Bryce Dessner: Circles
Julien Labro: Meditation #1 (Julien Labro, bandoneon with Takács Quartet)
Johann Sebastian Bach: Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme, BWV 64
Dino Saluzzi: Minguito
Julien Labro: Astoración (Julien Labro, bandoneon & accordina with Takács Quartet)
Maurice Ravel: String Quartet in F Major
Clarice Assad: Clash (Julien Labro, bandoneon & accordina with Takács Quartet)

Program essay

by Henry Michaels

Conversation. It’s an integral aspect of daily life. It’s one of the primary ways we communicate with one another, one of the defining elements of our humanity. When the opportunities for conversation are suddenly curtailed, then, or the primary means by which we engage in them are suddenly altered, the impact is massive. Bryce Dessner’s Circles is a work that was written during precisely one such moment: the height of the COVID-19 lockdown. Dessner describes Circles like this:

This piece was an expression of the creative process slowly starting to turn again, each individual voice searching for a line and searching for one another and eventually falling into a pattern or dance together, which weaves in and out of this collective rhythm and individualist polyphony. This theme of the individual versus the collective voice is something I have been exploring a lot in my work, especially when writing for a soloist. What does it mean to write for the individual, is it not more important than what we have to say as a group—the voice of many as opposed to the voice of one?

Written as it was at a time when the ways in which we communicate were so fundamentally altered, it is perhaps not surprising that Circles is a bit like a musical conversation. After all, what is a conversation if not a give and take between the collective and the individual voices?

Circles is also a conversation of sorts between each musician and the group, as well as the musicians and Dessner, whose score is purposefully light on certain musical instructions. For Dessner, this indeterminacy allows “the players of the quartet and Julien to find their own expressions and dynamics, to bring their own voice to these skeletal notes.”

This idea of finding voice, of adding to a kind of ongoing conversation is a useful way to understand music making. On a purely practical level, any musician can attest that playing music with others requires constant communication: discussion with one’s musical partners, questions about the articulation on this or that note, and non-verbal gestures such as breaths or subtle eye contact are part and parcel of the music making experience. On a more poetic level, conversation provides a useful metaphor for understanding some of the broader implications of music. Unlike a book or a painting, music is an artform that requires a mediator in order to fully realize it. The compositions—the notes themselves—of a Bryce Dessner or a Maurice Ravel exist in written form for as long as they remain preserved, but their full impact requires them to be sonically produced during the act of a performance. Translating what’s written on the page into sound requires some level of interpretation. The result is a sort of dialogue with the past, a constant give and take between a musician’s individual voice and the collective weight of history. 

Like Dessner’s Circles, Julien Labro’s Meditation No. 1 is also a product of the COVID-19 era.

But although the compositional circumstances and performing forces are the same, Labro’s Meditation—the first in a planned series for bandoneón and string quartet—foregrounds not conversation, but rather the lack of it.

In dealing with the tumultuous events over the past year, I started a habit of waking up early in the morning and preserving small windows of time for myself before allowing the craziness of the world to descend upon me. This series captures and reflects these precious moments

in time, without disruptions from news outlets, social media, phones, etcetera, where I was able to escape into an oasis that opened a new window for peace and creativity. 

Yet in many ways, the very existence of a work for bandoneón and string quartet is evidence of a dialogue or conversation. The fusion of the quartet—one of classical music’s most prestigious genres—with the bandoneón—one of the central instruments of Argentinian tango—shows a willingness to involve other voices in an effort to broaden the horizons of both traditions. 

The history of the bandoneón—an instrument similar to a concertina or a button accordion— is itself a story of dialogues, borrowings and broadening horizons. Developed in 1840s Germany by Heinrich Band (hence the name), the bandonion was intended by its inventor to serve as a sort of hand-held organ in communities whose churches were too modest for the real thing. But in what surely would’ve been an enormous surprise to Band, the instrument achieved its greatest and most enduring success half a world away from the small churches of rural Germany. After being introduced to South America by European immigrants, the bandonion (or bandoneón in Spanish) became a staple of popular music, particularly in Argentinian tango. In fact, by the early 1900s German manufacturers were beginning to produce the instrument solely for export to South America! 

Argentinian composer Dino Saluzzi’s Minguito is a wonderful musical encapsulation of this dialogue across cultures and genres. A bandoneón player from the age of seven, Saluzzi’s earliest musical training was itself a sort of dialogue or conversation. “There weren’t books, or schools or radio—nothing,” says Saluzzi. 

Nevertheless, my father was able to transmit a musical education to me; music that, later, when I was studying, I realized that I already knew—not from the point of view of reason or rationality, but rather in a different way, a strange way, the way that is produced by oral transmission.

Since then, Saluzzi’s career has seen him inhabit the worlds of tango, jazz, the avant-garde, and Argentinian folk music, and he has collaborated with musicians from a variety of genres. Originally composed for bandoneón and cello, Minguito immediately announces itself as a work in the tango tradition. The title of the work refers to the Argentinian television character Minguito Tinguitella, portrayed by Juan Carlos Altavista. Portrayed as the working-class son of Italian immigrants, Minguito is, much like the bandoneón, another example of the impact of immigrants on Argentinian culture. (That the character, who spoke a type of vernacular slang, was both praised and criticized for the way he spoke is just too good of a coincidental tidbit to pass up mentioning in a program note where conversation is being used as the framing device.)

There are many layers to J.S. Bach’s Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme, BWV 645, which is heard on this concert in the form of an arrangement of an arrangement of a setting of an existing tune. (Say that five times fast.) The existing tune is the Lutheran hymn “Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme” by the German hymnodist Philipp Nicolai, which was then famously used by J.S. Bach as the foundation of his 1731 church cantata Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme, BWV 140. BWV 645, though, is a transcription of the cantata’s fourth movement, “Zion hört die Wächter singen.” Originally a chorale for tenor voice and unison strings, Bach included this transcription in a book of six chorales titled Six chorales of diverse kinds, to be played on an organ with two manuals and pedal, but more commonly known as the Schübler Chorales. As the oh-so-creative title of the collection suggests, this work was originally intended for organ, meaning that Labro’s arrangement brings the bandoneón full circle, returning the instrument to its intended origins in German liturgical music. Heinrich Band would surely be proud. 

Bringing the bandoneón back to Argentina, it’s time to address the elephant in the room. No discussion of the instrument and its importance to Argentinian culture would be complete without significant mention of the great virtuoso bandoneón player and father of “nuevo tango”: Astor Piazzolla. Piazzolla’s style of tango was complex. It both drew inspiration from and provided inspiration to other genres, and Piazzolla became one of the twentieth century’s great influential musicians. Julien Labro’s Astoración was inspired by Piazzolla’s immense legacy.  

Astoración is an imagined duet and conversation with Nuevo Tango master Astor Piazzolla. I discovered his music at age 12 and it changed my life. It enlightened me that music was not only about written notes on a page but a means of expression. His passionate music moved me like none other and he became one of my biggest inspirations. I always dreamt that perhaps one day I could thank him in person, but fate decided otherwise as Piazzolla passed away in July 1992, the same month and year I discovered his music.

Although this musical conversation with Piazzolla is imagined, their dialogue is in many ways still quite real. In the learning of someone’s music, there is again that element of dialogue, of transmission of ideas, and of the give and take between yourself and a sometimes distant other. Labro’s conversations with Piazzolla or, for that matter Bach, are as real, then, as his conversations with Bryce Dessner or with Edward Dusinberre, Harumi Rhodes, Richard O’Neill or András Fejér. True, they may not be face-to-face, but they are no less substantive and certainly no less musically impactful 

The 28-year-old Maurice Ravel was in his final years (of many) at the Paris Conservatory when he wrote his String Quartet in F Major. Completed in 1903 and premiered the following year, this work was one of a string of Ravel’s compositions that quite infamously failed to win the prestigious Prix de Rome scholarship.

It has been noted—both by later generations and at the time (more on that in a bit)—that the quartet bears some resemblance to Claude Debussy’s String Quartet in G minor, Op. 10 written a decade earlier in 1893, both in terms of their overall style and because both Debussy and Ravel tied their four-movement works together by using certain themes throughout. Ravel, however, executed this thematic unity quite differently; whereas Debussy continuously varied the character of his themes, Ravel did not. Although they certainly aren’t just musical copies, the overall character of the repeated themes (particularly two themes from the first movement that are heard again in both the third and fourth) remains generally the same. While Debussy may have been an influence, and a completely understandable one at that, this quartet is nonetheless distinctively Ravel.

Don’t let the fact that Ravel was completing his studies when he composed his quartet fool you, though. He was at this point no mere student. In fact, by the time of the quartet’s premiere in 1904, Ravel was increasingly recognized as perhaps his generation’s greatest French composer. (This is partly why his repeated failure to win the Prix de Rome became so infamous, eventually culminating in one of the Paris Conservatory’s greatest PR disasters.)

Being recognized as perhaps his generation’s greatest French composer meant that he was now worthy of mention as one of France’s greatest living composers period, a list of luminaries that also included, of course, Debussy. That these two living composers were being discussed in the same breath naturally invited comparison. It was, shall we say, not always entirely flattering for either of them. Pierre Lalo, music critic for the Parisian newspaper Le temps and son of composer Edouard, wrote of Ravel’s quartet that, “In all the elements it contains and all the sensations it evokes it offers an incredible resemblance to the music of M. Debussy.” Now, it should be noted here that Pierre Lalo made snarky critiques of Ravel’s music a key element of his public persona in the early 1900s, and other critics, even those who also recognized shades of Debussy in some of Ravel’s music, were not nearly so dismissive.

 Regardless of the tenor of critical debate, these ongoing comparisons between Ravel and Debussy did their part to spark plenty of conversation in Paris. As Ravel’s fame continued to grow in the years following the premiere of his String Quartet, so too did the debate. If certain members of the Parisian intelligentsia felt they needed to, perhaps, take sides in this discussion, they were certainly encouraged by continued articles from Lalo, especially a particularly spicy bit of invective from 1907. Although neither Ravel nor Debussy harbored any real personal animus toward the other, the journalistic debate that had in many ways begun with the discourse surrounding Ravel’s String Quartet would ultimately lead to the notably icy relationship between the two peers.

As musical arguments go, Clarice Assad’s Clash is quite a bit different from the pedantic but mostly polite turn-of-the-century conversations about Ravel and Debussy. Written between 2020 and 2021, Clash in many ways sonically represents humanity’s collective emotional state during that difficult time. “I modeled the composition on imaginary friction between two human beings,” writes Assad, “basing much of the musical material and phrasing in human speech and predictability on human behavior, such as behavioral matching and contrast.”

 Emotions influence language, and as listeners, we react to the speaker’s emotional state, later adapting our behavior depending on what emotions the speaker transmits. On one side we have a person who argues, throws violent insults, interrupts, and yells—and on the other side; another who either retaliates or retreats, appeals to guilt, pleads and indulges in oversentimentalism. These are constant themes in this work.

Like Dessner’s Circles or Labro’s Astoración, this is a musical representation of a conversation, albeit one that has a markedly different tone. Assad toggles between discordant passages representing “willfulness and stubbornness”and consonant passages that display a “quasi- diplomatic character.” Clash is a dramatic work, one filled with a sense of anxiety and uncertainty, and Assad writes that the work “gravitates towards tension more than understanding.” This makes its brief moments of respite and resolution all the more sweet (albeit ultimately inconclusive).

It doesn’t take more than a glance at this concert program to see that something different is being put forth here. There is assuredly more than enough music written for string quartet or for bandoneón to fill a greater combination of concerts than one could ever reasonably hope to produce or attend in a single lifetime. But this program is clearly about more than that. It also advances the repertoire. It features new works, new combinations, new voices added to already rich musical tapestries.

One might even be tempted to say that this is the kind of concert program that shows the evolution of classical music. After all, writers about music are often so tempted to describe things as evolving, a metaphor for the way genres slowly morph and change over time. But the evolutionary metaphor tends to impart a kind of inevitability to the processes it describes, recognizing certainly the sometimes-accidental way that things unfold but overlooking the conscious creative choices that underlie much of the “growth.”

What if there was a better metaphor?

In his 1941 book, The Philosophy of Literary Form, writer, thinker, and literary theorist Kenneth Burke described a sort of imaginary unending conversation:

Imagine that you enter a parlor. You come late. When you arrive, others have long preceded you, and they are engaged in a heated discussion, a discussion too heated for them to pause and tell you exactly what it is about. In fact, the discussion had already begun long before any of them got there, so that no one present is qualified to retrace for you all the steps that had gone before. You listen for a while, until you decide that you have caught the tenor of the argument; then you put in your oar. Someone answers; you answer him; another comes to your defense; another aligns himself against you, to either the embarrassment or gratification of your opponent, depending upon the quality of your ally’s assistance. However, the discussion is interminable. The hour grows late, you must depart. And you do depart, with the discussion still vigorously in progress.

Perhaps it is Burke’s unending conversation that is the better metaphor for music. Whether the conversations are real or imagined, whether they’re taking place between critics and fans or composers and performers, whether they’re conversations across borders, genres, or even centuries—perhaps all of music history right up to this moment (and the next, and then the next) are part of a continuously and eternally developing conversation. Each musician, each composer, each lover of music adds their voice for whatever time they spend in that metaphorical parlor, then make their exit as the conversation continues to unfold in new and magical ways in perpetuity.