Esquinas

Esquinas (Corners) is an orchestral composition by the Mexican composer Silvestre Revueltas, written in 1931 and extensively revised in 1933. The first version is in two movements with a duration of about 11 minutes in performance; the second is variously described as being in one or in three (continuous) movements with a total duration of about seven minutes. The scores of both versions are dedicated to Ángela Acevedo.
History.
"Esquinas" was originally composed in 1931, in two movements and scored for chamber orchestra with a soprano voice in the first movement. According to one source, a version of "Esquinas" for orchestra alone was premiered on 20 November 1931 by the Orquesta Sinfónica de México under the composer's baton. Two years later, in October 1933, Revueltas decided to make a new version of "Esquinas". The second version is more compact, less repetitive, without abandoning the collage-form structure of short episodes. The two final movements are combined into one, and several orchestrational problems of the original version are corrected or improved. This abbreviated version is regarded as either a single-movement composition, or as broken into three movements.
The composer's note for "Esquinas" reads:
Instrumentation.
The first version of "Esquinas" is unpublished and details of the scoring are unknown. The second version is scored for a chamber orchestra which, according to the manuscript of the score held by the Free Library of Philadelphia (Fleisher Collection), consists of piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, cor anglais, E clarinet, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 4 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion (including xylophone), and strings. The publisher's (Peer International) website gives a slightly different instrumentation: 3 flutes (third doubling piccolo), 2 oboes, cor angalis, E clarinet, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 4 horns, D trumpet, 4 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion (2 Indian drums, xylophone, ch, bass drum, suspended cymbal, woodblock, tamtam, triangle, jingles, güiro), harp, and strings.
Analysis.
The original version of "Esquinas" consists of three movements, the second and third of which are played without a break:
"Esquinas" offers an early example of Revueltas's Mexican popular-musical modernism, "whose themes are shattered at the moment of their birth, a struggle that does not permit its features to be heard emerging, decomposed, barely sketched and acclimated".
In the second version of the work, Revueltas discarded the vocal part in the first movement of the original. Although it is difficult to be certain about the composer's reasoning, it was most likely a purely practical consideration. There are several difficulties with the part. First, it comes to only 24 bars in all, consisting of four very short, widely separated outbursts. Second, the required registers exceed the normal range of a typical vocal tessitura, creating problematic technical difficulties. Third, the actual function of the singer is not clear: is she a soloist, or should she be regarded as a sort of "supplemental instrument" in the orchestra? In turn, where should the singer be placed on the stage, and how should the melodies be sung, since there are no words and the composer has provided no indication for vocalization? It has been suggested that the soprano voice may represent the score's dedicatee, Ángela Acevedo, with whom Revueltas had been living since 1930 and would marry in 1932, and to whom he also dedicated the scores of "Ventanas", "Parián", and "Caminos".
The presence of a vocal part in the first version, however, suggests "In a direct and very natural way, the evocation of the sung street cry leads to the interpretation of two other cries of "Esquinas", which call attention to themselves because, among other reasons, they are enunciated by a female voice. The unusual way of incorporating the voice (since she is neither a soloist, nor is part of the orchestra, and her participation is brief and sporadic) appears to be explained by its communicative function serving the composer to highlight or underline certain musical elements he considered significant".
It has been proposed that the musical construction of "Esquinas" is based on the cries of Mexican street vendors who once populated the urban landscape. Revueltas does not quote actual street cries, but rather imitates certain of their stereotypical aspects. The incorporation of these characteristic features merely suggests a semantic marking, enabling or enhancing their identification as a musical sign of cultural origin.
Reception.
As an instance of Revueltas's harsher, more abstract, and modernist style, "Esquinas" was poorly received by audiences initially, in contrast to his more lyrical and tonal works, such as "Colorines" and "Janitzio". "Esquinas", in either of its two versions, has remained one of Revueltas's least-performed works, and the first recording was released only in 2004.