BACHIANAS BRASILEIRAS NO. 5
by Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959)

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THE THREE PASSIONS of Heitor Villa-Lobos’s life come together in this work: Bach, Brazil, and the cello. Little wonder that he struck gold with this elegant, evocative piece, which combines all three and soon became his most-performed work.

           Villa-Lobos was a prolific composer and lived a full life.  He traveled widely, was on close terms with the leading musicians of three continents, and long recognized as Brazil’s leading composer, an honor that is still unchallenged today.

           His love of the cello came early, for he was instructed at a young age in both cello and clarinet by his father, who took his family away from Rio de Janeiro when he lost his job as a librarian. They lived for a few years in rural Brazil, where the small towns were full of guitars and homemade instruments playing rhythms the boy had never heard before.

           Brazilian folksong echoed in his ears all his life, along with the more sophisticated dance music he heard in Rio streets on the family’s return. As a teenager her longed to be part of the chorões that improvised for parties and dances, and also to be good enough on the cello to play in orchestras.

           Although Villa-Lobos was writing music in great quantities and without much technical background, he was refused admission to the Instituto Nacional de Música for more formal training. Undaunted, he studied composition from Vincent d’Indy’s textbook and learned much more simply by listening, playing, and studying scores (especially the newest pieces coming from Europe, by Stravinsky, Milhaud, and others).

           He married an excellent pianist, Lucília, and together they made a modest living as musicians. With a government grant and some help from friends, Villa-Lobos went to Paris in 1923, a momentous time to be in that famously musical city. While acquiring a circle of notable friends, not all musicians, he remained more conscious than ever of his roots. In the 1920s, he composed a dozen or more works entitled Chorós, implying a lament in Portuguese but actually ranging widely in mood and content. They vary in instrumentation, too, from solo guitar to full orchestra.

           A series of twelve Studies for solo guitar, written soon thereafter for Segovia, is primarily an exploration of Brazilian popular guitar technique, but a secondary flavor is clearly that of Bach. In these, he was not aping baroque music, as many of the neo-classicists did at that time; he was working with modern idioms, many of them of Brazilian origin, with Bach’s processes and textures in mind.

           Thus, it was natural that the Studies might be followed by the sequence of Bachianas brasileiras, the first of which was composed in 1930 after the composer’s return to Brazil. In these, the Bachian sounds are sometimes superficial, sometimes more deeply threaded into Villa-Lobos’s style — more Brazilian than Bachian, in effect. When he started, he expected, without specific planning, that this new title would embrace a series of compositions written, like the chorós, for different combinations of voices and instruments.

           Eventually there were nine. No. 1 in the series is written for “an orchestra of cellos.” In 1921, he had arranged one of the fugues from Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier for eight cellos, and the first of the Bachianas brasileiras echoed that sound in two movements, titled “Preludio (Modinha)” and “Fugue (Conversa),” — Bach’s titles glossed with Brazilian counterparts.

           When he came to write the fifth in the series, in 1938, he returned to the “orchestra of cellos,” with the double title being “Aria (Cantilena).” In this piece, Villa-Lobos reveals that the divine properties of the cello’s cantabile voice are magnificently enhanced when paired with a wordless soprano voice an octave higher. This is a vocalise, comparable to Rachmaninoff’s famous solo for wordless soprano, each working its magic by supporting a long gorgeous melody with an intricate underpinning. For the return of the tune, Villa-Lobos directs the voice to be produced bouche fermée — "like a haunting memory."

           Having added a singer to his orchestra of cellos, he gave her a middle contrasting section, almost entirely without melody.  Here she sings a brief poem by Altimarando de Souza, after which the Aria returns. This was recorded and performed in Rio de Janeiro in March 1938, sung by Ruth Valadares Corrêa. Two months later, the Brazilian conductor Walter Burle-Marx took two programs of Brazilian music to the World Fair in New York, including the Aria, this time sung by Bidu Sayão, who later made a famous recording of it. Because of a copyright problem, a new poem invoking the serenity of twilight and written by Ruth Valadares Corrêa was sung for the middle section; this is the version used for all subsequent performances.

           In 1945, Villa-Lobos decided to add a movement to the beautiful Aria. This is the Dança (Martelo), a setting of a poem by Manoel Bandeira, a prominent Brazilian poet and a friend. The pulsating rhythm and harmonic sequences hint at Bach, but the spirit is unmistakably Brazilian, with twists and turns in the voice to suggest the exotic birds of the Brazilian interior that the poem celebrates.

—program note by Hugh Macdonald © 2020

From the cello section of The Cleveland Orchestra:

Mark Kosower, cello
Richard Weiss, cello
Charles Bernard, cello
Bryan Dumm, cello
Tanya Ell, cello
Ralph Curry, cello
David Alan Harrell, cello
Martha Baldwin, cello

with guest artist
Joélle Harvey, soprano

Click or tap on names above to read each musician's bio.

1. Aria

PORTUGESE:
Tarde, uma nuvem rosea lenta e transparente,
Sobre o espaço sonhadora e bela!
Surge no infinito a lua docemente,
Enfeitando a tarde, qual meiga donzela
Que se apresta e alinda sonhadoramente,
Em anseios d’alma para ficar bela,
Grita ao céo e a terra, toda a Natureza!
Cala a passarada aos seus tristes queixumes
Ereflete o mar toda a sua riqueza…
Suave a luz da lua desperta agora,
A cruel saudade que ri e chora!
Tarde, uma nuvem rosea lenta e transparente,
Sobre o espaço sonhadora e bela!

ENGLISH
As evening falls, a rosy, translucent cloud
Covers the sky, dreamlike and beautiful.
From the horizon the moon gently rises,
Adorning the evening, as a young girl
Decks herself out in a dreamy longing
To make her very soul beautiful,
Calling to heaven and earth and all nature!
The birds leave off their melancholy song,
The sea reflects its treasure.
Moonlight coolly awakens a cruel yearning
That both laughs and cries.
As evening falls, a rosy, translucent cloud
Covers the sky, dreamlike and beautiful.

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2. Dança

PORTUGESE:
Irerê, meu passarinho do Sertão do Cariri,
Irerê, meu companheiro,
Cadê vióla? Cadê meu bem? Cadê Maria?
Ai triste sorte a do voleiro cantadô!
Ah! Sem a vióla em que cantava o seu amô,
Ah! Seu assobio é tua flauta de irerê:
Que tua flauta do sertão quando assobia,
Ah! A gente sofre sem querê!
Ah! Teu canto chega là do fundo do sertão,
Ah! Como ua brisa amolecendo o coração,
Ah! Ah!
Irerê, Solta teu canto! Canta mais! Canta mais!
Pra alembrá o Cariri!

Canta, camaxirra! Canta, juriti!
Canta, Irerê! Canta, canta sof
Patativa! Bemtevi! Maria acorda que é dia
Cantem todos vocês
Passarinhos do sertão!
Bemtevi! Eh! Sabiá!

La! liá! liá! liá! liá! liá!
Eh! Sabiá da mata cantadô!

O vosso canto vem do fundo do sertão
Como uma brisa amolecendo o coração.

Irerê, meu passarinho do Sertão do Cariri,
Irerê, meu companheiro, etc.

ENGLISH:
My little duckling from the wilds of Cariri,
Little duck, my dear companion, where’s the guitar?
Where’s my beloved, where’s Maria?
O, how unfortunate to want to sing!
O, how can one sing of love without a guitar?
O, that whistling is your wild duck’s flute.
Your flute may sometimes whistle from the wilds,
O, for people who suffer without longing!
O, your song came from the depths of the forest,
O, like a breeze to comfort the heart.
Ah! Ah!
Little duck, let us hear your song! Sing on! Sing on!
All the way to Cariri!

Sing, little wren! Sing, pretty dove!
Sing, my duck, sing, my oriole,
Seedeater, flycatcher, tell Maria that it’s day,
Sing with all the little birds’ voices
From the depths of the woods.
Flycatcher! Hey, thrush!

La, la, la, la, la, la, la!
Hey, thrushes singing in the woods!

Your songs come from the depths of the forest
Like a breeze to comfort the heart.

My little duckling from the wilds of Cariri
Little duck, my dear companion, etc.

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