The influence of Latin-American culture on music has been quite profound. It has gently filtered its way into nearly every genre of music from classical and jazz to house and even drill.
What attracts composers perhaps to this genre of music is its innate energy, dance rhythms and a touch of the exotic. Ultimately, it is the rhythmic element of Latin American music that has seamlessly flowed into compositions for decades.
Latin American Rhythms Influence on Piano Music
Latin American music includes cultural influence from countries in Central and South America, Mexico and the Caribbean. Dance forms that are common within this broad compass are ones like the rumba, merengue, tango and salsa.
Each has its distinctive characteristics, especially rhythmic, with the tango towards the top of the list having been popularised extensively by Argentinian composer and bandoneon player Astor Piazzolla (1921-1992).
Hector Villa-Lobos
I will return to Astor Piazzolla later, but in the meantime, let’s dive into some other composers who have neatly incorporated Latin-American influences into their compositions. Hector Villa-Lobos (1887-1959), was a Brazilian composer whose catalogue of music is both compelling and dazzlingly original.
What contributed significantly to Villa-Lobos’s creative growth was his family’s extensive travels across Brazil as a child. His interests were sparked by the music of JS Bach, later Wagner and Puccini, and the indigenous sound of guitar music. (You can hear the fusion of Bach and Brazil in his famous collection of work titled Bachianas Brasileiras composed between 1930 and 1945).
Villa-Lobos absorbed a vast amount of traditional Brazilian music on his travels. His initial concert in 1915 premiered some of his compositions and helped launch his career. The pianist Artur Rubenstein became a huge support to the young composer, championing his piano music in concerts across the world.
Quite a good place to start listening is with his suite of eight-character pieces called Caraval das cranças from 1919-1920. In this work, you hear Villa-Lobos shrug off the constraints of earlier Romantic traits and allow his unique voice to be heard.
Alberto Ginastera
One of Argentina’s most important and prolific composers is Alberto Ginastera (1916-1983). The work of this innovative composer seldom receives the recognition it deserves.
Like Villa-Lobos, Ginastera’s compositions are not just variations on a tango, but a mesmerising fusion of Latin-American music and Western compositional styles and techniques. It is not music that immediately appeals perhaps due to its inherent dissonance reminiscent of Bela Bartok.
Ginastera’s piano music runs rich with the rhythms of Latin America. We hear music that is full-blooded, passionate, driven, colourful and entertaining. All the characteristics of music from these parts of the world. There’s virtuosity and sentiment. Ginestra is never afraid of trying something new in these many pieces including 12-tone melodies.
Of the groups of piano pieces, the Twelve Preludios Americanos (Op.12) and the three Piano Sonatas (Op. 22, 53 and 54), are a fine place to start enjoying his music. There are also two monumental and often brutal piano concertos. The first was written in 1961 (Op.28) and the second in 1972 (Op. 39).
Manuel Ponce
Mexican composer Manuel Ponce (1882-1948), was not only a key composer but a child prodigy. His passion for the piano showed through at a very young age and Ponce began composing in earnest in his early teens.
His outpouring of music throughout his life made unashamedly innovative use of Mexican traditional songs and popular songs. At times he received harsh criticism for adopting this approach, although his creativity remained undiminished, fresh, and invigorating.
As such, Ponce’s work contains a large number of arrangements of Mexican music alongside original compositions. Of particular note are some of Ponce’s mature compositions.
1912 saw the premiere of Ponce’s Piano Concerto, that ingeniously merged Romantic luxuriousness with grittier, driven aspects of Mexican traditional music. The opening piano cadenza reveals much of this.
The Three Intermezzi for solo piano are pieces that beautifully illustrate the influence of traditional Mexican chordal patterns and rhythms spliced elegantly with sweetness and sensitivity you hear often in the works of Chopin and Liszt. Here is Lang Lang giving his alluring rendition of the first of the three pieces:
Astor Piazzolla
Astor Piazzolla is primarily associated with bringing the Argentine Tango into the popular arena. What he is also credited with is not only developing a new tango style but in so doing fusing classical and jazz music with traditional music.
Whilst working as a bandoneon player in Anibal Troilo’s orchestra Piazzolla was fortunate enough to also be given the challenge to arrange music for the orchestra and play piano. This allowed Piazzolla to accrue sufficient funds to pay for private tuition from Alberto Ginestra.
Later he was fortunate enough to study with Nadia Boulanger at the Fontainebleau Conservatory.
In Piazzolla’s substantial catalogue of works that includes a huge number of breath-taking film scores, there are a firm number of pieces for the keyboard that stem from the 1940s.
Piazzolla’s first Piano Sonata (Op.7) is an interesting and vibrant work that seamlessly incorporates the rhythmic patterns of music from Argentina together with jazz influences that became so important in his later works. (His collaborations with saxophonist Gerry Mulligan are extraordinary).
Later piano works contain the Three Preludes for Piano from 1989. In these you can hear a plethora of influences from Rachmaninov to Irving Berlin and of course Argentina. Each of the pieces has a title as follows: Leijia’s Game, Flora’s Game and Sunny’s Game. Passionate pieces that electrify the air.
One of Piazzolla’s most enduringly popular pieces is from 1974/5 titled The Libertango. In this piano work, you encounter the very essence of the composer. There are jazz, tango, and classical strains that thread through this dynamic piece taking you on a most wonderful journey.
From Piazzolla, we can link fluently to Latin Jazz. Here we discover a wealth of creative compositions and some astonishingly talented performers. As far back as the Father of the Blues WC Handy, we hear the gentle habanera rhythms in his famous song St Louis Blues.
Equally, the piano music of Jelly Roll Morton often included Latin rhythmic elements that he felt were vital to jazz composition.
Other Prominent Composers in Jazz History
One of the first compositions for piano considered to be true Latin Jazz is called Tanga by Mario Bauza from 1943. In this piece, the influence of Cuban rhythms dominates with the right hand of the piano part using the guajeo style of playing block chords. This repeated pattern runs through the piece.
The Bossa nova became extremely popular amongst jazz composers and performers. It has its origins in Brazillian samba and begins to emerge in jazz from around the 1950s. A student of French composer Darius Milhaud, Dave Brubeck’s piano compositions are amongst the finest examples of jazz inspired by Latin American rhythms.
Works such as Bossa Nova USA and Broadway Bossa Nova illustrate this point succinctly. The Upstage Rumba is another clever use of these hypnotic rhythms.