Jaguar Songs for solo cello
Paul Desenne
About this work:
Composed for Iseut Chuat
Premiered at Galeria Sextante in Bogotá, Colombia in May 2003 with Paul Desenne, cello
PROGRAM NOTES
Gitane
Tombeau pour l'Amazonie
Gavotte
Birimbao
Jaguar
Each movement of Jaguar Songs presents its own concept of time, action or contemplation, and
flight. The jaguar is an Amazonian symbol of death, of frightening surprise – an energy that keeps
us running, keeps us from getting caught. Here, the cello escapes from the lyrical, weeping tradition and from the artifice of sound effects. Everything springs from a specific handling of the instrument derived from a true musical reference: a gipsy improvisation on Venezuelan and Andalusian lines; a shamanic contemplation of forest destruction where the timeless nature of the
Amazon is ripped to pieces by the music of chainsaws; a pop-gavotte possessed by the rage of electric blues-rock; and a restless Brazilian birimbao that makes way for the final, noisy, scraping, screaming flight through the Latin American night.
"Gitane" begins with the strumming of cuatros and charangos – the instrumental dance-calls of
Colombian music – and ends in a sort of improvised balancing act between two distant tonalities.
The flavor of these lines is drawn from the huge Andalusian influence in Venezuelan music. The
final phrases of the piece are a pajarillo – a Venezuelan fandango.
"Tombeau pour L'Amazonie" brings in a totally different concept of time derived from shamanic
chanting. The cello takes up the voice of the yapururú – the long bamboo flutes of Amazon cultures that play harmonic overtones to create oscillations between deep and high notes. The static opening section leads to a contemplation of pure sound, as the slowly evolving stream of notes approaches the chainsaws in a frenzy of fuzzy ostinati. This movement was composed during the
very tense days of April 2002, when huge street demonstrations against Chavez's regime were
repressed by hidden sharpshooters, and political confusion ensued.
"Gavotte" is an ironic title, since this poppish binary tune, the initial frivolous character of which is denied by the sentiment expressed as it unfolds, is a cover for a deeper transformation of the cello into a close relative of the Hendrixian electric blues-rock guitar. This isn't merely a cosmetic connection, for the cello can and will be possessed by the voices of this form-shattering, raucous expression. To spare the furniture in the delicate formal balance, things return to their apparent
normal state for a few seconds before the final race.
"Birimbao" is a short tribute to the surrealistic Brazilian ancestor of the cello, the berimbau, which
is like a primitive musical arc strung with a single wire and banged with a wooden or metal stick and a stone or coin. The body of this primitive cello is a calabash gourd with a sound-modifying mouth that the player leaves open or covers with his bare belly – an indication of the climate in which this sort of cello is played. Our modern, metal-stringed cellos are not too different in their
conception – we just have to bang on the strings a little. Our Pernambuco wood bows come from
Brazil, anyway.
"Jaguar" is built around rhythmic gestures, like instrumental onomatopœia, which come from the
music of Colombia, Venezuela and Brazil. In the middle of this rush we hear the Gregorian chanting of friars, like worm songs trapped in the maze of a deep forest from which they cannot escape. There are no conventional themes, motifs, or formal developments in this final piece; the music is built upon elements of pure rhythmic intensity. Latin American music is perhaps most
distinguished by its accompaniment figures rather than its particular melodies. The gestural, anonymous, faceless, collective weaving of frightened, syncopated textures is what this specific piece invokes.
- Paul Desenne
Year composed: 2002
Duration: 00:20:00
Ensemble type: Solo instrument, non-keyboard:Cello
Instrumentation: