I Homenaje a Federico Garc�a Lorca by Various

I’m surprised that Revueltas is never talked about in music history classes or textbooks. 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. On top a muted trumpet plays a melancholy tune that has something vague and indefinable in common with Charles Mingus.

This is rudely interrupted by snickering piano chords and big, out-of-nowhere major triads, sometimes sustained and sometimes in fractured dance rhythms.Īs 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. 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. The finale, “Son” (“Sound”), is similar in tone, but full of stops and starts. 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 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. 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.

I Homenaje a Federico Garc�a Lorca by Various