Leo Brouwer. A portrait of the artist in socialist Cuba.pdf

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Leo Brouwer: A Portrait of the Artist in Socialist Cuba Author(s): Paul Century Source: Latin American Music Review / Revista de Música Latinoamericana, Vol. 8, No. 2 (Autumn - Winter, 1987), pp. 151-171 Published by: University of Texas Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/780096 Accessed: 26/03/2009 00:42 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=texas. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We work with the scholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform that promotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

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Paul Century

Leo Brouwer: A Portrait of the Artist in Socialist Cuba

Leo Brouwer-guitarist, composer, conductor, teacher, and essayist-figures prominently among the most active Cuban musicians living today. Regarded worldwide as one of the foremost living composer/guitarists,1 Brouwer has contributed an essential component to the guitar's repertoire, with many of his works serving as fundamental pedagogical mainstays of the classical guitarist's curriculum. A prolific composer, Brouwer's compositions, apart from the guitar genre, include orchestral and chamber works, instrumental concerti, ballet and theater scores, and film music in styles representing his native Cuban heritage, avant-garde art music, and popular jazz-rock idioms.2 Today at the age of forty-eight, Brouwer remains in post-revolutionary Cuba to work within the Marxist political structure. He holds a number of influential and prestigious positions in the Cuban musical world. Since 1964 he has headed the Music Division of the Cuban Film Institute (ICAIC), and he has served as the Cuban representative on the International Music Council of UNESCO since 1980. Brouwer is also currently a musical advisor to the Cuban minister of culture and artistic director of the Havana Symphony. Brouwer travels frequently outside Cuba in multiple artistic roles. His appearances as a conductor of his own music as well as the standard orchestra repertoire are becoming more common, notably with the BBC and Toronto symphonies. Brouwer is also responsible for providing artistic direction and pedagogical guidance at many of the top-ranking guitar festivals such as the World Festival of Guitar in Martinique, the Toronto Guitar Festival, and festivals in France, Belgium, Finland, Hungary, Germany, and Japan. Aside from his substantial administrative duties and pedagogical activities, Brouwer sustains a busy schedule composing for film, theater, ballet, and instrumental ensembles. He is at present engaged in preparatory work for his first opera, a "romantic" story set in Cuba during the early decades of this century. Significant among the larger of Brouwer's

152 : Paul Century recent compositions are two guitar concertos and Cancion de Gesta for wind orchestra. Brouwer shares a common cultural background with a Cuban composer better known to the American public, Aurelio de la Vega. De la Vega himself has commented on their mutual heritage, noting that although he chooses to reside in California and Brouwer in Cuba, it is their culture, isolated from any political issues, which binds them together. For both composers there was an initial impulse to transcend the physical limits of their island. Each felt the necessity to confront the prevailing issues of composition in America and Europe, and it was in an international context that their Cuban folk affinity was manifested. Ronald Erin's insightful article on de la Vega (LAMR 15, no. 1) provides not only a satisfying historical background to any discussion of contemporary Cuban composers but also introduces a necessary analytical approach to an understanding of how a Latin American composer incorporates his folk music heritage into his personal musical language. I refer the reader to Erin's introductory paragraphs on nationalism and the requisite "cultural identity" which Erin explores with de la Vega. What I present here is more of a "portrait" of Brouwer than a lengthy technical discussion of his compositions. An understanding of the man and his philosophies precedes analysis, a task reserved for a later article. As Brouwer himself has emphasized, the total world surrounding the composer is essential to a complete appreciation of his music, and it is to this end that these pages are offered.

Musical Background Brouwer began studying the guitar at the age of thirteen, first with his father and later with renowned Cuban guitarist Isaac Nicola. At the same time he began the study of painting, which he gave up after a number of years to devote himself entirely to music. Essentially selftaught as a composer, Brouwer's first compositions came at the age of fifteen. Shortly after he experienced what might be termed a "moment of epiphany"; this "mystical" event marks the point when Brouwer realized the primary direction his life as a creative artist would take: There was something magical, magical for me, I have to declare it to you. The first time I was composing (but really composing, not joking), my mind changed entirely, in such a way, and in such a speed, that probably in 24 hours, for the first time in my life, I changed my entire scope-of the world, of the environment, of man in the earth. I got a dimension of everything that I never had before . . . This is something very personal: immediately I realized the esthetics, the world of creation, good taste, all

Leo Brouwer. A Portrait of the Artist in Socialist Cuba : 153 these words that signify tremendous things . . .I experienced these all in one stroke, one flash.3 Brouwer devoured the existing literature for guitar with great rapidity: "[I saw] . . . like a panorama,

a 'fast-motion,'

all the repertoire

of the

guitar, all the composers, the ones I liked, the ones I disliked, and then I started composing."4 Brouwer explains: Where was the Bart6kof guitar?There was no Bart6kof guitar ... Where was the Concerto for Cembalo and Instruments [sic] that de Falla did? . . . There was no Octet like Stravinsky's, no DanseSacreeand DanseProfaneof Debussy for harp and strings . . . all this music was a discovery for me

? . . and I said, I'm going to compose for guitar and strings, I did Danzas . .5 Concertantes. As a young guitarist in the 1950s with an open mind for contemporary music, Brouwer was, in effect, filling for himself a gap in the guitar repertoire. But it was not only the guitar which attracted him compositionally; Brouwer was aware of the need to further his knowledge of other instruments as well. He developed compositional discipline by writing solo sonatas for many other instruments, avoiding the guitar.6 Brouwer's earliest compositional efforts as a teenager exhibit a strong flavor of his own native Cuban-folk heritage.7 At the same time, with such works as the Suite #2 and Fuga No. 1, a concern for formal unity and traditional musical craftsmanship is evident. Brouwer demonstrates clever contrapuntal skill in Fuga No. 1, investing both the subject and countersubject with a syncopated Latin rhythm. Study #5 from the early Simple Studies exhibits the characteristic montunorhythm of Cuba. The first of half a dozen works for guitar and orchestra, Brouwer's Tres Danzas Concertantesrepresent a step into the twentieth century for the modern guitarist. While the ever-popular Conciertode Aranjuez of Joaquin Rodrigo remains an idiomatic expression of Spanish tradition, Brouwer's youthful concerto explores the domain of quartal harmony and subtle textural development. Brouwer received his only formal musical training in 1959-60 with Vincent Persichetti at the Juillard School and Isador Freed at the Hartt School of Music. Stylistically, the works immediately following Brouwer's initial period of study do not differ substantially from the earlier works, although his compositional technique shows the benefits of his studies. Brouwer admits that the later style was guided by a greater intellectual understanding of compositional practices in contemporary music.8 His music also became more skilled and well crafted than previously. Of interest is Elogio de la Danza, which presents rich harmonies with wide timbral changes. A significant event for Brouwer's musical development was his atten-

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