From Khachaturian to Copland - A Mexican Implausibility
Monday, October 07, 2019
 |
| Teatro Juárez, Guanajuato, Guanajuato |
Of late I have been hopping on my personal time travel machine - my memory.
I have lived in this 21st century 19 years but at
my 77 years I consider myself a man from the 20th. I am not as Paul
Theroux wrote about Graham Greene, “An Edwardian on the Concord”. But I did
grow up without a telephone and a refrigerator and my first view on a TV
happened in 1953. I flew in almost brand new Douglas DC-3s in 1955 and a brand new Packard in that same year.
I was raised by my mother and grandmother. Both were
musicians. My mother was a pianist and abuelita a coloratura soprano who was
never able to sing professionally in the turn of the 20th century
Manila because those women who did were considered to be prostitutes.
My Aunt Dolly played a so-so violin but my uncle Tony was a
fine tenor.
What that meant is that my mother and I would take tram 35
from the Coghlan street of Nahuel Huapí to my grandmother’s downtown flat on
Rodríguez Peña. She had a piano. My mother would play Beethoven and Mozart
sonatas and some Chopin. Then American Broadway songbooks would be opened and
my grandmother and uncle would sing accompanied by my mother. Aunt Dolly would play her scratchy violin
but I have no memory of what it was that my mother accompanied her. My fondest
memory is my mother playing the Moonlight Sonata.
As a ten year old that I was I can assert that I was bored.
As I look back on that bygone century I realize that the
music that was available to my family was limited to sheet music and a few
expensive LP records. By the time we moved to Mexico in 1954 the situation was
a tad better. The first house we rented had a device that was called a high
fidelity record player.
By early 70s my mother told me her desert island choice had
to be Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos. I remember that her recordings (Dutch I
think) had an oboe or a clarinet playing the trumpet part of the Second
Concerto.
In 1973 Rosemary and found ourselves not being able to pay
the rent. My mother who was quite deaf by then sold her piano to help us. I
remember the agony of her playing the music and telling me she had to imagine
what it sounded like.
Both my mother and grandmother had opinions on music that
they often repeated to me:
1. Mozart was impotent.
2. There were no great English composers after Purcell.
3. Bach was God.
4. The best Spanish music was either by Frenchmen, Lalo and
Ravel, or Cuban, Ernesto Lecuona.
5. There were no good female French popular singers.
6. My mother loved Grieg.
I believe that these opinions were based on a poor
availability of music. Some of the music they knew of because they could sight
read music they purchased at Ricordi (look that up).
I don’t think my mother ever knew about Mexican composers
or 19th century American composers except for the New Orleans born Louis MoreauGottschalk.
In the 70s I discovered Aaron Copland by the circuitous
route of a version of his Hoedown by Emerson, Lake & Palmer. I fell in love
with Copland’s music.
During the 50s, 60s and 70s going to the movies meant one
had to sit for close to one hour of government propaganda. Bits of Copland’s El
Salón México were constantly used as background music. I never stopped to learn
that the music, so Mexican sounding was not that of Chavez or Revueltas but of
Copland.
My grandmother would have categorically opined the best “serious”
Mexican music was by an American.
But there might be a reason for Copland’s Mexican sound. Salón
México is a 1949 Mexican film noir directed by Emilio Fernández and co-written
by Fernandez and Mauricio Magdaleno. It stars Marga López (and Argentine) as a
dance hall prostitute (commonly called cabaretera) struggling to support her
younger sister at an exclusive upscale school.
There was such a place as Salón México and it seems that
shortly before Copland composed his piece he sat at a table of the joint!
These days of impending rains and cold have me suffering
lovely bouts of nostalgia for my Buenos Aires, Mexico City, Veracruz (Americans
used to like to write that Vera Cruz) and Nueva Rosita Coahuila.
I was too young (14) and stupid to understand that my
grandmother a diplomat from the Filipino Embassy in Mexico routinely gave
parties in our large home and that the guests included Diego Rivera, Siqueiros and
Alma Reed. I was not aware that the 50s were the golden age of Mexican cinema.
How was I to know that one of the finest cinematographers of all time was
Gabriel Figueroa.
And to finish this diatribe of my vernal nostalgia, I
miss the implausible, surprising and extraordinary variety of Mexico and Pedro Armendariz's moustache
.
On one of my visits to the lovely town of Guanajuato in
the State of Guanajuato I entered the Juarez Theatre, an end of the 19th
century opera house built with the gold and silver mines of La Valenciana near
the city.
I sat down in the sumptuous theatre and an orchestra
played Aram Khachaturian.
And because we live in the 21st century there is this terrific YouTube video of Aaron Copland directing El Salón Mexico in Carnegie Hall and narrated and introduced by Leaonard Bernstein.
El Salón México
And that is not all. You can view on your phone or your computer monitor Salón México, the film that inspired Copland.
Salón Mexico - Film
And because we live in the 21st century there is this terrific YouTube video of Aaron Copland directing El Salón Mexico in Carnegie Hall and narrated and introduced by Leaonard Bernstein.
El Salón México
And that is not all. You can view on your phone or your computer monitor Salón México, the film that inspired Copland.
Salón Mexico - Film
