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COPYRIGHT 2001 Center For Black Music Research
In 1945, the Haitian composer Werner Jaegerhuber (1900-1953) published a set of six art songs entitled Complaintes Haitiennes that is without precedent in the literature of art song. They achieve their unique status by virtue of the fact that their texts and musical material are derived entirely from the rituals of Haitian voodoo. Even within the confines of the art music produced by Haitian composers, Jaegerhuber's songs constitute a departure from a musical tradition that typically fused the popular Creole rhythms and melodies of the urban elites with the imported forms and standards of European art music. Jaegerhuber's originality rests in the manner in which his art is founded upon the largely neglected musical traditions of the rural majority of his nation, combined with his own European conservatory training. Based on a period of ethnographic research beginning in 1937 and spanning eight years (Jaegerhuber 1937-45), these songs constitute a conscious and deliberate attempt to establish a music possessing a distinctively national character founded on an indigenous source. (1)
Two factors recommended these songs as more central to the genesis of a nationalist music than the many other compositions of this composer. First, of all of Jaegerhuber's compositions that incorporate ethnographic material, the Complaintes Haitiennes retain the closest possible link, through their text and melody, to the original sources. Second, of all of Jaegerhuber's compositions, these were his only published works. The appearance of the second edition of the songs in 1950--with its garland of three adulatory essays, alternate English translations, and descriptions of the voodoo deities that are the subject of these songs--possesses the character of a manifesto. In addition, it attests to the intention of the editor to address a public beyond those residing in Haiti. This new edition of the songs would make it possible for a broader audience to encounter them. For these reasons, the Complaintes Haitiennes constitutes a public declaration of the birth of a new school.
This article will support the assertion that Jaegerhuber founded a distinct national school by investigating the cultural and political life of the Republic at the dawn of the twentieth century. It will then examine Jaegerhuber's composition of Complaintes Haitiennes in light of his own development as a composer, as well as their reception by the elite classes of Haiti. An examination of Jaegerhuber's own unpublished ethnographic research will lay the necessary foundation for a study of the compositional process of transforming the liturgical music of voodoo into art songs. A brief summary of the influence exerted by Jaegerhuber upon the next generation of Haitian composers will conclude this article.
Jaegerhuber's contribution to Haiti's musical culture may be best appreciated in the light of a substantial, 43-page essay published in Port-au-Prince in 1919 by Dr. Franck Lassegue (1892-1940), entitled "Etudes critiques sur la musiques haitienne" (A Critical Study on Haitian Music). (2) Lassegue surveys the state of Haiti's musical culture by presenting a general overview followed by a critique of four contemporary composers: Ludovic Lamothe (1882-1953), Justin Elie (1883-1931), Alain Clerie (1876-1941), and Nicolas Geffrard (1871-1930). The general theme of this essay is a search for a distinctly Haitian "voice" among, what the author contends to be, the "domination" of European musical models. For example, in speaking of Nicolas Geffrard, the composer of Haiti's national anthem, La Dessalinienne, Lassegue (1919, 41) makes the following observation:
As he has constantly absorbed Mendelssohn and grown strong thereby, I have found in la Dessalinienne a bit of this warm and enthusiastic music which we occasionally encounter in the author of the A Midsummer Night's Dream. However, Mr. Geffrard told me that he found his inspiration in a score by Schumann to ground his laconic drama where one hears moaning those cries of revolt of an undefined nostalgia. And to this I attach the patriotic sobs of Chopin in the Military Polonaise. (41)
What is evident in this citation is the indebtedness of this Haitian composer to the canon of European composers (i.e., Mendelssohn, Schumann, perhaps Chopin) whom he admires and emulates in his composition. Lassegue's essay seeks to promote a more distinctly Haitian music--essentiallement haitienne. He lists two criteria to achieve this: "(1) that where, in spite of the dominance of the exotic, one can still recognize a bit of the sentiments associated with our homes or of our artists; (2) that where one clearly sees the genius of Haiti liberated from the competent frame of the quintessential capacities of our artists" (7).
The terms that Lassegue employs are broad. In his first criterion, he maintains that one can recognize a specific "Haitianness" in a composition by the sentiments that it evokes of Haitians' daily lives--nos milieux--or that are associated with their artists. In addition, this quality should be apparent in spite of the current dominance--l'ascendance--of the exotic. What is exotic, according to Lassegue, are all the non-Haitian elements. He devotes a section of his essay to this issue, entitled "La musique haitienne et la Culture des auteurs etrangers" (Haitian Music and the Culture of Foreign Authors). Here, the European parentage of much of Haiti's elite musical culture is noted. He criticizes the artists of his generation for not being the owners of their own music. In his words: "In spite of the sentiments they have slipped in there and which in part belongs to them, there is nothing else that could ascribe to them their right to ownership" (3).
Despite this censure, Lassegue exhibits a certain ambivalence toward these composers. For instance, he admires the manner in which they combine elements from a number of exotic sources, such as the presence of American ragtime as in Geffrard's Valse espagnole. In speaking of Geffrard's composition, he notes: "And I can imagine the meticulous work to combine in one exceptionally captivating stroke, with these quite personal melodies, the cadence of a Spanish waltz in the Romantic style and the waltz of American Ragtime" (38).
In his second criterion, Lassegue appears to withdraw still further from a cosmopolitan perspective to some unnameable "Haitianness," which he refers to as le genie haitien. Seemingly drawing his aesthetic inspiration from Herder's Abhandlung uber der Ursprung der Sprach (see Fubini 1987, 264), which traces the music and poetry of a people back to their primitive national character, Lassegue views the artists of Haiti as the repository of this quality, which he calls their "quintessential capacities." He contends that our perception of this "genius"--this essential Haitianness--should be unambiguous, something "one clearly sees." This genius should liberate itself (s'affranchir) from what he calls the competent frame (enveloppe), of these Haitian artists and become apparent in their musical compositions. In this, Lassegue mirrors Herder's argument for the creating of a distinctive national culture in opposition to a unitary, cosmopolitan civilization.
In seeking to diminish the foreign influence in Haiti's music, Lassegue proposes that all of Haiti's many communities be considered in the creation of Haitian elite music. Lassegue never admonishes his composers to follow only one specific path by identifying a particular constituency and its music. The advantage of this approach is that it permits him to embrace a repertoire that was largely ignored by the elite society without relinquishing any of the musical styles he admires. This repertoire is the music associated with the practice of voodoo. Lassegue holds up the music of Justin Elie as a prime example of his two criteria. He cities a work by Elie, entitled Bacchanale, as being a model composition. At the conclusion of his essay on the music of Elie, Lassegue makes the following summary of the importance and originality of Elie's writing: "In order to realize an original work and give at the same time a new impulse to Haitian music, Mr. Elie has placed his art and science at the service of Voodoo rhythms. He has solved great technical difficulties in order to have the primitive melodies of Voodoo flow in harmony" (25).
What Lassegue considered to be new and original was the utilization of voodoo rhythms and melodies (themes primitifs), which Elie harmonizes. In addition, Lassegue leads us to believe that Elie found a solution to the problem of what he calls the "great technical difficulties" inherent in trying to harmonize this music.
Lassegue's perception of Haitian folk music as being problematic to work with springs from the attitude of the urban, French-speaking elite classes, who ignored or disparaged the culture of the vast majority of their mostly rural, Creole-speaking countrymen. Haitian voodoo was recognized by the elite as a remnant of the great African diaspora that was brought to Haiti during its colonial days, when it was a possession of France called Saint Domingue. The intricate melange of West African cosmologies that constitute this religion was judged to be backward by the descendants of those who, through force of arms, created the first Black Republic modeled on the progressive values of the French Revolution. With their eyes firmly cast in the direction of Europe for guidance and acceptance, they adopted an attitude similar to that of Europeans regarding the relative importance of the cultural life and products of African civilization. Thus, the introduction of the folkloric culture, as represented by the music associated with the practice of voodoo, struck the elite minority as novel. However, some doubts arise as to the authenticity of the purported voodoo elements in this repertoire when one examines examples of the music.
Lassegue asserts that Elie introduced voodoo elements into music and he cites Elie's Bacchanale as an exemplary model. However, it is not clear from the text why this work could serve as a model for other Haitian composers. When, early in his essay, Lassegue mentions Elie's Bacchanale, it is in conjunction with another composition of his entitled Cleopatre. Lassegue lauds both as being "two prototypical examples of local music." Both works are credited for the manner in which "they magically intermingle in turn through evocation and invocation, Voodoo melodies, and popular songs of the street and carnival, in an accomplished arrangement without excluding either" (5). However, in another passage later in the essay, Lassegue praises Elie's Cleopatre and another composition entitled Aphrodite for their evocation of "ancient visions." Here, Lassegue notes Elie's penchant for basing his art on antiquity: "He has stirred the ashes of dead civilizations unceasingly caressed by others, and upon which sleeps a marvelous world" (25). What emerges from these descriptions is a confused image as to what this music really is. Perhaps Elie's Bacchanale does evoke the popular musical culture of Haiti. But how could it and Cleopatre be paired together when elsewhere Lassegue credits the latter for exhibiting an entirely different aesthetic? Unfortunately, we may never know the answer because all three compositions mentioned by Lassegue no longer appear to be extant.
The passage of time has not been kind to the works of Justin Elie. It is regrettable that another composition mentioned by Lassegue, Elie's Danse tropicale, is also not extant. Ballet vaudouesque, which Elie considered to be his chef d'oeuvre but which is not mentioned by Lassegue, has also disappeared. The orchestral score of this ballet, based on voodoo themes, followed a dramatic scenario, Elie chose to exile himself from Haiti in order to see this work, composed in 1921, produced in the United States the following year (Dauphin 1983). If we turn to some of his other remaining compositions, we find two songs that appear to support Lassegue's assertion, namely Elie's Deux poemes vaudouesques: I Dambala, II Chants de Hounsis (Elie n.d.). Upon closer inspection, however, these songs do not quite fulfill the promise of their titles.
The first problem that we encounter with these songs is that both texts have come down to us in English not in either French or Creole as their original titles would have led us to believe. Indeed, the title of the second song has been changed to "Vodoo [sic] Moon" presumably to make it more attractive to a U.S. audience. The obscure origin of these texts is futher deepened when we realize that neither the author nor the translator is known. Thus, the promise held out to us by their collective title, Two Voodoo Poems, seems difficult to authenticate. Perhaps sensing their cultural estrangement, another Haitian composer, Edouard J. Woolley (1916-1991), translated the texts of both to Creole at a later date.
Specific ethnographic evidence is lacking to support the assertion that the melodic material of these two songs is derived from their purported voodoo origins. Nevertheless, both share a characteristic reliance on the pentatonic scale that subsequent observers of this repertoire, including Jaegerhuber, considered an identifying trait. In addition, both songs share a distinctive melodic motive, a similarity that suggests that the paternity of these melodies lies in some repertoire of musical gestures associated with a specific liturgy. Support for this assertion comes from the detailed analysis that Jaegerhuber provides for a number of voodoo melodies. In his analysis, Jaegerhuber notes that prominent motives reappear from one melody to another and that these motives could be associated with specific deities. However, given the fact that Elie was a gifted melodist and a truly refined musician, we are at a loss to determine the degree of his fidelity to the origin of these songs. Of the remaining admirable compositions that form this artist's oeuvre, many speak of his interest in portraying the life and customs of his island nation. These include Les Chants de la montagne (for piano and various instrumental arrangements) and "Legende creole" (for violin and piano).
The above-named compositions point to Elie's proto-nationalist sentiments. However, Elie's vision was broader: although he felt a solidarity with his Cuban contemporaries Lecuona and Cervantes, who were preoccupied with founding a nationalist school, Elie based his art on a scale that was pan-Caribbean in scope (Dauphin 1979). Among his surviving compositions that attest to his interest in the Amerindian communities of the New World, we find Kiskaya: Suite aborigine (or Quisqueya) (for orchestra), "Evocation" from La Nuit dans les Andes (for orchestra), as well as the songs "La Mort de l'Indien" (text by Joseph Vilaire) and "Le Chant du barde Indien" (text by the Honduran poet Joaquin Bonilla). It is doubtful that Lassegue would have been acquainted with these compositions or even have known of Pile's artistic ambition. Indeed, they may not even have been composed when he began his critique. As noted above, we have lost some of Elie's compositions, and there are scores by him, resting in libraries, that have yet to be studied. A more complete assessment of this gifted composer is needed.
Lassegue's admiration for what he sees to be the originality of Elie's contribution to Haitian music can be better appreciated if we take into consideration the voice of an earlier critic, Stenio Vincent, a Haitian diplomat writing in 1910 on various aspects of Haitian cultural life. In his work entitled La Republique d'Haiti telle qu'elle est (The Republic of Haiti at Present) (Vincent 1910), he discusses the music of the Haitian composer Theramene Menes (1862-1911), who is also mentioned by Lassegue. Vincent gives...
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