Concert review: Musica Nova “French Connections”
When I hurry around the side of the lobby before the show, I hear the clarinet player warming up. The muscles under the corners of my mouth tighten involuntarily in response, forming lines down each side of my chin like a marionette, or a ventriloquist’s dummy. When I return to my seat, it has moved—we all shift toward the center of the aisle to make room. By the time the concert begins, every seat is filled, including the chairs placed on each side of the stage.
UTD does not offer a music major. The musicians who will perform are scientists and engineers. Dr. Rodriguez introduces the musicians and the pieces in a way that reminded me of Kurt Rongey, the syndicated voice on WRR. He tells us about the pieces, gives us a little tune or lick to listen for. His guidance allows us to anticipate and participate, which are the best things an audience can do. Tonight’s theme is “French Connections,” and all of the composers are either French or have studied in Paris.
The first suite is by Claude Debussy: The Children’s Corner. Debussy wrote this for his five-year-old daughter, Claude Emma or “Chou-Chou,” as a gift. Chou-Chou only lived to the age of thirteen, but, as Dr. Rodriguez put it, “she lives on forever in this music.” The piece, written originally for piano, has been arranged for two guitars. This, I think, is what qualifies these pieces as “Musica Nova” or “New Music:” by arranging for different instruments, the piece becomes new and different. The two scientists enchant the audience. They sit close together, with the simultaneous sway and symbiotic breath of practiced musicians. I know what it feels like to enter that world, that time outside of time, performing music, multiple musicians becoming one organism for a few moments, and I envy them. Then one guitarist mops his face with a handkerchief during a rest, and I remember what hard work music is. The second movement is a theme on one of Chou-Chou’s Chinese toys, and it sounds more authentically Chinese than on classical guitar than it ever could on a piano. The last movement is inspired by ragtime, and it is surprising in its familiarity. It is not the tune that we recognize, but the style. The suite ends with a musical laugh of sorts, and the audience laughs along, then applauds. This audience does not clap between the movements. Even the young girl sitting next to me is attentive.
The next piece is by Aaron Copeland, who found his quintessentially American voice while studying in Paris. Copeland’s Piano Blues, transcribed for a piano and three strings, isn’t just blue—it’s dark blue. The piece is deep, moody, and warm; a solitary cup of coffee at a café, an Americano in Paris. Again, by using the “wrong” instrumentation for the piece, Dr. Rodriguez has created a new meaning for the song.
We transition into Donald Grantham’s Son of Cimetiére. Grantham also studied in Paris and teaches as UT Austin. This piece is based on voodoo folklore. If Dia de los Muertes took place in Louisiana, this song is what you would hear. The piano and strings remain on stage, and are joined by a percussionist and a clarinet. This also is a new arrangement for this piece of music, and Dr. Rodriguez compares it to a body that has been stitched together: appropriate for voodoo/zombie folklore. The piece is dancey and bright, and it keeps the percussionist busy with wood blocks, a vibra-slap, triangle, maracas, tambourine, and drums. The clarinetist has quick fingers and the notes are firm, even in the highest register, but the performer has the misfortune of playing the instrument with which I am most familiar. To play a solo clarinet in a jazz ensemble, on a Bayou piece, is a terrifying responsibility, and I applaud her. I do wish once or twice for the confident, round breath and reedy tweet of the old jazz clarinetists, but this is pickiness on my part. The song is a danse macabre, exuberant and highly entertaining.
The next piece is by Darius Milhaud: The Creation of the World. It has the distinction of being jazz performed before Gershwin. It is a suite for ballet based on the African story of creation. Dr. Rodriguez tells us to listen for the refrain that sounds like the tag of the Happy Birthday song (“and many moooore”), but to replace it in our minds with the words “and it was good.” I decide I like Dr. Rodriguez.
The Prelude is strange and unfamiliar, slow, with a cello drone, darkness hovering over the water, but some order emerges from the chaos. Then the Fugue, with its light quick jazz, is a brief story that gets handed around the circle from musician to musician. The Romance is very brief, piano and strings only, but the only way I know to describe it is to say that it sounds like Gershwin. For the Scherzo, everyone is back in for a strange and modern piece like the “Mambo” number in West Side Story—I think Bernstein must have listened to Milhaud. The Final is sparse and somewhat softer than the preceding movements. The clarinet and piano carry the melody, and then pass it to the cello, then the violins. The melody flits around the stage, while the counterpoint reminds us, before the piece gets too pat or pretty, that this is a modern piece, after all. The end of the piece is a kind of cacophony, with wood blocks and jazzy bursts of sound, then the lone viola, low and charming, and a reprisal of the melodic hand-off, a call-and-response. The piece ends on a chord with an unresolved seventh—the seventh day of creation, perhaps?
During the intermission, I read that the pianist is a staff accompanist, which explains his solid but unshowy style. The anticipated soprano, too, is a guest artist, and not a student. She enters in a beautiful black dress with a rhinestone clasp, a marked contrast to the girls seated on the side of the stage who have come straight from soccer practice, shin guards still in place.
The soprano, Rebecca Duran, is Dr. Rodriguez’s goddaughter, and he arranged this piece—six e.e. cummings poems set to music— as a gift to her. He encourages us to follow along with the text, which is printed in the programs. The pieces are arranged for soprano and piano only. The first movement, “tictoc clocks,” is modern and has a “ticking” beat. Dr. Rodriguez says that it quotes Bach, but I am not familiar enough with Bach to catch the allusion. The next three pieces come in quick succession, and they are sweet, languid poems with words about love. Dr. Rodriguez’s arrangement normalizes the phrasing of cummings’ poetry, cleaning up the enjambment of the lines.
Ms. Duran is a true soprano. The higher she climbs, the better I like it. Her mouth is strangely unopen, which has the benefit of clarifying and modernizing the diction of the poetry, but denies us the most lovely and resonant parts of her voice whenever she encounters a horizontal vowel.
At the end of the fourth movement, a resolved major chord is a relief, somewhere to land, but it does not prepare us for what is to come next. Suddenly, Ms. Duran transforms from Serious Opera Singer to entertainer. When she sings, “mr youse needn’t be so spry,” she is Adelaide from Guys and Dolls, and on the last line she puts her hands behind her head and rolls her hips suggestively. The audience can’t help applauding, even though we are between movements. This infusion of sexuality transitions the audience into the final poem, a hilariously lewd rendition of “may I feel said he.” As this was the World Premiere, I wonder whether Dr. Rodriguez was nervous: a risqué symphonic piece is a risky one. But Ms. Duran is genuinely funny, breathing life into cummings’ spare (yet somehow explicit) poem. The audience clearly enjoys her performance, and the premiere is a success.
The final suite is by Gabriel Fauré, the Quintet No. 2 in C-Minor, Opus 115. According to our guide, Dr. Rodriguez, Faure wrote the piece when he was old, deaf, and suffering from aural hallucinations. It has been arranged for the piano and four strings. Dr. Rodriguez describes the piece as “passionate, erotic, and beautiful,” heavenly, music played by angels. I have to agree: it is not at all American, but it is music that sounds like home.
The first movement is voluptuous, rich, full, and textural. This is not music to hum, not a catchy tune. This is music to drown in. I want to roll the sound around in my mouth like wine. The second movement is more of a dancing fountain. The melody jumps from instrument to instrument, and then the plucked strings sounds like drops of rain, filling up clear pools of notes. Streams and falls of notes flow around us.
The third movement is brown and earthy. This is fragrant, loamy music, with sounds like wind and leaves. The melody travels down a path dappled with sunlight. The final movement is strange, spinning, twirling: a long, sweeping, cinematic gust of sound that swirls like an eddy, then rushes on again. Piano arpeggios sparkle around chords from the strings. This movement is a bolt of shining cloth flung out, a full skirt sweeping past, music rustling like silk. The sounds resolve into one lush chord, then the magical half-moment of silence after the music has ended, and the musicians exhale. The thread is cut, and we are released from the spell.
The concert is well-attended and well-received. Dr. Rodriguez deserves accolades for his directorship and guidance of the musicians, in addition to his impressive arrangement and composition. The musicians, too, should be commended for their commitment to their craft. Their musicality and professional attention to detail is remarkable. Overall, a resounding (sounding, sound, all around, round, e.e. cummings would be pround) success.
