Silvestre Revueltas – Homenaje a Federico García Lorca (1936)

Wild! The first movement of Homenaje a Federico García Lorca, “Baile” (“Dance”), is basically demented mariachi music: simple, repetitive major-mode melodies in parallel thirds, distorted by being layered over endless dissonant ostinatos, played clownishly on tuba or piccolo, doubled in mocking parallel minor seconds, or accompanied by razzing brass. The effect is one part Pétrouchka, one part Ives, one part Ginastera, one part Milhaud, and one part evil clown that’s going to kill you in your sleep. Speaking of Ives, the movement opens and closes with a gesture that reminds me a lot of his music: a chant-like melody played in the trumpet over a juicy piano chord that’s got an Ab major triad in the left hand and an F# minor triad with an added B natural in the right.

The finale, “Son” (“Sound”), is similar in tone, but full of stops and starts. Its basic material combines hemiola-filled melodies — think “America” from West Side Story (1957) — with an ostinato rhythm section that layers jumpy eighth-note figures in the piano over jerky sixteenth notes in the strings. This is rudely interrupted by snickering piano chords and big, out-of-nowhere major triads, sometimes sustained and sometimes in fractured dance rhythms.

As is often the case in pieces that lean toward the comical end, the middle movement, “Duelo” (“Sorrow”) is more somber: still based on melodies and ostinatos, but this time the repeated accompaniment figure is a sneaky, mysterious one, reminiscent of the introduction to the second half of The Rite of Spring (1913), played by the piano and violins with bass pizzes and xylophone major seconds accenting beats 2 and 4. On top a muted trumpet plays a melancholy tune that has something vague and indefinable in common with Charles Mingus. Later Revueltas brings back the tuba, this time in a more lyrical mode — not something you hear very often! — and adds tension with shrieking chords played by the piccolo, the clarinet at the top of its register, and two muted trumpets.

I’m surprised that Revueltas is never talked about in music history classes or textbooks. He fits squarely into the absurd side of 1920s and 30s modernism, alongside early Hindemith, Satie, and the composers of Les Six, and his use of his country’s vernacular materials makes for an obvious comparison with Bartók, Kodály, Copland, Ives, Janácek, Ginastera, Albéniz, etc.  And if this piece is any indication, he’s good, too. My only criticism of it is the reliance on ostinatos that I mentioned, but even there I’m not sure whether I actually think that the music could be more interesting, or whether it’s just that I’ve heard a million composition teachers say that varied repetition is always better.