Silvestre Revueltas's Redes: Composing for Film or Filming for Music?

The Journal of film musicVolume 2, numbers 2-4, WinTer 2009 Pages 127-44issn 1087-7142 coPyrighT © 2010The inTernaTional film music socieTy, inc.

ROBERTO KOLB-NEUHAUS

On May 12, 1936 at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City, Silvestre Revueltas directed the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional in a concert

version of the music he had recently composed for the film Redes which would premiere just two months later, on July 9 at Mexico City’s Cine Principal. Of nine film scores composed by Revueltas, two—Redes (1934–1935) and Música para charlar (1938)1— were also conceived as concert music in the form of symphonic poems. Of the two, Redes is of greater interest, not only due to its musical qualities, but also because of its historic significance within the particular confluence of aesthetic and political references of the time, which were highly significant in the history of art in Mexico.2 The idea of filming a brief documentary about fishermen in Veracruz as a pilot project for a socially oriented cinema program sponsored by the Mexican government was born in May 1933. Carlos Chavéz, at the time the head of the Fine Arts Department, had appointed American Paul Strand, head of the Cinema Commission, to make the film. Strand was an excellent photographer but had little experience in film. Perhaps this is why he invited Viennese filmmaker Fred Zinnemann to co-direct, Henwar Rodakiewicz to write the script and Gunther von Fritsch to edit the film. Mexicans who participated as apprentices included Agustín Velásquez Chávez, Julio Bracho and Emilio Gómez Muriel. 1 A score dated July 8, 1938, originally written for a government propaganda film on the construction of a railroad that was to cross the Altar Desert to link the Baja California peninsula with the rest of Mexico. Under the name “Música para charlar” (Chit-Chat Music), it was premiered by the composer in a special concert on December 15, 1938 at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City, performed by an ad-hoc orchestra named “Orquesta Sinfónica de Mexicanos” (Symphony Orchestra of Mexicans) for the occasion. Like Redes, this film score was also later reworked by Erich Kleiber into a concert suite. Perhaps unaware of the title the composer had given it, Kleiber called his suite “Paisajes” (Landscapes). 2 See Roberto Kolb, “Redes. La versión de concierto de Silvestre Revueltas,” in Pauta 87-88 (July–December 2003): 38-53.

Redes intended to offer a critical vision of Mexico, an alternative to the one propagated by the prolific commercial cinema of the day. As García Riera reports, “the spirit of the left, which tended to merge glorification of nationalism and indigenism with ‘social content’ and low-budget productions, led to the funding of Redes through a government department, the Ministry of Education . . . . Redes above all, but also Janitzio (Carlos Navarro, 1934) and Humanidad (a documentary by Adolfo Best Maugard, 1934) would be cited as the best examples of a cinema that paid more attention to national and social interests than to the box office.”3 It was, in fact, Russian cinema, particularly that of Sergei Eisenstein, that was then setting the standard for state-produced, socially inspired, educational cinema realized in “dramatic and aesthetic form.”4 In other words, cinema that was simultaneously understood both as art and as a tool for awakening the consciousness of the workers.5 This is suggested, for example, by Diego Rivera’s contrasting of the vulgarity of Mexican commercial cinema with the ideal of “realism” as expressed in Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin (1925) and October (1927). Stimulated by European primitivism, but nurtured by the local muralists, it was paradoxically Eisenstein who would give Mexico a cinematic image of itself. Even though his Mexican adventure ¡Que viva México! was never finished, it would exert a powerful influence on local film making. For sardonic 3 García Riera, Emilio, Historia documental del cine mexicano, (Guadalajara, University of Guadalajara, Jalisco State Government, Instituto Mexicano de Cinematografía, Conaculta, 1992, Vol. 1): 120.4 Paul Strand in a letter to Ignacio García Téllez, February 28, 1935. In Carlos Chávez. Epistolario selecto (Selected letters of Carlos Chávez), selection, introduction, notes and bibliography by Gloria Carmona, (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1989): 199.5 To confirm the importance of socially oriented film among the educated classes in Mexico, one only needs to note the program for the first Mexican cinema club, founded in 1931, the same year the first commercial sound film was produced in Mexico (Santa by Antonio Moreno). The artistic character and political bias in the majority of the films shown is notable—Mother by Pudovkin, for example—but even more so in the films that were soon to be screened: Eisenstein’s October, Thunder over Mexico (one of several films derived from the Russian director’s sequences originally shot for ¡Que Viva México! ) and Strike, among other conspicuously leftist films. Strand was familiar with this body of work and did not conceal his admiration for it.

Silvestre Revueltas’s Redes: Composing for Film or Filming for Music?

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García Riera, Redes is its most immediate and clearest example: “[Eisenstein’s] influence tended to translate into a visual rhetoric which exalted the static and merely photogenic, frequently portraying motionless indigenous faces, in grave and ostensibly meaningful poses and set in an elaborate compositional play of nopales and magueyes (cactuses) under the beautiful clouds of the Mexican sky, achieved by means of powerful filters.”6 As we shall see, this description fits Strand’s photography perfectly, provided Indians are replaced by the mestizo fishermen of Alvarado, and cactuses by tropical huts and palm trees. Add to this the powerful political motivation of the muralists and of composers such as Revueltas and we have Redes.

The filming of Redes, originally entitled Pescados,7 began at an inauspicious time. President Abelardo Rodríguez’s term of office was almost over, a circumstance which threatened both the political and financial continuity of the project. In fact, the political transition caused a number of changes in government which had a direct effect on the film’s production. Carlos Chavéz had to step down as head of Bellas Artes, frustrating his plan to write the film score himself. His successor, Antonio Castro Leal, assigned the task to Silvestre Revueltas, which caused friction among all concerned.8 Doubtless feeling pressured by the imminent change of government, Castro Leal gave Strand a deadline to complete the film, telling him he could not guarantee funding after December 16, 1934. Haste, not to mention countless financial and technical problems, made the film’s editing, scoring and sound production frustratingly haphazard. In a letter addressed on February 28 of 1935 to the new Secretary of Education, Ignacio García Tellez, Strand reports,

. . . The sound recording was never completed because it was impossible, and because of the totally inefficient organization of the task which at the time was not under my control but under that of Velásquez Chávez. Several rushed, under-rehearsed attempts were made to record the music in a studio crowded with pieces of the sets. Rodríguez, the person in charge of sound recording, was not under contract, so we had to be content with whatever time he could spare us. This was usually in the evening or at night, after he had been working all day. As a result, our recordings were considered poor by the Hollywood laboratory, but usable . . . 9

6 García Riera, Emilio, México visto por el cine extranjero, Guadalajara: Era, Vol. III (1987): 195 (my translation). 7 The title was a play on words, as pescados can mean both “fishes” and “fished.” Redes means “nets.” The film was distributed in the U.S. as The Wave.8 This is fully documented in the correspondence between Carlos Chávez and Paul Strand, and between these men and the government officials involved. 9 Carlos Chávez, 203 (my translation). All letters from Strand to Chávez are in English, and can be found in the Chávez Archive at the Archivo General de la Nación, in Mexico City.

In spite of everything, Strand and his team, including Revueltas, were able to finish the task in the time allotted. The fate of these rushed efforts, though, is uncertain. To date no copy has been found of this first film version.

The project was put on hold following the change of government. Strand was removed as head of the Cinema Commission, and when he stopped receiving paychecks he had to return to the United States, as did Zinnemann and Rodakiewicz. One year later, however, in late 1935 or early 1936, the project was taken up again with the aim of fixing its problems and distributing the film. Apparently it was Gómez Muriel who took charge. Revueltas decided to completely rewrite the music for the new version, now to be called Redes. Strand, Zinnemann and Rodakiewicz had no part in the second attempt at making the film, and therefore no say in the final result, leading to understandable frustration:

I respectfully request you to consider not only the injustice committed against me by allowing these incompetent, unscrupulous persons to complete a work which they did not create; they cannot know exactly what needs to be done . . . I request you to restore this opportunity to me and my associates.10

Understandably, Strand’s reaction to the new version was not one of wholehearted approval. He wrote Chávez after having seen it at a private screening in New York: “The synchronization of the dialogue appears to have been well done. The printing, poorly done and dirty. The music, mediocre in general. The credits, untruthful.”11 A few lines later, though, he took a softer stand: “Overall, I am not ashamed of Redes; with all its melodrama and other weaknesses, it is honest, and in many ways beautiful. I think that if it can reach the audience for whom it was actually made, namely the workers and peasants of Mexico, it will be of use to them.”12

The patent tension which permeates these letters is easily explainable by the uncomfortable position Strand was left in after Chávez—his good friend,

10 Carlos Chávez, 205.11 Apparently it was Strand’s Mexican assistant Gomez Muriel who supervised the edition of the known version of Redes, judging by the suspicious credit as co-director he assigns himself here: “Dirección: Emilio Gómez Muriel y Paul Strand”. 12 Carlos Chávez, 238. For more details on the history of the making of Redes, the account by Emilio Gómez Muriel, cited in García Riera, Historia documental del cine mexicano (Guadalajara: University of Guadalajara, Jalisco State Government, Instituto Mexicano de Cinematografía, Conaculta, 1992), Vol. 1: 119–20 and 127–31, and the account by Paul Strand in his letter to García Téllez (Carlos Chávez, 199–205) are recommended. While considerably less detailed, Fred Zinnemann’s lighthearted account of the making of the movie, included in his autobiography, offers a different view, in contrast with Strand’s somewhat embittered perspective (Fred Zinnemann, A Life in the Movies: An Autobiography. New York: Scribner, 1992, 30–37).

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unconditional supporter, and brains behind the original project—was removed from the production team. From his copious correspondence with Chávez during and after the filming one can infer that Strand experienced his own continued participation, as well as his collaboration with Silvestre Revueltas (at the time he was still Chávez’s assistant director at the Orquesta Sinfónica de México) as a betrayal of the man who had invited him to Mexico. Chávez had not only sponsored one of Strand’s best-known photo exhibits13 but, as mentioned before, also employed him in the State’s art division, an unusual and daring appointment considering Strand’s status as a foreigner.

The Double Semiosis

However, another source of tension lies behind Strand’s letter, and it leads us directly to the subject explored in this article. In October of 1934, while Strand was still shooting scenes for Redes, he wrote a revealing letter to Silvestre Revueltas:

Dear Sylvestre [sic]: I was happy to receive your letter – and the good news that you have already written considerable music that you liked and that you were beginning to orchestrate it. That’s fine. Best of all the interest in the film and the impulse it gives you to want to make music – I have no doubt you will do something swell – I feel however, that regardless of much work in Mexico, it will be necessary for you to come here early in October – to see the sequences you have not yet seen – there will be a number by that time relatively complete. – That you have been able to work out a general musical structure for the whole film is indeed a great start, but I feel certain that the moods, rhythm and tone of each sequence must in the final analysis govern the musical content within the structure you have worked out [my italics].14

Revueltas had, in fact, done a great deal more than Strand suggests: he had completed a first version of the music, 85 pages of continuous music scored for large orchestra, very likely conceived not only for the film but also for concert performance, as was his later version (December, 1935).15 It evidences the composer’s desire to write music that was equally effective by itself as it was in conjunction with the moving image and more, in fact, as we shall see: a music that aspired to embody temporal, spatial and actorial functions more commonly assigned to 13 One-man show at the Sala de Arte in the Ministry of Education building, Mexico City, February, 1933. 14 The original of this letter is contained in the Revueltas archive, in care of the composer’s daughter Eugenia Revueltas, and is reproduced here thanks to her kind permission (punctuation as in the original). 15 The manuscripts of both versions have survived and are in the care of Revueltas’s heir, his daughter Eugenia.

figurative discourse. This yearning—a film for music rather than a music for film—is confirmed in the scenes which also correspond to Revueltas’s concert suite, composed for the final cut of Redes, so bitterly repudiated by Strand.16 Strikingly, the images in these scenes seem to have been cut to the music rather than the other way around, recalling the procedure which would be used by Prokofiev and Eisenstein some years later in Alexander Nevsky (1938). As in Redes, in Nevsky, music ruled by edited film material alternates with music inspired by preliminary shots,17 with Eisenstein adapting his visuals to the pace and structure of a previously, more freely composed music.18 Indeed, in the scenes that coincide with his concert version, Revueltas’s manuscript reveals continuous musical writing, the coherent, self-sufficient musical structure of a symphonic poem in three movements.19 It is only through indications regarding visual action and timing in the score that a link to the film is established. The scenes that will concern us here constitute a series of “photo-musical tableaux,” perhaps echoing what Eisenstein had in mind when he spoke of the “vertical” synchronization of musical and photographic segments or phases. As for Strand’s images, they fit the musical structure comfortably because they are essentially photography in movement. Like Eisenstein, Strand was enamoured of the beauty of Mexico’s people and landscapes. Large sections of Redes relegate dramatic content to the picturesque, and even those intending to serve a plot are heavily burdened by Strand’s fascination with the exotic. Cutting such descriptive material to the music score represented no hardship whatsoever. The scenes that we will analyze here reflect the priorities of a photographer and a composer, not those of a film director or a screenplay writer. Symptomatically, words are used sparsely: the musical action is interrupted only twice and briefly, to 16 The concert suite has recently been reconstructed and recorded. See Redes: versión original de concierto de Silvestre Revueltas, José Luis Castillo (critical revision), Roberto Kolb (reconstruction), Mexico, UNAM, 2008 and the recording by Orquesta Sinfónica de la Universidad de Guanajuato, conducted by Castillo (QP 123, Quindecim Recordings, 2004). A critical edition of this reconstruction will be published by Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México in 2008. To avoid confusion, it should be mentioned that the more familiar concert version of Redes was compiled by Erich Kleiber and only coincides in part with Revueltas’s own concert version. This suite (1943) was published by Southern Music Publications Co. & Peer Musikverlag in 1971. 17 Eduardo Contreras Soto reports that Revueltas was apparently given a Moviola, allowing him to view and time an edited version of the film. However, he does not quote his source, nor does he specify whether this circumstance applied to Pescados and/or Redes. See Heterofonía 111–112 (July 1994 – June 1995): 5–14.18 Eisenstein describes this procedure in detail in The Film Sense (first American edition, 1942). See Sergio M. Eisenstein, El sentido del cine, (Buenos Aires: Lautaro, 1941) 148–49.19 It is not suggested here, of course, that Revueltas was the first to propose music as autonomous to cinematic discourse. Consider in this regard Maurice Jaubert’s experiments in his collaboration with Jean Vigo in the early thirties. See Annette Insdorf, “Maurice Jaubert and François Truffaut: Musical Continuities from L’Atalante to L’Histoire D’Adèle, Yale French Studies 60, Cinema/Sound (1980): 204–18.

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convey an epigrammatic message or a brief dialogue, somewhat clumsily uttered by non-professional actors. Music determines the general pace and structure with which image and words are to fit in these scenes, and, as we shall see, it constitutes an autonomous text that aspires to lend meaning to both image and words.

Whether successful or not in communicating such meaning, it remains a fact that the score’s notorious expressive and compositional resources are affected by the composer’s perhaps quixotic desire to challenge the traditional hierarchy, which ascribes figurative discourses more signifying power than the purely symbolic and presumably asemantic musical discourse. Trying to unravel this particular signifying process should be as helpful in revealing the source of energy of a very powerful score, as in making an argument for the writing of non-subservient film music.

In order to relate extramusical (semantic) meaning implicit in images and dramatic action to musical discourse (the semiotic level),20 the composer resorts to a variety of signifying strategies, which range from the basic mimesis between kinetic and musical gestures (“Mickey Mousing”) through indexical relationships such as the use of popular dance music to suggest a celebratory atmosphere, to sophisticated symbolic constructs, which, however, require shared codes between composer and listener in order to achieve communication. I am leaning here on Charles Sanders Peirce’s three main categories of signs—icons, which resemble their objects of representation, indexes, which point to them based on a shared existential or metonymic kinship, and symbols, which communicate meaning based on norms or conventions shared by sender and receiver. All three types of meaning-making (semiosis) are used profusely in our score. Take, for example, the upward-crawling chromatic gesture (8.1-3)21 that resolves into a static texture of strings with repeated horn calls (9.2-6) that mimics the casting of a fishing net and how it lands on the water’s surface (iconic representation of a physical movement), or the brilliant huapango22 melody played by the trumpet (14) when the fishermen of Alvarado gather around their boats to celebrate the abundant takings of

20 I rely here on Emile Benveniste, who refers to the semantic order as pertaining to the world of enunciation and discourse, whereas the semiotic order refers to the text independently of references to its context (Emil Benveniste, “The Semiology of Language,” Semiotica (special supplement, 1981).21 The number before the dot refers to Revueltas’s rehearsal numbers in the film manuscript, the numbers after the dot to the measures as counted from the rehearsal numbers. 22 Huapango literally means “festivity,” although it is (incorrectly) used by Revueltas and many others to refer to the son, a musical genre typical to the Huasteca area and extending to most of the coastal towns, such as Alvarado, where Redes was filmed. The term is not actually used in the later version (1935) but appears in the corresponding music in the original 1934 score, which is marked Tempo de huapango.

a particularly lucky fishing expedition (Mexican audiences immediately associate this folk music genre with the coastal population of Veracruz). Symbolic musical constructs have no iconic or indexical link to their object of representation, and are therefore not restricted by the pace of image and/or dramatic action. Perhaps it is precisely because of this representational indirectness that such symbolic constructs are usually the most productive in a compositional sense. They tend to lead to a more autonomous and richer musical text, whereas musical imitations of bodily movements do not usually carry well as musically generative material and quotations of folk music usually limit the role of film music to the synchronic, supporting role of illustration. As we shall see, it is indeed the symbolic discourse which accounts principally for both the semantic and musical wealth of Redes.

Painting, Filming and Scoring Death

Two scenes that are crucial to the content and structure of Redes are particularly eloquent in this last respect. They allude visually, verbally and musically to the topic of death, as can be inferred when linking musical gesture with corresponding representations in the film. This correlation allows the precise identification of meaningful sound constructs (musical signs), and elucidates their textual dynamic (a process in which semantic representation merges with musical semiosis). We might be speaking here of a strategic merging of intra- and extramusical semiosis as a compositional strategy: Revueltas draws from a semantic scenario—dramatic action expressed in images and words—a music which is meant to not only mark, but inform and even enter into dialogue with that very scenario.

Since analyzing this type of transdiscursive composition in the full score would be well beyond the scope of this article, we shall focus on the previously mentioned “death” scenes. As shall be seen, these resonate richly in two other artistically and politically relevant constructs of death, a mural by David Alfaro Siqueiros and in its filmic “quotation” by Sergei Eisenstein, both of which constitute meaningful precedents in the making of Redes. As I have written about them in depth elsewhere,23 I will touch upon them only in passing here.

Eisenstein visited Mexico in 1931 with the intention of filming his vision of the country in a film that was to be called ¡Que Viva México! The enthusiastic

23 See Roberto Kolb, “Four Ways of Describing Death: Painting, Filming, Narrating and Scoring Mexican Funeral Scenes,” in Eisler-Studien. Beiträge zu einer kritischen Musikwissenschaft (Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & Härtel, 2008).

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collaboration of Mexican painters during his prolonged stay—over a year long—opened his eyes to the country’s culture. Artists who offered their guidance and friendship included, among others, Rivera, Frida Kahlo and Siqueiros. To show his gratitude, but especially to acknowledge the definitive influence of their art and conceptions on him, Eisenstein decided to dedicate each part of his film to a different Mexican artist and incorporate details of their art in his film. In fact the film’s references to Mexican muralism in ¡Que Viva México! are so plentiful24 that it can safely be said that it is a fascinating experiment in transartistic reference used as creative strategy.

One such “filmic quotation” in ¡Que Viva México! is Siqueiros’s unfinished mural Entierro del obrero sacrificado (Burial of a Worker) (see Figures 1 & 2). Eisenstein reproduces the mural’s funeral scene in a way that is almost identical to the painted original. Film here seems to be merely painting set in motion (see Figure 3). It is much more, however: the painting of Siqueiros’s mural was interrupted25 as the painter’s protests against the repressive regime of Plutarco Elías Calles led to the cancellation of his contract in 1928 and later, indirectly, to jail. By including Entierro del obrero sacrificado in his film, Eisenstein was seeking its completion and survival. Ironically, ¡Que Viva México! suffered a similar fate. Absurd accusations, censure, intrigue, defamation and destructive interference by the Mexican and Soviet governments eventually forced Eisenstein to abandon his ambitious project.26

Whether intentionally or not, the photographer Paul Strand—an avid Eisenstein connoisseur and admirer—picked up the thread left by the Russian filmmaker. Repeating Siqueiros’s and Eisenstein’s depictions of death as sacrifice, Redes shows a fisherman who gives his life for the betterment of his community.27 His death is preceded by the needless 24 For an excellent study of Mexican murals in Viva México, see Eduardo de la Vega Alfaro, Del muro a la pantalla: S.M. Eisenstein y el arte pictórico de México (Guadalajara: Universidad de Guadalajara, Gobierno del Estado de México, Instituto Mexicano de Cinematografía, 1997).25 For a detailed account of this episode, see Alicia Azuela, “El Machete y Frente a Frente: Art Committed to Social Justice in Mexico,” Art Journal (Spring 1993): 3.26 For a detailed narrative of the story behind the production of the film, see Harry M. Geduld and Ronald Gottesman, eds., Sergei Eisenstein and Upton Sinclair: The Making and Unmaking of ¡Que Viva México! (Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press, 1970). 27 In a way, the idea of Redes had already come to Eisenstein when he saw Siqueiros’s unfinished mural: death as a necessary sacrifice for a better future and childhood as a symbol of this. It is suggested in the outline of Soldadera, one of the episodes of ¡Que Viva México! that never came to be:

“Adelita is the name of the song and this song is the leitmotif of [Pancha] the Soldadera.. . . – Say, Soldadera . . . “Where art thou going, woman?”She turnes pensive, smiles enigmatically, shrugs her shoulders, as if ignorant of what to answer, parts her hands in the broad gesture women are apt to make when saying:– “Who knows?” (¿Quién sabe…?)

death of his own son, the tragedy that triggers the film’s plot.

The boy has died because Miro, the film’s hero, could not afford his medical treatment. Miro leads a revolt of the fishermen against the merchant who buys their fish at a very low price. The merchant hires a professional politician to divide the protesters, leading to the violent confrontation which costs Miro his life. This death, however, unites the fishermen and they organize a great cortege of fishing boats to carry Miro’s body to the city in a defiant act of unity.

From Death to New Life

Thus, two different concepts of death seem to be represented: death as the interruption of life, associated with pain and injustice, and death as a necessary sacrifice but the precursor to new life, evoking more positive feelings. These two existential modes are very clearly differentiated in the musical text, as is the transition from one to the other. Words and images easily represent these two interpretations of death, but music can only do so symbolically. At first hearing, one might identify a set of leitmotifs associated with each of these representations. However, it will become evident that a traditional approach, linking the characters or moods suggested by dialogues and images to melodic motifs and their musical development, will not suffice in this case. Instead, we will call on a broader concept: musical gesture, because it not only incorporates the richness of leitmotif technique, but because it also considers qualities which transcend it, and which are particularly

. . . The angry voice of the sentinel calls to her.“What have you there under your shawl?”And lifting her rebozo, Pancha answers quietly:“Who knows, señor, it may be a girl or it may be a boy …”The troops start off noisily. In the packed cars the soldiers are singing Adelita! And on the roofs, the soldaderas with their kitchen [utensils] and children are squatted like crows. . . . Under the clothes hung out near the lanterns to dry, under soldier’s underwear waved by the wind, near the blazing bonfire, Pancha is sitting with her newborn baby.. . . Again the racket of machine guns…. . . This time Juan does not come back.And when the fight is over amidst its smoking ruins Pancha finds the body of her husband…She gathers a pile of rocks, makes him a primitive tombstone, weaves him a cross of reeds…She takes his gun, his cartridge belt, his baby, and follows the slowly advancing, tired army.. . . Towards Revolution.Towards a New Life! …” (Eisenstein’s synopsis of “Soldadera” is quoted in Inga Karetnikova and Leon Steinmetz, Mexico According to Eisenstein, (University of New Mexico Press, 1991), 130-32.

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Figure 1: David Alfaro Siqueiros, detail of Entierro del obrero sacrificado, 1923–1924. Unfinished mural at the Colegio de San Ildefonso (originally the National Preparatory School), Mexico City (© Colegio de San Ildefonso, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México).

Figure 2: Detail of Entierro del obrero sacrificado

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eloquent in symbolically correlating semantic and musical contents.

In his theory of musical semiotics, Eero Tarasti quotes the concepts of Swiss music psychologist Ernst Kurth in support of his own conviction that the “essence of melody does not consist in the succession of tones, but in the transitions between them:”

The experience of movement felt in a melody is not only a kind of subsidiary psychological phenomenon: rather, it leads us to the very origin of the melodic element. This element, which is felt as a force streaming through the tones, and the sensual intensity of the sound itself both refer to the basic powers in the musical formation, namely to the energies which we experience as psychic tensions (Kurth 1922: 3).28

This important insight is echoed also in Robert Hatten’s concept of musical gesture, defined by him in very general terms as “significant energetic shaping through time.” “Gesture,” Hatten maintains, “transcends the formal aspect of melodic motifs and themes radically . . . grounded in human affect and its communication [it] ‘go[es] beyond’ the score to embody the intricate shaping and character of movements that have direct biological and social significance for human beings . . . [it] entails a wide range of gestural competencies, including [a] correlation with other sensory, motor, and affective realms of human experience.”29 Revueltas’s complex gestures and their sophisticated rhetorical manipulations in his approach to the subject of death are a textbook example of how energy between the notes of a melody can be used to generate both expressive and semantic meaning.

Let us start by taking a look at the first funeral scene, which depicts the burial of the hero’s child (see Figure 4). In this scene, all sounds of the concrete world—walking, talking—are purposefully silenced in deference to the music.30 Images alternate freely between the procession, the burial and the expressions of pain on the faces of the mother and father, but the resulting sequence is all contained in the music’s well-rounded structure.

28 Quoted in Eero Tarasti, A Theory of Musical Semiotics (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1994), 99.29 Robert Hatten, Interpreting Musical Gestures, Topics, and Tropes: Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2004), 95.30 Later scenes in which dialogue and music coincide prove that the lack of diegetic sound in this scene was not due to technical limitations. Other descriptive scenes, such as the “Segunda pesca” (the “second fishing expedition”), another photo-musical tableau portraying fishermen at sea, also silence the voices of men in favor of the music. Such contradictions only go to show the prevailing ambiguity between the various concepts—documentary, drama, visual art—which interact confusingly in this film. They also explain the legendary disagreements between the makers of the film throughout the shooting and thereafter

The score here avoids any form of mimesis between visual and musical gesture, or of stylistic appropriateness: the walking pace of the people has nothing in common with the rhythm of the music; there is no funeral march; the surprising image of a smiling child flying a kite while another is laid to rest forms a disturbing antithesis to the painful melody (the music presumably uses expressive contradiction to suggest the injustice of a futile death or the fate that may await other children). All this underlines the music’s contribution to the production of meaning, usually dependent on image and plot alone. We perceive a basic psychological congruence with the dramatic content, but the score moves at its own pace, creates its own space, and speaks through the voice of its own (musical) actors.

The second funeral scene shows Miro’s own death (see Figure 5). There are revealing differences with respect to the child’s funeral: Miro’s body is not taken to the cemetery, and is not buried. Instead, the fishermen, now united, place him in one of the fishing boats, reinstating him as their leader. The death of their hero shall not be in vain: together they row towards the town, do what is necessary to reverse their misery, and take their fate into their own hands. No explanatory words to this effect are uttered, however. The meaning of the scene relies solely on the power of musical symbolism, correlated with the content of the images.

Reflecting the opposition between the dramatic representations of death as the end of life and death as premise of new life, the differences between the two musical texts clearly expose and distinguish the main signifying elements in both, as well as revealing the expressive and semantic purpose of the rhetorical changes they undergo.31 Let us take a closer look at this process.

At least three independent gestures act in concert, articulating meanings related to the burial of a child in the first funeral’s music. First of all, we hear in the strings what sounds like the representation of a heartbeat, the basis of biological and emotional life: soft note pairs, in which the second note is an echo of the first. The eloquence of such a bio-cultural reference relies on more than just pitch: the composer is very precise in suggesting the kinetic source—low pitch, piano, decrescendo, portato (see Example 1, ms. 1.1-14).32 31 As we shall see, certain musical gestures compared with the second are privative; others reappear in the second, but show a radically different, perhaps even opposed, design. See privative vs. equipollent oppositions in Hatten, 34-35.32 We are reminded here that, as suggested by Hatten, “gestures may be comprised of any of the elements of music, although they are not reducible to them; they are perceptually synthetic gestalts with emergent meaning, not simply ‘rhythmic shapes.’ The elements synthesized in a musical gesture include specific timbres, articulations, dynamics, tempi, pacing, and their

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Figure 3: Shot from the Prologue of ¡Viva México! Yucatán, 1931 (© Kino International, New York)

Figure 4: First funeral scene (© Dirección General de Actividades Cinematográficas, UNAM)

Figure 5: Miro’s body is loaded onto the fishing boats and rowed into town (© Dirección General de Actividades Cinematográficas, UNAM)

135

Secondly, we hear a melodic gesture marked molto espressivo ma semplice, in which the volume ascends, but only to return immediately to its point of departure, as if coming to life only briefly. In light of the dramatic context, this construct can safely be assumed to represent “death” or, similarly, “beginning and ending life” (ms. 1.2-12). This idea is also represented

coordination with various syntactic levels (e.g., voice-leading, metric placement, phrase structure).” (Hatten, 94)

harmonically: the gesture departing from, but soon returning to its original tonality, without venturing far from it (D minor, ms. 1.2-15). Thirdly, we hear a very familiar stylistic type, pianissimo espressivo, in the violins: the pianto figure which has played such a major role in the representation of lament throughout Western music (ms. 1. 3 & 5).

Repeated notes imply non-directionality and can be interpreted as a symbol of immobility (stasis), a

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Example 1: Beginning of the first funeral scene

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staying forever in one place (as in death). The “death” gesture, which ascends only to return immediately to its starting point, is another way of articulating the idea of non-movement and non-directionality. In light of the semantic context of the film, the repeated slow pulses and the brief, cyclical death motif are probably intended as representations of stasis.33 In conjunction with the emotional marker of the pianto figure, these constructions of stasis effectively convey the idea of finality in death well. As we can see, the representation of death is a result, not of a single leitmotiv, but of three compounded gestures that interact strategically. The changes effected by the composer on these gestures will be crucial in decoding the meaning of the second funeral scene (see Example 2). Following the plot and the images, the second funeral scene pursues consequence rather than finality. Meaningfully, two of the three signs, the pianto and the death gesture, will not reappear. Although this music is built upon the same heartbeat-like pulse that had sustained the music of the child’s burial, the chord pairs are no longer repeated, and the static melodic

line of the ostinato is broken. The second note of each pair now breaks away upwards, at first in intervals of a second, then gradually in increasingly wider ones, reinforced by longing crescendi. The harmonic change now generates tension and therefore implied motion. Clearly the idea of stasis has been abandoned. The substitution of the repeated note pairs for an ascending and crescendo melodic line suggest the opposite kinetic meaning: rising, moving on, striving. Revueltas achieves this meaning brilliantly by associating this gesture 33 The romantic tonal Fortspinnung of both the melodic and the ground motifs, repeated again and again, does nothing more than insist on the idea of immobility. In this sense it is also static.

with the movement of the oars that lead the fishermen to their new, self-achieved destiny (see Examples 134 and 2).

In the second funeral scene, the “death” gesture is replaced by a motif in the trumpet line (Gesture 1c), which draws our attention because despite the promising start, it refuses to evolve melodically, harmonically or metrically, giving us the sense that “it does not go anywhere,” that it “falls apart.”

We have heard it before; it is no less than the opening gesture of Redes. In that first appearance, though, it resolves into a florid sound-painting of the waves shown behind the film’s credits35 (Gesture 1a).

Soon after, we encounter this gesture again, in a scene where the hero casts his net with an expression of hope on his face (see Figure 6). As he draws the net back in, empty but for a single fish, his look turns dark. Just at this moment, unlike its first exposition where the gesture seemed to create expectation (fanfare-like ascending fifth interval, molto crescendo, fortissimo associated with the images of a sea full of promise), the composer now lets the melody slowly descend and

34 This and all subsequent musical examples are drawn directly from the original manuscript of the film-score (1935) and reproduced here by kind permission of Eugenia Revueltas. (A DVD version of this score will become available to researchers in 2009, contained in the Biblioteca Facsimilar Digital Silvestre Revueltas, Roberto Kolb and Eugenia Revueltas, eds., UNAM). The score was reduced for reasons of space. Erich Kleiber derived a suite from this score in 1943, which was published by Southern Music Publications Co. & Peer Musikverlag in 1971.35 This is obviously a clear example of iconic sound-painting.

Example 2: Rowing scene (fourth and last section of the film score)

Gesture 1c

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“collapse”(descending triplets, pianissimo, but senza sordino). In consonance with the fisherman’s frustrated expectation, the melody abandons any development and resolution. The following downbeat, the space of finality and affirmation in the Western Canon, is left void. The meaning of this gesture is not only corroborated by the dramatic action, but also by the composer’s annotation in the film score: “desilusión, arroja pesc[ado]” (Disappointment, throws away fish). (Gesture 1b)36

Fascinatingly, this brief gesture representing an unfulfilled “promise” will now become the very substance and motor of change, dictating musical and semantic action in the second funeral scene. As we said earlier, this motif is brought back once more in Miro’s funeral scene. Because of its previous

36 The trumpet gesture is actually a composite of two other gestures. It is formed on the one hand by an ascending 5th interval (originally fortissimo, now pp), which is practically a stylistic type, culturally associated with fanfares, and in this context evoking images such as “to call,” “attention,” “prepare,” all creating expectation. On the other hand it shows a gesture which frustrates this expectation by means of a melodic and harmonic descent to the point of origin, the upbeat of the motif and by avoiding a resolution on the downbeat. More than emphasis, the accents on the descending line (significantly slower than the semi-quavers in the original gesture) seem to suggest the idea of “stumbling”.

association with the fisherman’s misfortune, it is charged with tension and a sense of foreboding. But now, as the screen shows more and more boats joining Miro’s, the trumpet motif, originally symbolizing a desilusión, finds itself gradually transformed and serving the opposite meaning: as we shall be able to observe the “crumbling” inconclusive gesture is turned into one of solid and regular rhythmicity, increasing note density, speed and volume, self-replicating, and moving insistently towards resolution (see Table I).37

Before we continue analyzing the musical and semantic transformations of the “disappointment” gesture, it is necessary to introduce a new gesture, used by Revueltas to give support to this process of metamorphosis. Unlike the gestures already discussed, this one is not associated with a particular dramatic action or actor, as might be typically expected of a leitmotif. More than a representational purpose, it serves a structuring function. Seemingly not assigned to the trumpet by coincidence, it is a theme 37 Regarding the textual development possibilities of gesture, Hatten suggests that it “may encompass, and help express, rhetorical action, as in a sudden reversal, a collapse, an interruption, or a denial of implication. Rhetorical gestures disrupt or deflect the ongoing musical discourse, contributing to a contrasting dramatic trajectory.” (Hatten, 95).

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Figure 6: Miro’s fishing scene (© Dirección General de Actividades Cinematográficas, UNAM)

Gesture 1a

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which reinforces the already familiar idea of aborted onward motion, observed both in the “death” and “disappointment” gestures. In the second funeral scene it prepares or is combined with the various transformations of the “disappointment” gesture. Although strategically varied every time, its double purpose—insisting on the idea of a frustrated expectation while paradoxically building the tension which will eventually allow resolution—can be clearly recognized in its gestural construction. Different strategies are used to serve this apparently

contradictory enterprise. Expectation is created by increasingly ascending melodies and dynamics, strengthened orchestration, increased duration of the gesture, and the addition of subgestures of “insistence” such as repeated, accented notes, which provide more density. Expectation is frustrated by avoiding melodic, harmonic and metric resolutions or by means of an unexpected melodic descent (Gestures 2a, b, c and d).

Let us return now to our “disappointment” gesture and its gradual metamorphosis into a gesture which reverses this meaning. It appears several times in its

Outset of the film (credits)

Unsuccessful fishing attempt

Outset of the second funeral scene

Association with image

Sea and waves, the livelihood of fishermen

Empty fishing-net, dark expression on Miro’s face

Listener recalls association with empty fishing-net

Paratexts “Disappointment; throws away fish”

Rhetoric of melodic discourse

Melodically, harmonically and metrically conclusive

Melodically, harmonically and metrically inconclusive

Melodically, harmonically and metrically inconclusive

Rhetoric of enunciation

p - molto crescendo – ff pp - con sordino, ma marcato pp, ma marcato

Temporal articulation

Lento quarter note = 60 più mosso

più mosso quarter note = 88

Andante (più lento quarter note = 48)

Actoriality Single utterance, used as generative gesture for the whole introductory section (credits)

Single, isolated utterance (associated with Miro fishing by himself)

First of a series of isolated utterances, repeated in different instruments (first manifestation of actorial multipliticy)

Table I: Rhetorical Transformations of Gesture 1

Gesture 1b

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Gesture 2a

Gesture 2b

Gesture 2c

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manifestation of “disappointment” (mm 14.1, 15.1, 16.1-2 and 16.3-4),38 played by different instruments. What seems noteworthy here is not only the gradual increment in dynamics (perhaps expected), but more so the indications of articulation, which embody the ambiguity of a motif which serves contradictory expressive purposes: pp ma senza sordino, pp ma marcato, mf ma marcato.

The next important transformation of the gesture occurs at rehearsal no. 17. We now encounter only the second subgesture of the motif (Gesture 1d), but

instead of the “crumbling” triplets, the figure is slowed down to emphatic, martial eighth notes, rhythmically (and semantically) correlated with the “oar” motif, which, as mentioned earlier, constitutes the ground and key driving force behind the entire second funeral scene.

The transformation of expressive purposes also takes place outside the gesture. At first a single utterance associated with the solitary image of the fisherman, it is now multiplied, suggesting a symbolic reference to the collectivity of fishermen portrayed in the final scene, where increasing numbers of boats join up in their revolutionary quest. Revueltas had explored this idea already in Esquinas (1931), where a melody representing the lament of a lonely street inhabitant is gradually turned into a war song, involving a multiplicity of music-semantic actors.39 As in Esquinas, the idea of actorial multiplication is symbolized here by way of a multiplication of instrumental voices,

38 The section analyzed here is roughly equivalent to Erich Kleiber’s suite, starting on the Andante at rehearsal number 18 of the Peer and Southern Edition. 39 See Roberto Kolb, El vanguardismo de Silvestre Revueltas: Una perspectiva semiótica (PhD diss., Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 2006).

presented in stretto form, with the brass answering the woodwinds antiphonally, as an echo (17.3-5).

The same strategy of multiplication can be observed in the next transformation of the gesture. But here the stretto—in light of the dramatic action it would be a representation of urgency and premonition—is further compressed, the speed of the gesture doubled (now a figure of sixteenth notes). Furthermore, the previous avoidance of a metric resolution is gradually abandoned in favour of emphatically accented gestures and resolutions on a downbeat (Gesture 1e).

The crumbing effect, naturally a descending figure, is symbolically reversed in the last metamorphosis of the gesture. This idea of musical (and semantic) inversion is dynamically reinforced by a crescendo from pp to ff . Thus “collapse” becomes something akin to “uprising,” as is also suggested by the martial and celebratory atmosphere into which this last gesture is placed (Gesture 1f).

Three different gestures are now correlated into a single, meaningful texture, a powerful negation of stasis, of death as finality: the driving “oar” motif, the “disappointment” gesture now transformed into an empowering one, and the brass theme building expectation and finally unleashing the closing statement of Redes. It appears to be the “death” motif, which is now stated as glorious affirmation (major tonality, tutti fortissimo, marcato, piatti tremolo and a final blow on the tam-tam). All its rhetorical attributes reversed, it has become a representation of hope rather than defeat, of death that gives life (see Example 3). The hero’s death has been vindicated and turned into new energy. The film ends with a wave that comes crashing down, no doubt Strand’s tribute to his admired Russian model, who had symbolized revolutionary anger in just this way in the final scene of Potemkin.40

Thus we have witnessed the metamorphosis of the semantic—two concepts of death—into the musical: dramatic gesture is here correlated symbolically with musical gestures, political drama is embodied as musical tension, in short, compositional strategy is drawn from dramatic and visual content, not merely to reflect it, but to interact dialogically with it, and to produce meaning through such a dialogue.

40 Greenough mentions other relevant aspects of Eisenstein’s influence on Strand (Greenough, 14): “He exploited S. Eisenstein’s concept of montage to great advantage. He used a montage of action, that is, multiple shots that break a scene down into component parts, in order to increase visual and emotional tension, and he used a montage of objects, abrupt cuts from one object to another, to imply a relationship or establish a sense of conflict. In addition, The Wave consciously echoed Eisenstein’s Potemkin in several places: it has been noted that Strand broke down a fishing scene into one hundred shots, the same number used to construct the scene at the Odessa steps.”.

Gesture 1d

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Gesture 1f

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Example 3

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Epilogue

Considering Revueltas’s and Strand’s argument regarding the role of music, the reader will be asking him/herself how the conflict played out, once the photographer and his foreign crew had left the country and the cutting of the film came to rest solely in the hands of the Mexican apprentices. Since the original film, Pescados, is lost, a definitive answer to this query cannot be given. However, because the scores of both versions, Pescados and Redes, survived, a comparison lies at hand. Such an exercise, inevitably speculative, at least regarding dramatic content, is nevertheless strongly suggestive. Like Redes, Pescados shows the continuous writing of a symphonic suite, and, very roughly, also the structure of Revueltas’s concert suite in three movements—“Introducción,” “Funeral” and “Fiesta del trabajo” (Celebration of labour). However, this initial impression is quite misleading. In Pescados, the music for the credits is oddly followed by the episode that ends the film in the case of Redes (the beginning of Miro’s funeral music). This is followed by the brief gesture of frustration which in Redes precedes Miro’s brief statement regarding the injustice done to a child that has to die because his father cannot afford a doctor (one of two brief interventions in which dialogue “interrupts” the music in the initial scenes of Redes). This gesture is followed by a music characterized by a patent lack of substance and direction, suggesting a prevalence of dramatic action. Only now have we reached the funeral scene. But rather than leading directly into the Fiesta del trabajo as is the case in Redes, we are presented once again with the abovementioned dramatic gesture of frustration. This leads into a recitative-style melody in the celli and double basses, which had merely bridged two sequences in Redes and was cut out of the concert version. Only now do we reach Fiesta del trabajo, but, unlike its compact appearance in Redes, it is here merely “discoursive;” an endlessly meandering melody without structural or harmonic boundaries, clearly a supporting music for a very extended visual scene.

Naturally we cannot reconstruct the dramatic and visual content of Pescados on the basis of the old score, but we can affirm without fear of error that its music was determined to a great extent by plot, both in its actorial and visual expression. The “Mexican” version most definitely neutralized dramatic content and sequence in favour of a musical structure. Strand’s fury is hardly surprising. We, however, gained a beautiful, emancipated score.

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