The voice of the enchanted bird: considerations on the use of leitmotif in Uirapurú (1917) by Heitor Villa-Lobos

Daniel Zanella dos Santos – [email protected]
  Universidade Estadual de Santa Catarina

Uirapurú (1917) is a well-known symphonic poem by Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959), which lasts about eighteen minutes and was composed for orchestra with some added instruments. The composer also wrote its argument, based on one of the many legends about the Amazonian bird. As shown in the manuscript, the piece was conceived as a ballet and was premiered in 1935 in Buenos Aires by the Colon Theater Orchestra and Corps de Ballet.

The focus of this article turns to the use of leitmotif in Uirapurú, one of the elements that can be related to the influence of Wagnerian aesthetics in Villa-Lobos. The piece features several elements that can be considered as leitmotiv, easily recognizable by a careful hearing. One of the main leitmotiv in the work was marked by Villa-Lobos in the manuscript and also in the edition of the score with the name “Canto do Uirapurú” in a section of between measures 136 and 142. Despite the difference between this melody and songs emitted by the uirapuru bird, Villa-Lobos uses several features that contribute to characterize it as a birdsong: melody’s range and registration, the flute use and the fragmented way the theme is stated. The similarity between this version of the theme and its probable source in the Richard Spruce’s book Notes of a botanist on the Amazon and Andes, as well as the resources used by the composer to characterize it as a birdsong, allow me to consider it as the presentation of the theme in its original form. Therefore, it becomes a kind of archetype from which other instances of this theme are transformations.

Apart from the instance commented above, the leitmotif reappears five times during the piece always modified. In these transformations, Villa-Lobos uses a total of eight phrases with different extensions that are juxtaposed in different ways in each instance of the theme. In their recurrences, these phrases preserve some of its features such as melodic contour and interval structure. Rhythmic aspects undergo change but within a narrow range of resources, such as the use of rhythmic reductions and augmentations and metric displacement. Scalar content also undergoes certain variation through transpositions, but at no point evades diatonicism. These elements give the leitmotiv the necessary unity so that it keeps its identity, but at the same time gives variety so it does not become repetitive. In the first three recurrences of the “Canto do Uirapurú”, we can clearly make a segmentation of the piece according to the presentation of the theme and the treatment given to it by other textural layers. This does not apply with the last three recurrences, because in them the theme appears as an element inserted within larger sections that exceed its presentation.

It is in the field of texture and orchestration that the composer operates the largest transformations. Each instance of the subject has its own instrumentation, using a solo instrument, instruments family or a complex work of timbres and registers alternation. The richness of the Villa-Lobos’ orchestration was already recognized by the public and critics of his time. Textural aspects are also critical to understand the use of the leitmotif “Canto do Uirapurú” on Villa-Lobos’ piece. In the first instance of theme, for example, the texture creates a real landscape on which the melody is revealed, and if it were neglected, an important part of the the theme’s character would be lost.

The analysis presented, together with the composer’s clearly narrative intentions (as evidenced by the markings of the scenes moments of the argument in the score), suggest that this leitmotif can be understood as one of the agents used in the musical piece to musically tell the story of its argument.