Brouwer:

The composer, guitarist and conductor Leo Brouwer Mezquida was born in Havana, Cuba, in 1939 into a family of musicians. He had his first music lessons from his father, Juan Brouwer, and his aunt, Caridad Mezquida, while his great-uncle, Ernesto Lecuona, had been famous both as a composer and as a pianist. He had his first guitar lessons in 1953 with Isaac Nicola, who established the modern school of Cuban guitar-playing, and two years later began to study composition on his own.

In 1959 he was awarded a scholarship for further study of the guitar in America at Hartford University and of composition at the Juilliard School in New York, where his studies were with Vincent Persichetti, Stefan Wolpe, Isadore Preed, J. Diemente and Joseph Iadone. In 1960 he was appointed director of the Instituto Cubano de Arte e Industria Cinematográficos, a position that, over the years, brought the composition of a large number of film scores both in Cuba and abroad. From this time onwards he was associated with the Cuban musical avant-garde, serving as adviser to Radio Habana Cuba and teaching at the Conservatorio Nacional, and, as occasion demanded, in universities abroad. He established the biennial Cuban Guitar Competition and Festival and since 1981 has been general director of the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional de Cuba. Conducting engagements have taken him to a number of countries.

It is possible to distinguish three periods in Brouwer’s development as a composer. The first of these started in 1954, with a series of pieces that explored the resources of the guitar in works that combined traditional classical forms with Cuban inspiration. In the 1960s, after the Cuban revolution, he came to know the work of avant-garde composers such as Penderecki and Bussotti, when he attended the 1961 Warsaw Autumn Festival, absorbing these influences and those of leading contemporary composers who visited Cuba from abroad, into a very personal style that made use of modern techniques of various kinds, including elements of post-serialism and the aleatoric.

The late 1970s brought a third period that Brouwer himself has described as national hyperromanticism, a return to Afro-Cuban roots coupled with elements of traditional technique and of minimalism. In addition to his many film scores, he has written orchestral works, including concertos for the guitar, the flute, and the violin, and chamber works that often include the guitar. Many of his guitar compositions have won an international reputation, with a firm place in current repertoire, played and recorded by guitarists throughout the world.

Decameron:

“El Decameron Negro,” or “The Black Decameron” is a composition by the Cuban composer Leo

Brouwer from 1983 that has become a very standard part of the guitarist’s repertoire. The title is a

reference to the 1910 collection of African folktales about love and eroticism  compiled by the German

anthropologist Leo Frobenius (and if that weren’t a complex enough genealogy, Frobenius’ title was itself

a reference to the Italian Giovanni Boccaccio’s Medieval compilation of folk stories known simply as The

Decameron). There seems to be little real connection between the music and Frobenius’ folk stories (my

personal theory is that Brouwer simply liked the fact that they shared a first name), but the music is

certainly beautiful and complex, modern but not dissonant.

“El arpa del guerrero,” the subtitle of the first section, means “The Harp of the Warrior.” Sharon Ibsin,

who performed the piece’s premiere and for whom the piece was written, notes that the first movement

“contrasts dramatic and rhythmic passages with lyrical moments. A warrior is banished because he has

taken up playing the harp. But he returns to lead his people in battle when invaded. After his victory, he is

condemned to exile again, but escapes with his lover.” I’ve perused the English translation of

Frobenius’Black Decameron before, and found no trace of this story—or any of the other stories referred

to in Brouwer’s piece. That said, the piece does consist of a first section, mildly dissonant and filled with

abrupt contrasts and changes in mood; a second, lyrical passage; and a third section marked “tranquillo.”

These are repeated and varied over the course of the movement, culminating in a coda marked “vivo,” a

pair of rapid, ascending arpeggios, and a scale that plunges first down and then triumphantly up (perhaps

foreshadowing the “valley” referred to in the next movement).“The Ballad of the Maiden in Love” is the longest and most complex of the three movements here; it is, I believe, technically a rondo rather than a ballad. It begins with a lyrical section largely in D with some beautiful artificial harmonics woven into the principal melody before moving on to a very rapid and energetic second section which is more dissonant but largely centered on G. Typical of a rondo, it reprises the opening section before moving on to a third section which combines the rapid energy of the B section with the D-based tonality of the opening section. It returns to that opening for a final repetition, following an overall pattern of A B A C A.

Pyesa:

This is the second movement of Leo Brouwer's El Decameron Negro. My performance of the first movement is here. The full title of the second movement is "Huida de los Amantes por el

Valle de los Ecos" or "Flight of the Lovers through the Valley of Echos".

There are a number of interesting things about this movement. It brings together two elements that are new to Brouwer's work and that will return again and again in his later music. The first of these is the influence of the 'minimalists', namely Philip Glass and Steve Reich. At the beginning of this movement, as we hear arpeggios that have more and more notes added to them creating groups of 4, 6, 8 10, 20, 11 or 14 notes, there is evident the influence of the early music of Philip Glass. The way these ideas develop, though,  owes nothing to Glass, but is typical of Brouwer. He uses brief canonic passages, which Glass would never do. Later on he uses arpeggio figures that only the guitar could execute. In these figures, which occupy the middle of the movement, slurred pairs of sixteenth notes are played against triplets. The repetition of smaller and smaller parts of the arpeggio, combined with a diminuendo, suggests the echos of the title. Brouwer has always had a unique gift for exploiting the timbres of the guitar. This brings me to the second element: the evocation of nature. More and more, especially in pieces like Cuban Landscape with Rain, Brouwer creates lovely passages that seem drawn directly from nature.

Considered from a more technical view, this movement is a series of variations on a simple arpeggiated major seventh chord. But, of course, the beauty is all in the details.

“The Flight of the Lovers through the Valley of Echoes” is the fanciful title given to this piece. Isbin’s notes say that the music “seems to follow their [the lovers’] flight. Horseback rhythms alternate with love music, and there is a dazzling portrayal of the sound of the horse's hooves echoing off the valley walls.” Indeed, in the long and masterful center section, arpeggios repeat again and again, only to fade away with each repetition. The piece is technically demanding, with complex rhythms (one finds measures in 5/8, 7/8, 11/8, 15/8 and even the unusual—not to mention rather puzzling—time signature of 0/4!) and rapid arpeggios that jump the length of the guitar’s neck. I recorded just this movement 12 years ago, and it’s slowly increased in speed (it was almost two minutes longer then). Still, many guitarists play this movement at a simply phenomenal tempo, especially the particularly difficult opening section.