Concerto Gaucho
Kevin M. Walczyk
wind ensemble | grade 5/6 | 16' duration | view score
Concerto Gaucho was composed for Oregon native and trumpet virtuoso Tim Morrison. The work's central building blocks stem from the African-influenced music of Uruguay, which is the birthplace of Oregon Symphony Music Director Carlos Kalmar, to whom the work is dedicated.
The gaucho was traditionally known as a horseman who freely traversed and lived off of the unclaimed lands of Uruguay's Rio de la Plata region. The gaucho symbolized freedom and mobility during the first half of the Nineteenth Century and came to represent a national heroic archetype in Uruguay and throughout the southern cone of South America.
Typically equipped with a guitar, the gaucho was a wandering minstrel of sorts, performing music that described the vagabond's life. The trumpet soloist is the protagonist of Concerto Gaucho, which features two distinctive musical identities indigenous to the Rio de la Plata region - the milonga and the candombe. The slow, lyrical second movement of the concerto is based on the milonga, a song form that was a hallmark of the payadores (folk singers of improvised verse) who, by the end of the Nineteenth Century, played a vital part in preserving the vanishing image of the world of the gaucho. The lyrics of the milonga often featured political, historical, and patriotic themes that helped chronicle real historical events and pay tribute to local heroes, especially the gauchos. Concerto Gaucho's milonga is newly composed but features musical traits characteristic of the payadores' song, including its distinctive rhythm. The rigid formal scheme is structured on the payada - a singing duel between two payadores (or in the case of the concerto, interplay between the trumpet soloist and the orchestra). The payada form of the milonga utilizes decimas, ten-line stanzas with specific rhyme patterns. The wordless milonga of Concerto Gaucho utilizes the same decima structure but replaces the rhyme scheme with corresponding phrase structures.
The first and third movements of Concerto Gaucho are created from the energetic candombe - an African-derived rhythm that has been an important influence on Uruguay's musical culture for more than two centuries. The Candombe's unique rhythmic structure is achieved by layering three separate drum patterns, each named for the specific drum that performs that pattern - the piano drum, chico drum, and the repique drum. The three short, repetitive drum patterns that comprise the candombe, along with the madera - the rhythmic 'key' to the candombe - provide nearly all of the rhythmic elements for the outset movements of the concerto. As with the formal construct found in the concerto's milonga section, the decima plays a vital role in structuring the two candombe movements. Similar to the "fast-slow-fast" structure of the traditional concerto form, Concerto Gaucho's three movements are performed one after another with no musical breaks. This uninterrupted flow, in combination with the reprise of the candombe for the third movement, gives the work a sense of one large, continuous musical expression. Concerto Gaucho pays tribute to the wealth of historically-enriched music indigenous to Uruguay, which is rarely heard outside of its region.
The wind ensemble edition of Concerto Gaucho was conceived simultaneously with the orchestral edition from the beginning of the compositional process. The wind ensemble score was completed in December, 2007 and premiered by soloist Joey Tartell and the Indiana University Concert Band under the direction of Dr. Paul Popiel on October 14, 2008. The orchestral premiere performance (May 17, 2007 - 1st Annual Ukrainian/American Music Festival) and recording of the orchestral edition was made by the Kiev Philharmonic (Ukraine National Symphony), featuring trumpet soloist Yuri Kornilov (ERM Media - Masterworks of the New Era, volume 13).
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