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"Who says that music is either popular or cultured?
That concert music is for the elite while the other is fit only for dancing?
If there is - and indeed there is - an opposition between popular and cultured music, the root of the separation lies not it the language or style but in the way the world of mass communication exploits popular music for commercial ends.
It's the law of supply and demand that divides the two worlds!
The answer is to integrate, which doesn't mean adding a rock beat to Beethoven's Fifth, but through the patient and painstaking work of transformation." - Leo Brouwer
Much has been said and written of the irresistible attraction that the Cuban folk legacy has exerted on Brouwer's music.
Indeed one of the hallmarks of his style is the manner in which his roots are superimposed on the collective memory of the western tradition.
The most direct way, therefore, of checking the validity of the title "Folk Songs" and of presenting the guitar works on this disk is simply to follow Brouwer's "transformations" of an assortment of popular themes, rhythms, forms and styles.
What follows is a concise glossary of references: Drume Negrita is a traditional Afro-American lullaby, collected by E. Grenet and reworked by Brouwer using refined jazz-based harmonies.
The guitar version is preceded by a quotation, almost an evocation, of Bola de Nieve's rendering.
Zapateo and Guajira, drawn from the Cuban tradition, are given Frenchified harmonisations (Debussy, Ravel), while Ojos Brujos stands out for its modulating chromatic treatment.
The Lennon-McCartney songs are elaborated in different ways, each referring to either a composer or a situation from the western tradition: Bartók in Eleanor Rigby with its contrapuntal texture and polytonal harmony; Hindemith in Penny Lane with its fourth-chord harmony and the atonal neoclassicism of its introduction and coda; the characteristic string textures of Dvorák in She's Leaving Home; Stravinsky in Ticket to Ride; a chromatic model in Here, There, and Everywhere; the counterpoint of the Elizabethan viol consort in Yesterday; Gershwin and Bernstein in Got to Get You into my Life.
Danza caracteristica is inspired by the typical conga rhythm of the carnival street processions, with its traditional refrain "Quitate de la acera, que mira que te tumbo" (19th century); Elogio de la Danza is a tribute to the world of ballet; Lento to the "broad adagio"; Ostinato to Russian ballet.
The Piezas caracteristicas have evident Afro-Cuban roots; so does the pentatonic Studio (no. 14) in the yoruba style.
The other studies played here also feature the two variants of the son folk dance: the urban son (no. 1) and the country or montuno type (no. 5). No. 6 uses a typical harmonic arpeggio cliché while no. 11 harks to the "country" idiom of Nashville.
Lastly, Un dia de Noviembre, is a classical soundtrack theme in the pop style: short, tuneful, memorable and characterised by major-minor alterations.
Copyright © Paolo Paolini
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