, on the other, the increasingly weighty proclamations from the brass. Towards the end the brass element is reduced to a syncopated rhythmic ostinato behind the opening theme on solo cello until, in the final bars, it asserts its dynamic supremacy. The slow movement – headed Aria in Bachian terms and Modinha (or love song) in Brazilian terms – is based on the expressive melody introduced, after a few bars of preparation, by the cellos in tender counterpoint with the violins. With the entry of the wind, while retaining its distinctive melodic shape, it advances from intimacy to outspoken passion with prominent trumpet colours at the central climax of the movement. A solo bassoon briefly offers a reminder of the earlier lyricism before a new surge of passion emerges in a vigorous variant of the main theme featuring a particularly eloquent clarinet. Intimacy is finally restored by a solo cello.

Equivalent to a symphonic scherzo, the third movement is headed Toccata (Catira Batida), the Portuguese subtitle referring to a dance of Indian origin from central Brazil. Spectacular outer sections, animated by extraordinary rhythmic energy and brilliantly coloured by exotic percussion, are offset by a characteristically melodious middle section eventually worked up to full-scale orchestral splendour. The concluding Fuga has the breadth of a symphonic finale. It is based on a sedate theme which is briefly anticipated by the strings in the opening bars and then definitively introduced by bassoon with a counter-theme on cor anglais. Although the thematic duality is not preserved throughout, it does contribute to the textural density of a movement which amounts to a monumental celebration of the contrapuntal virtuosity of composer with as much faith in his own genius as that of J.S. Bach.

Gerald Larner © 2011