This week’s theme is…Music about Transportation! When we hear the word “transportation” in the twenty-first century, we imagine many modes of moving people and things from place to place, over sea, land and air. This is largely a modern set of images, although people and things have moved from place to place throughout all of history. Because of this, the theme of transportation is present in music to varying degrees through its history.
Music about Transportation, Day 2 – Bachiana Brasileira No. 2 by Heitor Villa-Lobos
Rail transport began to develop into its full maturity early in the nineteenth century and quickly came to transform the logistical capabilities of the Western World. In addition to its capacity for transporting people and freight across land with unprecedented speed and reliability, the mechanical ingenuity and sheer power of the steam locomotive, which dominated and drove railway transport throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, fascinated and inspired musicians who were, over the course of the locomotive’s reign, steadily increasing their level of comfort with depicting extra-musical influences and models in their works. There is so much music about trains, in all sorts of styles. From Steve Goodman, to the ubiquitous bluesy harmonica riffs, to the Faber Piano method for young children:
Musicians have taken the steam locomotive as impetus for creating many works of music. There are also a handful I have come across in the Western concert repertoire, and of all of these, I think the one that stands out as the most entertaining and inventive, while still managing to be undeniably train-like, is the final movement of Bachiana Brasileira No. 2 by the most famous Brazilian composer in history, Heitor Villa-Lobos.
Villa-Lobos lived during a turbulent and volatile time during Brazil’s political history. The nation had declared independence from Portugal, becoming its own kingdom in the 1820s. This system lasted for about 70 years at which point a military dictatorship overthrew the monarchy in a coup d’etat, and the Brazilian government, in true modern Latin American fashion, became a series of insecure and variously brutal regimes that has only recently stabilized. Villa-Lobos seemed to stay out of politics, spending a great deal of his time visiting Europe to absorb musical influences there. But his artistry was significant in that he created a very special and uniquely personal brand of music which successfully blended European models with the fresh colors and flavors of Brazilian folk music in often unexpected and intriguing, but always effective, ways.
The art music composed by historic native Brazilians, while initially indebted to European models, owing to its Portuguese colonization, became steadily more rebellious against assimilating strict Western academic practice as the nation progressively and gradually distanced itself from European-style governance. By the time of Villa-Lobos’ compositional maturity the art music of Brazil was moving in a more fully nationalistic direction, preferring to draw inspiration from its distinctive folk song and dance over classical European models. Villa-Lobos was happy to add his voice to this movement, contributing his elegantly vivid and individualistic creative manner to the mix. He stands out as a creative genius in his best works, neither fish nor fowl, but blending the hues of Brazilian folk traditions with whatever Western European influences he was interested in at the time and always in a strikingly original way. Among his best-loved works are the Bachianas Brasileira, a collection of 9 works for highly-varied ensembles that pay homage to J.S. Bach, a beloved musician for Villa-Lobos (and so many others!), but in a “Brazilian” mode. The nine works are varied as can be, and all of them seek to synthesize Baroque contrapuntal practice with Brazilian folk music in some way, shape or form.
The second of the Bachianas Brasileira is scored for full orchestra (not all of them are). Its final movement is something of a light-hearted novelty, placed after three other movements of considerably greater gravitas. The opening two movements are all vocally inspired, like arias or chorales, blending long-breathed Bachian melodies, under which harmonies shift and shade the sustained pitches above, with an earthy, and even sultry at times, Latin jazzy quality. The orchestration is constantly colorful, sensuous, creamy, and caressing. You get the sense that Villa-Lobos was a real Latin lover type, and his musical pictures often portray this sensitive and seductive quality, as do his surviving photographic portraits. The third movement, a dance has a restless string ostinato which supports broad trombone lines, and paints a sweeping landscape. The insistent rhythms propel the movement to the end more and more urgently, with florid climaxes of orchestral sound. The landscape goes on and on, evocatively and soulfully singing its song, until it winds down, its texture sort of unraveling and petering out until the final accent. And then we come to the finale:
As evidenced by the sparse, amorphous collection of sounds at its opening, the fourth movement is obviously imitating a steam train. The scrapes, hisses and groans of the beginning gradually “build steam”, coalescing into a steady, rhythmic texture which clearly evokes the mechanical insistence of a steam locomotive, and then the melodic strings, and later woodwinds, play a sort of traveling tune, evoking the scenic view of the countryside, passing peacefully, even if a little plaintively, but also with a constant undercurrent of excitement and pleasure in the experience. Throughout the movement, various aspects of the train, like its whistle, are concretely imitated and about halfway through the movement the percussion takes to chugging along after a short chaotic episode which seems to evoke the image of blowing steam out of the pistons while stopped at a station. Villa-Lobos must have worked very hard at orchestrating certain episodes of this movement to capture its subject so completely and successfully, and to frame it in such a balanced musical composition.
Villa-Lobos calls this fourth movement a toccata, named for the virtuoso genre of the Baroque era, used by so many composers, most notably Frescobaldi, Pachelbel, and J.S. Bach. Fast, light, and agile, Toccatas were mostly written for keyboard instruments, especially harpsichord and organ, as a display of personal virtuosity for the composer, and so Villa-Lobos is taking a bit of liberty in applying the name to this movement, but it feels peppy enough, even if not outright virtuosic. The movement’s subtitle, though is most appropriate. It is called “The Little Train of the Brazilian Countrymen”, named after little steam trains that ferried Brazilian villagers around across the Brazilian countryside. It’s anyone’s guess as to why Villa-Lobos chose to conclude the second Bachiana Brasileira this way, but part of their genius is how easily the varied styles, colors, moods and images evoked co-exist throughout. Listening to all of them is really a journey through the sights, sounds, tastes, smells and everyday sentiments of Villa-Lobos’ native land. I see this ticking train toccata as a kind of homage to his fellow countrymen, most of whom would spend their entire lives working in the heart of Brazil, probably never even seeing the country’s major urban centers, let alone those of any other nation. As such it exhibits a sort of wistful melancholy paradoxically combined with a deep contentment borne out of enjoying the locale in which one is planted. This is nationalist music at its most populist, celebrating the everyman, much like Copland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man”, but set in the Brazilian Countryside. I think that it feels affectionate, a valentine from Villa-Lobos to his working class compatriots, in which he sings their praises through the most elevated human language, his personal, deeply Brazilian, adaption of the music of Johann Sebastian Bach.
Throughout the Bachianas Brasileira I am struck by how naturally Villa-Lobos was able to creatively fuse the natures of the two very different influences, the rigorous polyphony of Bach with its deep human longing on one hand, and the sensuous, steamy, and easy-going insouciance of Brazilian life on the other. They somehow fit together in Villa-Lobos’ vision, though few would ever think it possible.
You can listen to all four movements of Villa Lobos’ Bachiana Brasileira No. 2 here:
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