Entr’acte: Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5
On the occasions when Heitor Villa-Lobos deigned to write memorable vocal music — his failure to create a clear-cut national opera notwithstanding — he was plainly unsurpassed in inventiveness, originality, and means of expression.
For example, a thorough study of his superb Bachianas Brasileiras (1930-1945) is an absolute must for any classically trained artist to achieve a deeper understanding of the Brazilian composer’s methodology and mind-set. In these works Villa-Lobos brought “together his native folk-lore elements with the great European musical tradition [of Bach], and,” in the estimation of American conductor Leonard Bernstein, “[unified] them into a single style of his own, as he does in the very title of this piece.”
There were nine Bachianas in all, with the first one, for eight cellos, dedicated to Spanish cellist Pablo Casals; the second, for chamber orchestra, featured the delightful toccata movement O Trenzinho do Caipira, or “The Little Train of the Country Bumpkin”; the third and fourth were for piano and orchestra, respectively; the sixth, for bassoon and flute; the seventh and eighth, for full orchestra; and the ninth, considered one of his most sonorous musical creations, was composed for mixed voices or string ensemble.
The most performed of the Bachianas, of course, is the ever-popular No. 5 for soprano soloist and eight cellos, written in two movements, with the first having its world premiere in 1938, in Rio, and sung by its lyricist, the singer Ruth Valadares Corrêa; and the second, Dança (Martelo), a song with rapid articulation, completed around 1945, with words by Modernist poet Manuel Bandeira.
The cream of operatic vocal talent, including Arleen Auger, Kathleen Battle, Victoria de Los Angeles, Renée Fleming, Maria Lúcia Godoy, Jill Gomez, Barbara Hendricks, Ana Maria Martínez, Eva Marton, Anna Moffo, Bidu Sayão, Kiri Te Kanawa, and Galina Vishnevskaya, has recorded this gorgeous and oft-performed showpiece, focusing primarily on the lyrical Ária (Cantilena) section.
A small portion of the aria has even found its way onto the grooves of the post-pubescent Brazilian singing team of Sandy & Júnior, as a brief solo number for Sandy on her live Mercury album Quatro Estações (“Four Seasons,” 2000), further attesting to the popularity of the tune with teenagers.
Once heard, this hauntingly beautiful melody, augmented by contrapuntal pizzicato effects in the cellos, is not soon forgotten. Many listeners will be reminded of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s earlier Vocalise for soprano and orchestra from 1912, which served as a model for Villa’s version. It has remained one of the Brazilian composer’s most recognizable and universally beloved pieces of music from among his over fifteen hundred or more compositions.
There was poetry in the verses as well as in the scoring, which, in sum, read as follows:
Tarde uma nuvem rósea lenta e transparente
Sobre o espaço, sonhadora e bela!
Surge no infinito a lua docemente,
Enfeitando a tarde, qual meiga donzela
Que se apresta e a linda sonhadoramente,
Em anseios d’alma para ficar bela
Grita ao céu e a terra toda a Natureza!
Cala a passarada aos seus tristes queixumos
E reflete o mar toda a Sua riqueza…
Suave a luz da lua desperta agora
A cruel saudade que ri e chora!
Tarde uma nuvem rósea lenta e transparente
Sobre o espaço, sonhadora e bela!
A rosy, transparent cloud rises slowly
Over the dreamy and beautiful space!
Sweetly the moon appears on the horizon,
Decorating the afternoon like a darling damsel
Who rushes and dreamily adorns herself,
With an anxious soul to become beautiful
Shout to Nature, you sky and Earth!
All the birds become still to the moon’s complaints
And the sea reflects its splendor…
Softly, the shining moon awakens
To the cruel longing that laughs and cries!
A rosy, transparent cloud rises slowly
Over the dreamy and beautiful space!
Inconceivably, the familiar female part was originally intended for the violin. But at the suggestion of soprano Bidu Sayão, the composer was sufficiently convinced to re-score the wordless opening with her voice category in mind, thus equating the worldwide success of this lovely elegiac ode to the diminutive diva’s prescient advice.
“Though distinct from the Choros,” added biographer Simon Wright, “the Bachianas are indeed an extension of the earlier series, and both cycles demonstrate similarities and common features. Like the Choros, the individual Bachianas display a large variety of instrumental media…, [with] the scope [ranging] from the intimate to the gigantic.”
All’s Fair in Love and War
This very “gigantism,” as Wright so aptly termed it, would manifest itself in unorthodox ways, which Villa-Lobos translated into huge public gatherings of massed choirs, numbering some thirty to forty thousand strong — and sometimes more — voiced by Brazilian school children from all grade levels, in soccer stadiums all across the country.
It was all within the context of promoting “Getúlio Vargas as the head of state, of the Estado Novo, and of the regime,” by lifting the level of the country’s art in a newly unified and “independent” Brazil, that the Bachaianas came into being, concurrent as they were with the length and scope of President Vargas’ first administration, ending in 1945.
For a variety of reasons – some highly controversial, some not so contentious – most authors tackling this subject have, in the past, overlooked the glaring historical record of the composer’s fervently nationalistic period. With the extraordinary research put forth by Analía Cherñavsky, in her 2003 master’s dissertation for the State University of Campinas, Um Maestro no Gabinete: Música e Política no Tempo de Villa-Lobos (“A Maestro in the Cabinet: Music and Politics in the Time of Villa-Lobos”), along with those of José Wisnick and other authors, only lately has Heitor Villa-Lobos’ wholehearted participation re-surfaced – and, most importantly, been acknowledged – in what, in retrospect, might have been regarded at the time as a highly-suspect form of latent National Socialism (!).
After the war’s end, and certainly after Vargas’ subsequent resignation from the presidency, Villa-Lobos went about deconstructing (or, in less polite terms, “reinventing”) his formerly close association with the regime; that is to say, his involvement as the country’s musical director, responsible for elevating the musical tastes of Brazil’s younger generation – an exceptionally lucrative civil service position, mind you, with a regular salary, benefits and retirement pension.
* * *
As his artistic career progressed by leaps and bounds, all was not so quiet along the home front. The joining of two such powerful forces as Heitor Villa-Lobos and his wife Lucília was not one to have withstood a constant clash of ego-driven temperaments, to say nothing of the conflicting demands of joint careers in classical music.
Around 1932, Villa-Lobos met and fell hard for the much younger Arminda Neves de Almeida, nicknamed “Mindinha,” who would become his most trusted companion and aid. Their initial encounters, which slowly blossomed into a full-blown extramarital affair, sparked a midlife crisis that was carried on, for the most part, in relative secrecy.
After years of furtive meetings, however, the time finally arrived for a firm commitment to be made, one way or the other. From Europe, where he was scheduled to attend the First International Congress of Music Education in May 1936, Villa-Lobos wrote to Lucília requesting an end to their 23-year relationship:
“I am sure that the decisive news that follows will not be a surprise to you. For a long time I have considered this resolution [regarding my personal life]. My reasons are few but just. I cannot live in the company of someone from whom I feel entirely estranged, isolated, constricted, in short, without any affection except for a certain gratitude for your faithfulness during the many years we have been together.
“I proclaim our absolute liberty [from one another]. I do so, however, with a clear conscience, in the knowledge that I have done everything to ensure that you lack for nothing…
“I should wish you never to feel resentment towards me or anyone else, but to accept that our situation could not end in any other way…
“I will send a reliable person to fetch my personal belongings, and I will live alone with my mother.
“Wishing you much happiness in your new life.”
Shocked and dismayed by his obvious betrayal, Lucília never formally consented to the separation. Her final letter to him, dated June 19, 1936, was all the more revealing for its unfettered expression of hurt feelings and, independent of their present predicament, her undiminished defense of his art:
“I never imagined that, open and impulsive as you admit you are, and enjoying absolute liberty, you would endeavor to hide the real reason for your conduct, casting around for excuses which are in any case quite unjust and without foundation for a decision as serious as our final separation…
“My attitude has always been one and the same and known to all: to be your sincere companion and collaborator.
“If the many enemies you have have been busy spreading this infamous nonsense, quite certainly your work, your response, your compositions have by themselves crushed any such outrageous allegations… And despite the humiliations I have suffered, I continue to encourage interest in your work and to make it known in every post I hold, even though you are not there to see it.
“My devotion and sincerity have not grown less. I regard Villa the man and Villa the artist as quite distinct. I think, in any case, despite your insistence on your decision not to return home, that it would be better for us to have, as I already asked, a personal understanding between us…
“However, you should quite clearly understand that I will not relinquish any of my rights as your wedded wife and shall continue to sign myself Lucília Guimarães Villa-Lobos…”
Their exchange fairly crackles with tension and strain, and smacks, too, of the same kind of circuitous logic (from Villa’s part, at least) that Wagner’s head god, Wotan, once tried to pawn off on his harried mate Fricka as justification for his many wanderings and dalliances.
Brazil, being a Catholic country, had no divorce laws as such. Knowing this, Villa-Lobos and Arminda nonetheless went ahead with their plans to share living quarters as de facto “husband and wife” — a scandalous Picasso-like arrangement to others, but a perfectly acceptable state to the enamored pair — until such time as an official 1973 decree allowed for the surviving Mindinha to legally adopt the composer’s surname.
Even more troubling for scholars, as well as for his many admirers, was the surprising discovery that the composer later instructed Mindinha to basically “rewrite” the entire history, as it were, of his association with his lawful spouse. This involved the virtual elimination of any mention of Lucília as a major factor in the dissemination and perpetuation of his works — certainly a much more “scandalous” revelation than his living in unwedded bliss entailed, considering the position Villa-Lobos soon held as Brazil’s premier musical attraction.
(End of Part Three)
Copyright © 2013 by Josmar F. Lopes
