Janitzio (Revueltas)

Janitzio is a symphonic poem by the Mexican composer Silvestre Revueltas, composed in 1933 and revised in 1936. A performance lasts about fifteen minutes. The work is a portrait of Janitzio Island in Lake Pátzcuaro, Mexico.
History.
The score of "Janitzio" was completed on 31 July 1933 and was premiered under the composer's baton. According to some sources, this was by the Orquesta Sinfónica de México in the Teatro Hidalgo in Mexico City on 8 December 1933;( However, before it was unveiled to the audiences of the OSM, Revueltas had conducted it at the Palacio de Bellas Artes with the Orquesta del Conservatorio on 13 October 1933 in a program that also included Revueltas's own "Ocho por radio", Daniel Ayala's "Leyenda", and the first Mexican performance of Manuel Ponce's "Canto y danza de los antiguos mexicanos".
According to one source, Revueltas originally composed the work for the film "Janitzio", directed by Carlos Navarro and starring Emilio Fernández. However, this film, released in 1935, was produced after Revueltas's score had already been premiered, and the film's music is credited to Francisco Domínguez.
Revueltas revised the score three years later, completing the new version on 30 December 1936 at the Sanitorio Ramírez Moreno in Mexico City, where he was hospitalized for fatigue and rehabilitation from alcoholism. The original version was dedicated to Carlos Chávez and Armando Echevarría (librarian of the OSM), but Chávez and Revueltas fell out during the 1930s: the 1936 revised score bears no dedication.
Programmatic content.
"Janitzio" is a portrait of Janitzio Island in Lake Pátzcuaro, and is one of only two of Revueltas's works that refers directly to a Mexican landscape (the other is "Cuauhnáhuac").
The composer wrote a short programme note on the work (in at least two versions):
This note has been cited as an example of the composer's self-deprecating sarcasm. However, considering his leftist political views, these remarks might better be understood "as a reflection of his disdain for bourgeois consumerism, or as an attack on artistic production within a capitalist system".
Instrumentation.
The work is scored for piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, E clarinet, B clarinet, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, two trombones, tuba, suspended cymbal, side drum, bass drum, tamtam, and strings. The original 1933 version had only two horns, one trombone, and no violas; the side drum was to be played with the snares off, and the word "gong" appears instead of "tam-tam".
Analysis.
"Janitzio" follows the three-part structure that Revueltas favoured in all his orchestral works, with a lyrical, slow middle section. This has also been described, somewhat differently, as a "fast–slow–"radiant"" structure. The three sections are marked "Con brio" (b. 1–177), Lento espressivo (molto sostenuto e cantabile) (b. 177–238), and Tempo I (b. 239–386).
The lively opening employs certain melodic turns native to the region, which may have been modelled on a Purépecha "son" called "La Reina de los Huajiniguiles" (The Queen of the Huajiniguiles), from Uruaipán in the state of Michoacán. There are two main theme groups. The first is made up of three motivic cells, found in the first four bars and characterised principally by their rhythms, from which the entire work is generated: an ascending perfect fourth from E to A, a scale segment G–A–B–(C); and a descending major third from C–A. These plainly establish the key of A major. The second theme group (b. 89–138) is more compact than the first, and is primarily lyrical rather than rhythmic. It is not clear that this is actually a secondary thematic group as found in a sonata-allegro form. It is instead developmental in essence.
The middle section is contrasted by its simplicity, slower tempo, and 3/4 metre (though there are metrical variations throughout the section). It is features a lyrical, two-voiced theme, first presented by the clarinet and bassoon over an ostinato bass accompaniment. The key of G major is established by an insistent G pedal in the basses as well as by the tuba's dominant D at bar 183 and a dominant-tonic cadence at b. 190. The thematic development is continued from the previous section.
In the central part of the concluding section (between rehearsal numbers 28 and 29), Revueltas uses a "distortion" characteristic of his style. A waltz in A major evoking the atmosphere of 19th-century salon music is contradicted by a surrealistic presentation in the brass of a B-major arpeggio..
Reception.
From the outset, "Janitzio" was a great success with Mexican audiences and the press. One critic reported that the audience demanded that "Janitzio" be repeated. Another review of the premiere reported:
"Janitzio" was the epitome of the style of musical nationalism preferred by Mexican audiences, which was based on mestizo, popular elements, rather than on the pre-Columbian. Revueltas had by this time developed a style in which various, often disparate elements of the Mexican cultural soundscape were made to collide in audible violence: the popular, the modern, the urban, the peasant, the Indian, the military, the street life, the market, and the dance. Although the music sometimes celebrates the plurality and vitality of Mexican society, it also acknowledges clear cultural and societal conflicts. Whereas the harsher, more modernist examples of this style, such as "Esquinas" and "Ventanas" (both 1931) were given a cool welcome by audiences, more lyrical, milder examples, such as "Colorines" (1932) and "Janitzio", were enthusiastically received. In fact, in the annual poll taken at the end of the 1933 OSM season "Janitzio" came in first place with 221 votes, ahead of even Ottorino Respighi’s "Pines of Rome" (210 votes), Igor Stravinsky’s "Firebird" Suite (198 votes), and Robert Schumann’s Piano Concerto (142 votes). This was in sharp contrast with "Ventanas", which had received only 27 votes in the previous year's poll.
References.
Footnotes