Chôros No. 10, “Rasga o Coração”
At-A-Glance
Composed: 1926
Length: c. 12 minutes
Orchestration: piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, alto saxophone, 3 horns, 2 cornets, 2 trombones, timpani, percussion (grand tambourin de Provence, bass drum, caxambu [Brazilian tom-tom], 2 puita [friction drums], reco-reco [scratcher, small and large], caisse-claire, tambour, large tam-tam, woodblocks, wood shaker, metal shaker), harp, piano, chorus, and strings
First Los Angeles Philharmonic performance: May 23, 1997, Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting
About this Piece
Born in Rio de Janeiro, Heitor Villa-Lobos fashioned a music that relied on elements of his native Brazil through the prism of the Western orchestra. In doing so, he captured the essence, rather than the actual reality, of Brazilian folklore.
Two prominent sets of works stand out in Villa-Lobos’ output, both of which range in scale and scope from intimate miniatures for small combinations to orchestral tone poems of symphonic dimensions: the Bachianas Brasileiras and the Chôros. Both collections make use of indigenous Brazilian popular and folk elements, mixed with the European tradition. In the more explicitly titled Bachianas Brasileiras, Villa-Lobos ponders the possibility of Johann Sebastian Bach as a 20th-century Brazilian composer (much as Prokofiev imagined Haydn or Mozart as his contemporaries in his “Classical” Symphony). The Chôros series, too, unites European formal and instrumental elements with instruments and materials native to Brazil.
The title Chôros refers instead to Brazil’s urban street musicians. Chôros No. 10 is regarded by many as the masterpiece of the series; it calls not only for full orchestra but also for a large chorus and a supplemental battery of Brazilian percussion instruments. The work’s subtitle, “Rasga o Coração” (“Rend the Heart”), is derived from a poem by Catulo da Paixão Cearense that serves as the optional text. The composer specifies, “One may also vocalize on Ah! in place of the Portuguese text.” The words that are actually sung (at the chant-like entry of the chorus), Ja-ka-tá ka-ma-ra-já, do not appear in Cearense’s poem, but were chosen by the composer for their purely sonorous effect. The lyrical melody that soon emerges on Ah! is by Villa-Lobos’ older contemporary, the Brazilian composer Anacleto Augusto de Medeiros (1866–1907).
Villa-Lobos draws upon both the music of Brazil’s large international cities, such as Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, and that of the Brazilian interior. Urban dance rhythms and Villa-Lobos’ fanciful version of indigenous chant are synthesized on a massive symphonic scale.
Completed in Rio in 1926 (after Villa-Lobos had returned from Europe), Chôros No. 10 subtly betrays the influence of the European scene: the unvarnished surface and immediacy of fauvism, the clean-cut textures of Stravinskian neoclassicism, and even the motoric, mechanistic features of Italian futurism. The net result of the work is wholly unique, however. Most notable in its freshness is the hypnotically vigorous second half, in which a driving rhythmic foundation built on the crisp and deliberate patterns of Brazilian dance underlies the soaring lyricism of the chorus as it impersonates the spirit of indigenous chant. Through the clear delineation (or stratification) of melody and rhythm, the dichotomous worlds of song and dance, the rainforest and the city, spirituality and modernism all mutually coexist in a meaningful way. Through such a synthesis, Villa-Lobos succeeds in faithfully maintaining the spirit of Brazilian music in a truly symphonic manner, as well as in inventing a distinctly individual musical space. —David Fick