May 202021
 

American composer and conductor H. Owen Reed (1910-2014), a professor at Michigan State University, spent five months in Mexico over the winter of 1948-49. After several weeks in Mexico City and Cuernavaca, with side trips to Taxco and Acapulco, he spent a couple of months in Chapala. This trip, funded by a Guggenheim Fellowship, was the inspiration for his most famous composition, “La Fiesta Mexicana: a Mexican Folk Song Symphony for Band.”

H. Owen Reed

H. Owen Reed

The idea for the symphony first came to him after reading Stuart Chase’s fine book, Mexico; a study of two Americas (1946). Reed envisioned a three-movement symphony referencing folk songs and popular music that would also lend itself to choreography. And, indeed, though usually performed by dedicated wind orchestras, “La Fiesta Mexicana” has sometimes been presented in conjunction with costumed dancers and staging.

The opening movement of the symphony, Prelude and Aztec Dance, is based on a march Reed heard in Cuernavaca and Aztec dance music from central Mexico. The second and third movements—Mass and Carnival—were inspired by Reed’s time at Lake Chapala: “In a small choir loft in Chapala, I heard the chant from the Liber Usualis which I used in the second movement…. The two-against-three rhythm of the two bells used throughout “La Fiesta Mexicana” was a standard cliche of the young musicians who seemed to have little respect for my early morning sleep. Again this was in Chapala.” Part of the third movement makes use of a mariachi rendition of El Son de la Negra. [1]

The work was premiered by the US Marine Band in 1949. The first major label commercial recording, released in 1954, “burst on the classical record scene and became an overnight sensation. Music lovers were dazzled by the color and inventiveness of the score.” [2]

Score of La Fiesta MexicanaThe work marked a milestone in the “genre of long-form compositions for wind ensemble” and has been recorded dozens of times since.

The score includes the following notes on each movement:

“I. Prelude and Aztec Dance — The tumbling of the church bells at midnight officially announces the opening of the Fiesta, which has previously been unofficially announced by the setting off of fireworks, the drinking of tequila and pulque, and the migration of thousands of Mexicans and Indians to the center of activity — the high court surrounding the cathedral. After a brave effort at gaiety, the celebrators settle down to a restless night, until the early quiet of the Mexican morning is once more shattered by the church bells and fireworks. At mid-morning a band is heard in the distance. However, attention is soon focused upon the Aztec dancers, brilliantly plumed and masked, who dance in ever-increasing frenzy to a dramatic climax.”

“II. Mass — The tolling of the bells is now a reminder that the Fiesta is, after all, a religious celebration. The rich and poor slowly gather within the great stone walls of the old cathedral [for reverent] homage to their Virgin.”

“III. Carnival — Mexico is at its best on the days of the Fiesta — days on which passion governs the love, hatred and joys of the Mestizo and the Indio. There [are] entertainment and excitement for both young and old — the itinerant circus, the market, the bullfight, the town band, and always the cantinas with the ever present band of mariachi.”

Notes:

[1] Reed’s lecture notes on La Fiesta Mexicana  [6 May 2021]

[2] Phillip Nones. 2013. “H. Owen Reed at 103: The Dean of American Composers Celebrates a Birthday.” Blog post dated 19 June 2013.  [27 April 2021]

Comments, corrections or additional material related to any of the writers and artists featured in our series of mini-bios are welcome. Please use the comments feature at the bottom of individual posts, or email us.

Nov 102016
 

The famous American writer, composer and translator Paul Bowles (1910-1999) was a frequent visitor to Mexico in the late 1930s and early 1940s prior to moving to live in Morocco in 1947. Bowles spent a few relaxing weeks in Ajijic, on Lake Chapala, in the first half of 1942.

Paul Bowles was born in New York on 30 December 1910 and displayed early talent for music and writing. After attending the University of Virginia, Bowles made several trips to Paris in the 1930s, and also visited French North Africa in 1931. During the late 1930s and most of the 1940s, Bowles was based in New York where he composed music (primarily for stage productions) while making frequent trips south to explore the sights and sounds of Mexico and elsewhere, trips which had a profound influence on his musical compositions.

Bowles’ interest in visiting Lake Chapala dates back to 1934, when he was considering accompanying Bruce Morrissette in traveling around Mexico. In March 1934, Bowles wrote to Morrissette that, “A while ago I made a list of what seemed to be the best places there: Campeche, Necaxa, Toluca, the baja part of Baja California, Mazatlán, Pátzcuaro, perhaps Lago Chapala, Morelia, which looks to be lovely, Tepatzlán, Cholula, Amecameca and Xochimilco …”

In 1937, Bowles met Jane Auer at a party. When they met again, accidentally, a few days later, Jane suggested to Bowles that he “take her to Mexico with him.” Auer and Bowles married 21 February 1938, and had a successful, if unconventional, marriage that lasted until her death in 1973.

[Jane Sydney Auer (1917-1973) was an American writer and playwright. Her novel, Two Serious Ladies, first published in 1943, may have been the catalyst that resulted in Bowles’ own novel-writing career. Jane Bowles suffered a stroke in 1957, from which she never fully recovered. She died in 1973 at a clinic in Spain.]

bowles-paul-autobiographyThey took a Greyhound bus to reach Mexico on their first trip together in 1937, with Bowles hiding 15,000 anti-Trotsky stickers in his luggage. In Mexico, he met the Mexican composer Silvestre Revueltas and attended a concert at which Revueltas conducted his Homage to García Lorca. Bowles took a second trip to Mexico later in 1937 in order to live for a short time in Tehuantepec (on the recommendation of Miguel Covarrubias, whom he had met in New York), where he worked on an opera about a slave rebellion.

On 23 February 1938, two days after their marriage, Bowles and his wife attended the first performance of Bowles’ Mediodia (Mexican dances for 11 players) in New York. The couple then left on a honeymoon, “with 27 suitcases, two wardrobe trunks, a typewriter and a record player”, aboard a Japanese freighter, the SS Kanu Maru, on a trip that took them to Panama, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Barbados and Paris, France. They returned to New York in September.

They visited Mexico again in 1939 and stayed in Acapulco and Taxco (where Jane first met Helvetia Perkins, who would later became her lover). On this trip, they met a still unknown Tennessee Williams, and a young man named Ned Rorem, then only a teenager, who went on to become a composer and diarist, and win a Pulitzer Prize in 1976.

bowles-paul-on-musicSome idea of the exalted literary and musical circles in which Bowles and his wife moved can be gained from a list of their roommates in the rented house they occupied in 1941. The house, at 7 Middagh Street in Brooklyn Heights, New York, was rented by the novelist and editor George Davis, who occupied the ground floor. Paul and Jane Bowles lived on the second floor, together with the theater set designer Oliver Smith. Benjamin Britten, Peter Pears, and W. H. Auden shared the third floor, while Golo Mann lived in the attic. It was in this house that Bowles composed Pastorela, a Mexican Indian ballet commissioned by Lincoln Kirstein for American Ballet Caravan.

Early in 1942, when Bowles and his wife revisited Mexico, he was taken ill with jaundice and spent several weeks in a “British hospital in Mexico City” before going to Cuernavaca for convalescence. In Cuernavaca, Jane let him read and critique her manuscript of Two Serious Ladies, though it was greatly rewritten and edited prior to its publication the following year. Jane, accompanied by Helvetia Perkins, left for New York at the end of March, while Bowles remained in Mexico a few more weeks, staying at Casa Heuer, the small posada run by siblings Paul (Pablo) and Liesel Heuer in Ajijic.

In a letter to Virgil Thomson, Bowles wrote that, “As soon as she had gone I came to Chapala. Reasons for my not going with her were several.” During his stay in Ajijic, Bowles visited the house in Chapala where D.H. Lawrence had written the first draft of The Plumed Serpent in 1923; Bowles found it “depressing” and poorly ventilated, with the ambiance of a dead-end street. According to his autobiography, Bowles discovered a whole new world of “delightful” literature during his time in Ajijic. He started with García Lorca, then read two novels by Bioy Cásares and the memoirs of Mario Alberti before turning his attention to Mexico’s early colonial times, and then to short stories by Jorge Luis Borges.

bowles-paul-and-janeBowles’ compositional creativity was in full flow during these years. In 1944, for example he composed the incidental music for the Broadway opening of Tennessee WilliamsThe Glass Menagerie. (The success of this work enabled Williams to spend the summer of 1945 at Lake Chapala).

In 1947, Bowles moved to Tangier, Morocco. His wife, Jane, followed a year later. Except for a series of winters spent in Sri Lanka (then Ceylon), and occasional trips elsewhere, Bowles lived the remaining 52 years of his life in Morocco. His fame was undiminished and a succession of famous writers and musicians made the pilgrimage to Morocco to visit him, including the most famous names of the Beat generation: Jack Kerouac, William S Burroughs, and Allen Ginsberg.

When Gregory Stephenson interviewed him in Morocco in 1979, he found that Bowles had mixed memories of Mexico:

“When I mention the Tarahumara, Bowles says that he once translated some Tarahumara myths for a surrealist magazine. He rummages in his bedroom and returns with a copy of View for May 1945, a special “Tropical Americana” number which he edited. There are black and white photographs, collages and translations, including sections of the Popul Vuh and the Chilam Balam, all done by Bowles. A myth titled “John Very Bad” has been rendered by him into English from the Tarahumara. There are also bizarre and gruesome news stories selected by Bowles from the Mexican press.

Bowles speaks of the extreme poverty and squalor he encountered in parts of Mexico when he visited that country in the 1930s. Mexico was a land of gloom and chaos, he says, but also poetry, mystery and great natural beauty. Places such as Acapulco and Tehuantepec were very pleasant in those days and living there was very cheap. Yet he was often very ill in Mexico, afflicted with diverse ailments.”

The astonishingly prolific writing and composing career of Paul Bowles was drawn to a close by his death in Morocco on 18 November 1999.

Bowles’ extensive musical output included Sonata for Oboe and Clarinet (1931); Horse Eats Hat, play (1936); Who Fights This Battle, play (1936); Doctor Faustus, play (1937); Yankee Clipper, ballet (1937); Music for a Farce (1938); Too Much Johnson, play (1938); Huapango – Cafe Sin Nombre – Huapango-El Sol, Latin American folk (1938); Twelfth Night, play (1940); Love Like Wildfire, play (1941); Pastorela, ballet (1941); South Pacific, play (1943); Sonata for Flute and Piano and Two Mexican Dances (1943); ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore, play (1943);  The Glass Menagerie, play (1944); Jacobowsky and the Colonel, play (1944); Sentimental Colloquy, ballet (1944); Cyrano de Bergerac, play (1946); Concerto for Two Pianos (1947); Concerto for Two Pianos, Winds and Percussion (1948); Oedipus, play (1966); Black Star at the Point of Darkness (1992) and Salome, play (1993).

Novels by Bowles include The Sheltering Sky (1949); Let It Come Down (1952); The Spider’s House (1955); and Up Above the World (1966). His collections of short stories include A Little Stone (1950); The Delicate Prey and Other Stories (1950); A Hundred Camels in the Courtyard (1962); Things Gone & Things Still Here (1977); Collected Stories, 1939–1976 (1979); and A Thousand Days for Mokhtar (1989). Poetry works by Bowles include Two Poems (1933); Scenes (1968); The Thicket of Spring (1972); Next to Nothing: Collected Poems, 1926–1977 (1981); and No Eye Looked Out from Any Crevice (1997).

Sources:

  • Paul Bowles. 1972. Without Stopping: An Autobiography. Peter Owen Publishers.
  • Virginia Spencer Carr. 2004. Paul Bowles: A Life. Scribner.
  • The authorized Paul Bowles website.
  • Letter from Paul Bowles to Virgil Thomson (Mexico, April 1942). Jackson Music Library, Yale University, Virgil Thomson archive.
  • Gregory Stephenson. 1979. “Calling on Paul Bowles, Tangier, Morocco, August 1979”

Sombrero Books welcomes comments, corrections or additional material related to any of the writers and artists featured in our series of mini-bios. Please email us or use the comments feature at the bottom of individual posts.

Sep 212015
 

Elizabeth L. Kuzell (1895-1986), better known as Betty Kuzell, lived in Chula Vista, Lake Chapala, for many years with her husband Dudley Kuzell (1896-1969). The Kuzells, both accomplished musicians, were active in the local community and instrumental in founding the Lakeside Little Theater, which has proved to be an enduring success. They arrived at Lake Chapala in about 1961.

Betty Kuzell was born Elizabeth Laird in California on 22 November 1895 and died in Chicago in 1986, on her 91st birthday. (Her mother was the cutely named Pocahontas Glazebrook). Betty married Dudley Francis Kuzell in Los Angeles, on 2 March 1918. The couple had one child, James Elgar Kuzell, born  in about 1923.

Versions of the founding of the Lakeside Little Theater differ, according to source. According to June Nay Summers, Betty Kuzell founded the theater in 1964, a date echoed in the short book Ajijic, 500 Years of Adventures (DAR, 2011). Summers claimed that the first production of the theater group was held in the building that was the former Chapala Railway Station on 14 August 1965, and was a musical written and directed by Betty entitled  “From Kokomo to Mexico”. Sadly, these details do not appear to be substantiated.

Based on the pages of the Colony (Guadalajara) Reporter (a weekly first published in December 1963), the story begins in early 1964, following an evening of musical entertainment (featuring Betty on the organ, Paul Carson on the piano, with Dudley Kuzell, William Stelling and Kenneth Rundquist as singers) at the Kuzells’ home. (This was quite a distinguished gathering since Rundquist was scheduled to sing at the World’s Fair in New York a few months later.) (CR, 2 April 1964)

if=men=played=cards-A week later, anyone interested in forming a Little Theater Group was invited to meet at the “Chapala Country Club on Friday 10 April at 4 p.m”. Clearly the meeting was a success since, on 20 June 1964, “the first little theater production to be presented by the Chapala Country Club” (based at the time in the former Chapala Railway Station) opened. A cast of four (Bob Owens, Floyd Wilson, Mike Bieselt and Dick Peppin), under Betty Kuzell’s direction, put on George S. Kaufman’s brilliant satire, If Men Played Cards as Women Do.

Early the following year, on 18 February 1965, a columnist reports that “Lakeside Little Theater became an independent and solid entity with its first business meeting held last week at Chapala Country Club.” The group adopted by-laws and Betty Kuzell became founding director. Regular membership was set at $25 pesos a year (two dollars at the then rate of exchange); sponsor members had four free tickets included in their $100 peso membership fee. (CR, 18 February 1965)

By June, the Lakeside Little Theater had 130 members, and announced it would close membership at 150. In mid-June, it presented “The Saddle Bag Saloon, Duke Reagan, Prop.” at the Chapala Country Club. The play, with a cast of over 40, was written and directed by Betty Kuzell, who also arranged the music. The set included a nude painted by Bob Snodgrass. At this time, the group was variously called either the Lake Chapala Little Theater or the Lakeside Little Theater in different articles and places.

In August 1965, the Colony Reporter (19 August) announced “another hilarious Lakeside Little Theatre workshop program next Monday… when Ken Kirk… will present “Courtship in 1830″ at the Chapala Country Club.

Relatively little is known about the Kuzells prior to their time in the Lake Chapala region, though a trawl through old newspapers reveals some snippets related to their musical prowess.

For example, the 18 September 1950 edition of The Van Nuys News from Van Nuys, California, describes a “sisterhood event” held at the Valley Jewish Community Center, at which Betty sang with the Sisterhood Choir.

Sombrero Books welcomes comments, corrections or additional material related to any of the writers and artists featured in our series of mini-bios. Please email us or use the comments feature at the bottom of individual posts.