If you are of a certain age, one’s image of Cuba is inextricably linked with the island’s 20th-century political turmoil. Americans have come of age in parallel with Batista’s dictatorship, the 1959 Communist revolution and Fidel Castro, the Bay of Pigs fiasco, and – most ominously of all – the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962. Cuba also calls to mind America’s problematic detention program at Guantanamo Bay. In 2014 President Obama took steps to normalize U.S.-Cuba relations somewhat (then reversed and restored, in turn, by subsequent adminstrations), but travel to the island is still not free and easy. It may be hard, therefore, for most of us to envision another Cuba far removed from such political wrangling.

Yet this is an island nation boasting 6,000 years of indigenous culture and tradition. After four centuries of Spanish colonization and U.S. intervention, Cuba attained independence in 1902 and embarked on 50 years of sporadic growth and modernization, particularly in the mid-1920s and again after 1940. Tourism from the U.S. exploded, and cities like Havana became a reflection of urban hustle and bustle imported from New York: hotels and bars, gambling and prostitution. In such periods Cuba offered a Latin getaway for those inured to New York City. This feeling is perfectly captured, for example, in the overnight jaunt to Havana orchestrated by Sky Masterson in Frank Loesser’s Guys and Dolls (1950). Artists like Dizzy Gillespie helped put Afro-Cuban jazz on a world stage while a young Desi Arnaz got his start as a mambo bandleader in Miami - having been forced into exile from his native Cuba during one of many political reversals.

For classical audiences, the colorful weave of music, nightlife, and flair found in this “other Cuba” springs to life in the Cuban Overture composed in 1932 by George Gershwin (1898-1937). Gershwin grew up in Brooklyn as the second son of Jewish/Ukrainian immigrants. Beyond rudimentary music instruction as a young boy, his first taste of live music-making came in his late teens when he took work as a “song plugger” around Broadway. This quickly spilled over into creating original songs and full-length shows and a more serious interest in learning composition. At the time, ambitious American composers sought guidance from prominent Europeans. Gershwin was no exception, and he spent a short time in Paris in the mid-1920s petitioning Maurice Ravel and Nadia Boulanger to take him on. Both declined, for they recognized that severe classical instruction would impede Gershwin’s mature command of American song and jazz. Indeed, he had already composed the successful Rhapsody in Blue (1924) and put pen to paper for An American in Paris while he himself was living out that description.

In July 1932, following a short vacation to Havana, Gershwin sketched out a new symphonic poem. Originally titled Rumba, the work introduced adoring fans to rhythms and orchestral textures borrowed directly from Cuban models; Gershwin even based the main theme on a then-popular song by Cuban composer Ignacio Piñeiro Martínez, whom Gershwin met briefly. The lively opening section presents a riot of ideas and colors, eventually settling on the theme inspired by Martínez’s rumba-salsa. While the tune is captivating, it would be a pale shadow of its Afro-Cuban origins were it not for Gershwin’s ample percussion backing, which calls for bongos, claves, wood blocks, and maracas.

We recognize the composer by a few signature moves, such as the chromatic dissolve in place of more technical transition between themes. Between the first and second themes, Gershwin also writes a kind of reverse-Rhapsody in Blue gesture, using the solo clarinet to unwind his main theme rather than introduce it. The work’s second idea is more subdued, sounding as if we have stepped from the glittering dance hall into an intimate courtyard behind. Gershwin is clearly more introspective in this material, though its abstraction – its lack of clear melody – make it arguably the weakest part of the whole. Small wonder that the return of the boisterous main theme is needed to end the overture with a bang.

The premiere took place in front of over 15,000 paid audience members during an all-Gershwin concert by the New York Philharmonic. Gershwin himself soon renamed the piece as Cuban Overture because he felt that designation – rather than the restrictive Rumba – “a more just idea of the character and intent of the music.”

Two centuries earlier, music on the island was largely governed by imported Spanish modes of expression, and the Catholic Church obviously played a dominant role. Much of that music is now lost, but the works of one man – now generally considered the first native-born Cuban composer of classical art music – are gradually receiving wider attention. Esteban Salas y Castro (1725-1802) was born on Christmas Day in 1725 and spent nearly his entire life in service to the Church. However, he also received an excellent musical education from an early age, allowing him to take charge of the largest cathedral in Santiago de Cuba. There he began to compose works to feature the resident vocalists and instrumentalists at his disposal. Like Bach in Europe, Salas wrote music to fulfill his professional demands, but also to utilize the fluctuating roster of performing musicians available to him from week to week. Eventually he was able to create performances that included his own music as well as imported works by Haydn, Pleyel, and others. Today, in homage to its pioneering native son, the thriving Conservatory of Santiago de Cuba bears Salas’s name.

Cándido Corderito is a strophic song for sopranos and various instruments, strings primarily but also recorder and percussion. It opens with an instrumental pastorella (ritornello) prior to the vocal entrances. Assured and vibrant, and certainly made more festive with the percussion, the material is not far removed harmonically from conventional European classical manners. A short contrasting section lasts hardly long enough to slow the energetic procession.

The composer and piano virtuoso Louis Moreau Gottschalk (1829-1869) remains synonymous with a particular era in music history. Reflecting the diversity of his own birth and childhood – growing up in New Orleans as part of a bustling, mixed-race household – Gottschalk spent the vast majority of his career performing outside the United States. As a child he was initially denied entry to the Paris Conservatory because of his American passport, though he eventually received a first-class piano education and performed to the delight of no less a figure than Chopin himself. Gottschalk became the most celebrated American pianist of the mid-19th century, undertaking exhausting concert tours that crisscrossed the United States by virtue of the new railroad network. In the end, however, it was his many trips to Cuba, Puerto Rico, and other Latin American lands that reinforced the popular flair conveyed in his works. Sadly, he contracted yellow fever during one of those trips and died at age 40, probably less from the virus than from misplaced efforts to treat its symptoms.

Like Gershwin several generations later, Gottschalk’s mature style relies on the contrast between European classicism and New World elements from jazz, spirituals, and creole. His formal training explains some virtuosic passages and a highly-polished manner, but it is the “exoticism” of Caribbean dance rhythm and melody that generates his works’ lasting appeal.

About a decade before his death, Gottschalk composed a solo piano work called Souvenir de la Havane (1859), subtitled caprice de concert and built around two contrasting sections. As the title implies, Souvenir de la Havane attempts to capture the composer’s recollections of Cuba at a time when he was elsewhere. It opens in an understated way to the swaying movement of the habañera, the general term applied to a Spanish-American contradance that emerged from the Cuban capital. (The signature aria from Bizet’s Carmen typifies the genre.) The simple main theme is heard in both unadorned and contrapuntally-elaborated versions. A nostalgic tone develops from the overall descending lines throughout section A, which is then reversed by the buoyant major-mode theme and variations of section B. This music is not profound, and that assessment would suit Gottschalk just fine. But the focus on dance, virtuosic flashes, and variation form evidenced in Souvenir de la Havane were also daily bread for “serious” composers like Schubert and Liszt.

Although he composed many works in various genres, including dozens of film scores, Leo Brouwer (b. 1939) will forever be synonymous with the guitar. It was his first chosen instrument and remains the alpha and omega of his musical universe. Born in Cuba, Brouwer grew up surrounded by music. His mother was a gifted multi-instrumentalist and his father studied guitar informally; cousins and other relatives were professional musicians. At first the sounds of Bartók and Stravinsky – with their percussive edge and novel dissonances – fascinated young Leo, but it was exposure to the guitar as a teenager that opened his eyes and ears to centuries of rich musical tradition. Following several years of study, Brouwer advanced to the Hartt School in Connecticut and eventually Julliard, where he profited from additional lessons in composition.

Around this time, the ancient lineage of the guitar combined with academic study of modernist trends to help fashion Brouwer’s eclectic approach to composition. He was deeply impressed by experiences working with and learning from avant-garde figures like John Cage, Morton Feldman, and Toru Takemitsu. Through it all he has maintained a grounded philosophy:

Notation ought not be confused with the actual creation of music. I compose ideas, not themes. I can change musical ideas but I cannot alter themes. Every piece should have a magical moment. This helps to breathe the music . . . If I have an idea, it immediately takes on ten possible directions. The older I become, I find it more difficult to compose because of the various possibilities and directions any one musical idea can take.

For many years Brouwer maintained active careers as composer, arranger, and performer. In fact, he performed the guitar part at the premiere of Henze’s El Cimarron (1970) in Berlin, the very work that concludes tonight’s concert. Somewhat earlier, while not quite 20 years old, Brouwer composed a Quintet for Guitar and Strings in three substantial movements. [The first movement is not played tonight.] The second movement, in moderate tempo, opens with simple guitar figuration and string harmonics. Later the roles are reversed. Soon, a new idea appears in the guitar and cello based on a motoric ostinato, sparking a more intense passage. Toward the conclusion the opening material returns and leads to a solo cadenza for guitar. In the vigorous finale, marked Allegro vivace, Brouwer creates a dazzling array of textures. At the heart stands another cadenza, which provides a break from the propulsive energy that pushes this Quintet to a rousing finish.

Contemporary with Brouwer, Cuban-American composer Tania León (b. 1943) is one of the island’s most decorated living artists. She was born in Havana and received her earliest musical training at the piano. After taking degrees from two Cuban conservatories, León left her home as one of roughly 300,000 refugees relocated to the United States in the “Freedom Flights” that linked Havana and Miami over a period of years. She arrived at New York University in 1967 to continue studying piano, conducting, and composition. In the past 50 years she has served as musical ambassador for a wide range of organizations, from the Arthur Mitchell Dance Theater of Harlem to the New York Philharmonic, and has conducted orchestras from the Netherlands to Johannesburg. León has held numerous invited lecture positions, won a Pulitzer Prize in 2021, and was named a Kennedy Center Honoree the following year.

León’s choral version of El Manisero provides yet one more renewal of this timeless song. Originally composed by Moises Simon, El Manisero (The Peanut Vendor) has become a signature rumba exported to the entire world since it was first recorded in 1927. Hundreds of recordings and countless arrangements have been made since that time, from artists like Louis Armstrong, Django Reinhardt, Stan Kenton, and Dean Martin. While the tune is popular in instrumental contexts, León resurrects the original lyrics in her version for 12 voices. But the singers do far more than present the words and melody; the entire musical fabric, from harmony to rhythm, are realized by the voice. The sopranos call out the signature motive “Mani! Mani!” (Peanuts! Peanuts!), while the lower parts provide percussive, harmonic, and rhythmic backing. Fans of Bobby McFerrin, take note!

INTERMISSION

The works heard this evening have celebrated positive aspects of Cuban culture, its infectious dance rhythms above all. At the risk of severely oversimplifying a long and complex process, the variety and allure of Cuban rhythm owes a great deal to music forcibly imported to the island as a result of the African slave trade. The island’s inhabitants and indigenous culture have been transformed ever since Columbus and his Spanish-funded expedition arrived in October 1492. Three hundred years of brutal trafficking in human beings brought well over half a million Africans to work Cuba’s growing coffee and sugarcane plantations. And even after the slave trade was officially banned by governments in the U.S. and U.K., Africans continued to arrive on the island well into the 1860s. As much as such a horrendous episode can be said to “end,” perhaps a fitting marker can be placed at the lifetime of Esteban Montejo (ca. 1868-1973) – El Cimarrón, the Runaway Slave.

Quite probably the last escaped slave living on Cuba, Montejo died in 1973 aged 104 years. He had been born into slavery and raised on a sugarcane plantation. As recounted in his memoirs, dictated to ethnologist and author Miguel Barnet in 1963, Montejo heeded the urgent desire to escape and went to live as a young man in the mountains of Cuba, connecting with small communities of other escaped slaves. The biography ends in 1905 and recounts various aspects of Montejo’s life, from the tortures of daily life lived under the lash to his more pleasant days in the mountains and his service in the 1898 War of Independence. Published in 1966 as Biografía de un cimarrón, these recollections became the basis of a dramatic musical work conceived by German modernist composer Hans Werner Henze (1926-2012). In 1969 Henze spent a year teaching in Cuba. Despite being raised in a very conservative household just before World War II, Henze ultimately developed a very liberal outlook and became an avowed Communist. His musical interests ranged from imitation of ultra-modernism in the post-war years (serialism and atonality) to jazz, world music, and popular music. Above all, Henze claimed that nearly all of his music was conceived with a theatrical dimension. Such is certainly the case with El Cimarrón.

Henze first visited Cuba in April 1969. A mutual friend introduced him to Barnet, who in turn connected the composer to El Cimarrón himself, Esteban Montejo. The meeting left a strong impression on Henze: “I had never seen a man that old. He was as tall as a tree, walked slowly and very erect; his eyes were alive; he radiated dignity; he seemed to be sure he was a historical personality.” Over the next few months a libretto emerged, and Henze quickly composed a musical score to accompany the various scenes selected. The completed work premiered in Berlin in mid 1970.

Henze’s style in El Cimarrón is not easily accessible: spare and mercurial, with textures that generally remain muted but occasionally burst forth in chaos and rage. In addition, some of the passages of the libretto relate harsh scenes witnessed by Montejo first-hand. The 15 movements relate specific episodes from Montejo’s life or his reflections on life in general. (Not all movements are performed this evening; a complete performance lasts about 90 minutes.) By using a modicum of instruments (voice, flute, guitar, and percussion), Henze creates a laser-like focus on the timbre of every sound heard. The vocal soloist must perform a wide range of effects, from spoken monologue to shouting to falsetto singing. The percussionist performs on numerous instruments – some from beyond the Afro-Caribbean tradition – and all four performers at times play a percussion role. Reaching back to his days in the famous Darmstadt School, Henze even introduces a substantial amount of aleatoric techniques into El Cimarrón. He meticulously notates specific pitches at times but leaves rhythm to the performer’s discretion; at other times, only the general pitch contour is indicated, and the performer must decide on the size of each upward or downward interval to be sung. Beyond making each performance of El Cimarron unique, this level of indeterminacy also supports the theatrical realism and spontaneity that emerges between the four performers.

Listeners may be disturbed by both the content and the music, and Henze clearly wants this to be the case. He believed deeply in musical activism, and El Cimarron takes its place as a piercing artistic testament to the inhumanity inherent in slavery – a legacy kept alive in the mesmerizing figure of Esteban Montejo. We will prefer the sounds of Gershwin and Gottschalk, of course, but Cuba’s long history cannot escape the harsh truths about why its musical culture became so captivatingly diverse.

© Jason Stell, 2024