Here is something unusual: the Villa-Lobos Guitar Concerto played on three guitars.
This turns it into an interesting piece of chamber music with a much different, tighter, kind of ensemble. I learned this piece in three months for a live broadcast with the CBC Vancouver Orchestra. It is heard a good deal less than it should be! This arrangement really seems to work.
I first encountered the music of Heitor Villa-Lobos as a guitar student around 1972. It was the Prelude No. 4 and I found it both atmospherically lovely and technically challenging. It has a simple ABA structure, with the outer sections a simple triadic melody accompanied by harmonic chords. Then there is a fast middle section with rushing arpeggios that guitar students always struggle to get even. The magic comes when the return of the A section is preceded by a statement of the triadic melody in harmonics. It ends with a tonic chord in first inversion. Nice piece. Here is a recording I made many years later:
I later learned all five of the preludes and performed them as a group many times in concert, but this is the only one I have a recording of. After I began studying with Teo Bagchus in Vancouver, the first teacher I had who really knew the repertoire, I started to learn the Etude No. 8. I was still working on it when I traveled to Alicante, Spain to study with Teo's teacher, José Tomás. In fact, when I first knocked on his door and he asked me what I was working on, I'm pretty sure that it was mention of the Villa-Lobos Etude No. 8 that got me in the door. Later on I worked on the Etude No. 1, which is one of the trickiest arpeggio studies. Audiences like it because it sounds pretty, but guitarists can spend a few years mastering the complex arpeggio pattern. Here is my recording of it:
There are twelve etudes for guitar in all by Villa-Lobos but a lot of guitarists never get past the first one, which is actually one of the easiest. A particularly challenging one is the Etude No. 7 with its quick scales and melody that goes far up the neck. Here is my recording of that one:
So that gives you a pretty good sample of the solo guitar music by Villa-Lobos. I was bragging to a commentator that I have played almost all the music for guitar by Villa-Lobos in concert and that is almost true. I have played all of the preludes and most of the etudes (seven or eight of them, at least), the Concerto for Guitar and Orchestra as well as the Sexteto místico, a chamber work for the fascinating ensemble of flute, oboe, alto saxophone, guitar, celesta and harp. The only piece ever written for that ensemble, I am sure. That performance was for a chamber music series in Vancouver, recorded for broadcast by the CBC, in which I also played El Decameron negro by Leo Brouwer for solo guitar. Alas, I don't have a copy of that recording, so let's listen to this performance. The players are Bent Larsen (Flute), Sverre Larsen (Celesta), Björne Carl Nielsen (Oboe), Christian Hougaard (Saxophone), Jan Sommer (Guitar), Tine Rehling (Harp):
I haven't played the Suite popular brasileño, nor the Chôro No. 1, nor a couple of the etudes, but everything else...
Apart from the performance of the Concerto at the beautiful Orpheum Theatre in Vancouver, I think the performance I am most proud of was in Montreal when I devoted the whole first half to Villa-Lobos. I played the Etude 1, Prelude 1, Etude 2, Prelude 2, Etude 5, Prelude 3, Etude 7, Prelude 4, Etude 8, Prelude 5 and ended with the Etude 10, a real tour-de-force of slurs! I really wish I had a tape of that concert.
I haven't posted on guitar technique for a while. I hope you non-guitarists will forgive me but, who knows, I might say something useful even to non-guitarists.
A while ago I put up my performance of the Etude No. 1 by Heitor Villa-Lobos. Here it is again:
This is possibly the most popular etude of the twelve, not just with guitarists, but also with audiences. It poses some unique technical challenges. There is a new critical edition of the Etudes by Frédéric Zigante that takes into account some manuscript versions of the pieces and corrects some misprints. It is an excellent edition with complete scholarly apparatus about editions and sources. But, there are still some problems. I think the major problem with this etude is the right hand fingering which is found in a ms. of Villa-Lobos. He was a fine composer, but one suspects his guitar technique was less than polished. The problem with the RH fingering indicated is that you will probably never be able to achieve a truly even effect. There is a better fingering that aligns the RH with the meter more effectively. I have been using it so long myself that I honestly don't remember if I discovered it independently or if someone showed it to me. In any case, here is the first measure as a sample with Villa-Lobos' fingering and mine underneath:
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The problem this solves is the one created by following what Villa-Lobos considered to be a logical right hand fingering in terms of assigning strings to fingers. Unfortunately, this creates a problem in the third beat where a very weak finger combination, m a, falls on a strong beat metrically. What happens is that the rhythm at this point tends to limp. I'm sure there are very gifted technicians that can make the arpeggio even despite this, but I'm not one of them, nor are any of the students I have taught over thirty years. So there is a simple solution: simply adapt the fingering to the meter, which is what the lower fingering, numbered "2" does. The thumb plays on the beginning of each beat, making this fingering feel much more natural. The string-crossing requires a bit of practice, but it is easily achievable.
There are a couple of other issues with this piece. First of all, the tempo. The etude is often played at MM 120 to the quarter or even faster, at perhaps 132 or more. This may be achievable technically, but notice what Villa-Lobos writes: "Allegro non troppo". NOT too fast. Allegro is estimated at being between 109 and 132, so a not too fast allegro could easily be around 100. I think my recording, which dates back a number of years, is actually too fast! Even and controlled is better than speedy with this etude.
Now, how to practice it. Over the years I came up with an excellent practice method that will just about guarantee success. Practice the arpeggio by itself on open strings and also damp the strings with your left hand around the tenth to twelfth frets. You will get just a thumping kind of sound, which is very good for you to listen to for an even touch and rhythm. Practice this arpeggio VERY SLOWLY until it is memorized and very even. The next step is to practice it with different rhythms as below:
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Once you can play all these rhythms with complete control and evenness, then incrementally speed them up until you reach 100 on the metronome. As far as the argpeggio goes, that's it. It might take a while, but it is an extremely good discipline for the right hand. Once you have the arpeggio going well, you can try it with the actual chords. Having real pitches instead of just thumps is a real thrill, which adds to the fun of playing this etude.
UPDATE: I should probably mention that the way to practice those rhythmic patterns is to do each one by itself many times in a row before going on to the next one.
The only remaining problems with the etude are measures 23 and 24 and 31 and 32 where you have to skip around, first with slurs and then with harmonics. But just practice each passage very slowly until you have it mastered. No real tricks here.
Don't rush it and you will have an excellent addition to your repertoire.
Last week, as an introduction to my recordings of the preludes by Máximo Diego Pujol, I did a post called "The Latin American Prelude and Some History". Now I would like to do a postlude because there are some interesting differences between Villa-Lobos' handling of the prelude and Pujol's.
Heitor Villa-Lobos wrote five (or maybe six?) preludes in 1940. Some of them at least were played by Segovia, even though he was not the dedicatee as he was in much of the music by Ponce, Rodrigo and Moreno Torroba. Villa-Lobos dedicated his preludes for guitar to "Mindinha" or Arminda Neves d'Almeida who was Villa-Lobos' companion from 1936 until his death in 1959. The first prelude, in E minor, was a Segovia favorite.
I doubt anyone could handle that cello-like melody in the bass in the first part as lyrically as Segovia. For absolute rhythmic accuracy one would look elsewhere, to John Williams, for example, but the tone-color and vibrato of Segovia was really remarkable. This prelude is in arch-form: ABCBA. The prelude no. 2 I have put up before, but here is another performance:
It is surprisingly hard to find good performances of this prelude, but Pepe Romero, whom one does not usually think of as a Villa-Lobos interpreter, does an amazing job. That arpeggio in the middle is very difficult to master because the right hand fingering is awkward. The other problem is that the shifting makes it hard to avoid squeaking. But you would never even know these were problems listening to Pepe! The form of this prelude is a straightforward ABA with the middle section quicker.
The Prelude No. 3 is a favorite with students because it is technically a bit easier than the others. It is an hommage to Bach, mostly shown in the descending compound melody of the second part. A compound melody, one of Bach's specialties, is created by making one melodic line suggest two. Here, a high note is interspersed with a descending scale, which sounds like one melody turning into two. The form of this prelude is ABAB. John Williams has always played this prelude with particular intensity:
The Prelude No. 4 is another one with slow outer sections and a quick arpeggio in the middle. It is Villa-Lobos' hommage to the music and culture of the natives of Brazil. Here is a performance by Julian Bream (or you could go listen to mine here):
The Prelude No. 5 is a waltz in the form ABCA. It is in the style of the popular music of Brazilian society at the time: light, charming music.
Villa-Lobos had a great advantage over most composers for guitar: he was a guitarist, though a composer first. Segovia has made criticisms of the way Villa-Lobos wrote for guitar and there is no denying that many pieces pose unusual technical problems. Only very accomplished guitarists can solve them all. But the music is still idiomatic for guitar and the brilliant use it makes of the sonorities of the instrument is one reason these preludes are so popular. There is real originality here too, melodic, harmonic and rhythmic, but at the same time the music is never too far from its roots.
Pujol is a guitarist first, I suspect, and a composer second. His preludes are perfectly idiomatic for guitar with none of those awkwardnesses we find in Villa-Lobos. He never writes an awkward arpeggio, though the left hand does have to stretch a bit here and there. Though warmly expressive, Pujol's preludes are never as original as Villa-Lobos' and never get far enough from their roots in the tango! They are not quite as easy to play as they sound, as many student guitarists have discovered, but they are beautiful pieces for guitar that will charm the audience even though they may not have as much substance as the preludes by Villa-Lobos.
Last week I posted a performance of myself playing the Prelude No. 4 for guitar by Villa-Lobos. I'm going to put up some more preludes by another Latin American composer soon, but I want to say something about form first. The pre-lude, literally the thing you do before you play, started out in the 17th century as a couple of chords just to check the tuning for lute-players. I went into that in some detail in this post. Given that origin, the earlier preludes tended to be fairly simple arpeggiations. Bach, of course, made them a lot more complex, but the basic idea of a single, fairly simple, texture throughout, remained. Let me just give you some examples. First, a 17th century unmeasured prelude by Louis Couperin:
Other preludes by Louis Couperin extend into fantasia-like pieces. Here is a very typical lute prelude by S. L. Weiss based on a simple arpeggio:
And here is the kind of prelude Bach liked to write. There is but a single musical idea and it tends to be some sort of arpeggio:
Chopin, the next composer after Bach to really take the prelude seriously, followed this basic idea but with one important addition. Alongside a kind of arpeggio pattern he placed a touching and expressive melody:
But the idea of a prelude as being essentially a piece without contrasting sections was preserved. The first guitar composer to write preludes was Manuel M. Ponce, probably in the 1920s or 30s. He wrote twenty-four preludes, more or less emulating the example of Chopin. They are mostly very short pieces, less than a minute long, and each explores a single idea. Here is the Prelude in F# minor (they have different numberings depending on the edition), one of the longest:
Then came Villa-Lobos who wrote his five preludes for guitar slightly later, in 1940, with quite a different model. Though Bach was an important influence, when it came to his preludes the popular music of Brazil was just as important. All of his preludes are in at least two different sections with two different tempos, themes and moods. Take the Prelude No. 2, for example: short arpeggios with appoggiaturas and occasional scale passages are found in the first section, while the second section, piu mosso, uses a single arch-like arpeggio throughout. Then the first section returns for a basic ABA form. Here it is a live performance with John Williams. Sorry about the funny sound, but even with that, I think you would like to hear this version:
With the exception of the Prelude No. 5, that has three contrasting sections (ABCA), all the Villa-Lobos preludes rely on two contrasting ideas in different tempi. Except for the Prelude No. 3, that repeats ABAB, they are organized as ABA.
So that's a little history of the prelude with special attention to preludes written for guitar in the 20th century. This will be an introduction to the next group of recordings I am going to post. I am going to put up the Five Preludes by Máximo Diego Pujol (b. 1957), the Argentinian guitarist and composer. As one might expect, a major influence on his music is that of Astor Piazzolla, the great tango composer.
I just mentioned the etudes of Villa-Lobos talking about that manuscript that surfaced. It will interesting to see which if any performers will decide to take that into account in their performances. My recording of the Etude No. 7 is from the standard published edition. The Etude No. 7 is one of the more virtuoso ones, right up there with the Etude No. 2 and Etude No. 10. The twelve etudes of Villa-Lobos divide into three categories in my view. There are the ones that are not very interesting, that no-one seems eager to learn or listen to and that you only hear when someone plays the whole set of twelve. These include Nos 4 and 6. Then there are the ones that are pretty good, but awkward technically such as No. 9 (hard to realize slurs) and No. 12 (the shifting makes for a lot of squeaks). Then there are the ones that really work well, both technically and musically and that everyone likes to hear. These include No. 1, No. 7, No. 8 and No. 11. So here is my recording of the Etude No. 7. As it has a certain exuberance about it, I have chosen photos of Villa-Lobos with that in mind.
Composers used to issue pieces in groups of six: Bach wrote six English Suites, six French Suites, six keyboard partitas, six Sonatas and Partitas for violin, six Suites for cello and Haydn wrote a whole lot of sets of string quartets issued in groups of six: Op 20, Op 33, Op 50, Op 76. Even Beethoven's first set of string quartets, Op 18, had six pieces. Sometimes, they would write a group of twelve, like Chopin's etudes in two sets of twelve. Really large projects might involve sets of 24, like the Chopin preludes or Bach preludes and fugues. Those sets coincide with the number of keys: there are twelve major and twelve minor keys. But why those sets of six? You know, I'm really not sure!
But one of the first to break the pattern was the Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887 - 1959) who wrote not six, but five preludes for guitar. There has always been a rumor that he actually wrote six, but one was lost. But since his five preludes, a number of other composers for guitar have written groups of five, such as the Five Bagatelles of William Walton and the Five Preludes of Maximo Diego Pujol.
Today I want to post for you my recording of the Prelude No. 4 of Villa-Lobos--the one I learned first and that remains my favorite to this day. It is an unusual piece, with a haunting modal melody interspersed with quiet chords. Then there is a scintillating arpeggio section followed by the melody in high bell-like harmonics followed by a repeat of the opening. For some reason, the piece has always felt to me that it is floating in a very high place, so I have chosen photos of mountains in South America to accompany the music, with a couple of waterfalls for the quick arpeggios.
I just have a little piece for you today. Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887 - 1959) is a very important composer, one of the short list of figures who created a modern school of composition in Latin-America. The two main influences on his music were the native music of Brazil and modern European music which he encountered through the French composer Darius Milhaud who was a member of the French legation at the time and introduced Villa-Lobos to the music of Debussy, Satie and possibly Stravinsky.
In the 1920s Villa-Lobos met Andrés Segovia, who inspired him to write etudes for guitar. These, though not easy to play, turned out to be successful compositions, adding a whole new dimension to the guitar repertoire and were followed by a set of preludes that are very frequently heard, and a concerto for guitar and orchestra.
The Etude No. 1 is one of the pieces that every aspiring guitar virtuoso struggles with. It is not as hard as it sounds in most ways, but in some ways it is harder. It is not so difficult to play quickly, but quite difficult to play evenly and with good rhythmic control. Nearly every student guitarist makes the same mistake with it: they don't read the tempo marking which is not vivace, presto, prestissimo or muy rapido, but rather is the more modest Allegro non troppo: Fast, but not too fast! Just about every recording is too fast and the notes tend to blend into an indistinguishable mush of sound. To be perfectly frank, if I were recording it again today, I would play it a bit slower. It is clearer, makes more sense and is more beautiful... Here is the first page of the score:
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As you can see (you may have to click on the image), the tempo is Allegro non troppo!
One interesting thing about the piece is that it always seems to be a favorite with audiences who love the soaring arpeggios and colorful harmonies. Here is my recording:
