Symphony No. 3 (Chávez)

Anfiteatro José Ángel Lamas, Caracas, where Chávez's Third Symphony was premiered

The Symphony No. 3 by Carlos Chávez was composed in 1951–54 on a commission from Clare Boothe Luce, and is dedicated to the memory of her daughter, Anne Clare Brokaw.

History

Chávez had evidently met former U.S. congresswoman, ambassador, publisher, playwright, and journalist Clare Boothe Luce in Florence at some point in the late 1940s. An unlikely friendship sprang up between them, which continued for nearly three decades. In February 1950 Luce came to Mexico City for a week of cultural exploration, and on 18 February 1950 wrote on a scrap of newspaper a commission for a musical work (initially envisioned as a piano concerto), "for Ann Clare Brokaw the most beautiful and sad and gay thing you ever wrote that has her lovely face and my broken heart in it". Brokaw, who had died as the result of an automobile accident in 1944 at the age of nineteen, was Mrs. Luce's only child, from her first marriage (Parker 1984, 48–49).

Composition of the Third Symphony began in 1951, but was interrupted repeatedly. After completing the first movement and a large part of the second, Chávez fell ill. By the time he recovered, there were more urgent deadlines requiring Chávez to put the score aside in order to work on the Fourth and Fifth Symphonies, both of which were completed before the Third. In April 1954 Chávez resumed work, completing the piano score on 14 June and the full score by the end of the same month (García Morillo 1960, 152–53; Parker 1984, 65). It was premiered in the Anfiteatro José Ángel Lamas in Caracas, Venezuela, by the Orquesta Sinfónica de Venezuela, conducted by the composer. According to Orbón (1987c, 80), this was on 9 December 1954, though others put the date at 11 December 1954 (García Morillo 1960, 153; Weinstock 1959, 15). It received further performances, in Europe in June 1955 at the I.S.C.M. Festival in Baden-Baden (in an orchestral concert conducted by Ernest Bour), in London with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Juan José Castro (29 November 1955), and in the United States, with the New York Philharmonic under the composer's baton (26 January 1956) (Copland 1955, 10; Mitchell 1956, 34; Reizenstein 1955, 8; Taubman 1956). Thanks to the efforts of his friend Aaron Copland, Chávez was able to secure a contract with Boosey & Hawkes in 1955, and the Third Symphony was the first of his works published by that firm (Parker 1987, 436–37).

Instrumentation

The symphony is scored for piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, cor anglais, E♭ clarinet, two clarinets, bass clarinet, three bassoons (third doubling contrabassoon), four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion (three players), harp, and strings.

Analysis

The Third Symphony consists of four movements:

  1. Introduzione: Andante moderato
  2. Allegro
  3. Scherzo
  4. Finale

The opening movement introduces a number of thematic elements that will be developed throughout the symphony—a procedure known as cyclic form (Parker 1983, 73). The character at the outset is dramatic and tense, recalling somewhat the "Greek" style of the Sinfonía de Antígona and the ballet La hija de Cólquide (García Morillo 1960, 154–55). Later in the movement (at rehearsal-number 16), a jarring contrast is created when Chávez introduces a universally familiar five-note children's chant, a figure that is also found in a number of the composer's contemporaneous and earlier works—the Fourth Symphony, the choral works Tierra mojada and Llamadas, and the ballet Caballos de vapor—whose presence here may be explained by a hidden program connected to the terms of the Symphony's commission (Parker 1991, 160–64).

After the slow first movement, the fast tempo and sonata-allegro design of the second movement more closely resembles the traditional opening movement of a symphony. This Allegro is the main focus of the symphony because of the solidity of its formal structure and its greater length than the other movements (Parker 1983, 74). To describe it as a sonata-allegro, however, refers to its character but not its form, which is both simple and original. Chávez replaces the usual exposition–development–recapitulation with two alternating sections, each of which occurs three times. Development occurs during the appearances of the second of these, through either the reappearance of motives from the first section, or the production from them of variants (Orbón 1987b, 89).

Discography

References

Further reading

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