Vacariana

Vacariana is a piano work composed in 1951 during the first creative phase of Gilberto Mendes’s career. The enigmatic title is drawn from a folk theme originating in Brazil’s southernmost state, Rio Grande do Sul — a melody collected by composer and ethnomusicologist Mário de Andrade during his fieldwork on Brazilian folk traditions. While many Brazilian composers of the period favoured Afro-Brazilian rhythms and the folklore of the Northeast, Mendes chose here to draw on the gaúcho (southern) tradition, which has strong Iberian and Guaraní roots. This unusual decision reflects Mendes’s keen interest in the diverse cultural substrata of Brazil and, more specifically, in the Hispanic-American dimension of the national folk heritage.

The title Vacariana likely refers to vacaria — a rural term evoking pastoral songs sung by gaúcho cowboys — and may be read as a play on Villa-Lobos’s Bachianas, but here filtered through regional folklore. The work remained unpublished for decades before being rediscovered by pianist Antônio Eduardo Santos, who premiered it in concert several decades after its composition.

Vacariana takes the form of a set of free variations on a simple folk theme. This opening theme, probably stated clearly at the outset, is drawn from the gaúcho tradition and is characterised by a moderate triple metre and a modal, Iberian-tinged melodic profile. Mendes himself noted the originality of his choice: “While most Brazilian composers favoured traditional African syncopations, I opted for a theme from Rio Grande do Sul — once again showing my love for the Hispanic-Latin American cultural subject.”

The following variations explore a range of transformations. Mendes described Vacariana as a “unique compositional exercise, like a tracing paper laid over Beethoven’s 32 Variations in C minor.” Indeed, the influence of Beethoven is evident: Mendes may have borrowed the bass line or harmonic progression from Beethoven, or simply applied the same variation principle to a folk melody. The spirit of Beethoven’s concise and virtuosic idiom can be felt throughout.

Adding a modernist twist, Mendes also introduces a quotation from Prokofiev — specifically the incipit of the Prelude op. 12, no. 7. One can imagine a variation beginning with Prokofiev’s sharply etched motif, creating a temporal clash between the rural and the avant-garde. Throughout, Mendes alternates lyrical passages — where the theme is embellished and harmonically enriched — with rhythmic episodes highlighting the dance-like nature of the material, complete with offbeat accents reminiscent of zambas or guaranias.

The work is of moderate length (approximately three minutes), indicating that Mendes opts for a handful of well-contrasted transformations rather than an exhaustive cycle. A final, accelerated and brilliant variation may serve as a coda, blending Beethoven’s harmonic gravity and Prokofiev’s pianistic energy with the original folk melody in a sort of climactic toccata.

Premiered only in the 1990s, Vacariana was immediately recognised as a precursor to several of Mendes’s lifelong concerns: the dialogue between folk material and formal invention, and a polyphonic admiration for figures such as Beethoven and Prokofiev. The piece, which demands intermediate-level pianistic skill, was first recorded by Antônio Eduardo Santos in 1998, providing the earliest aural document of this long-forgotten gem. Critics have hailed Vacariana as “a neoclassical miniature laced with regional flavour.”

Indeed, its variation form and stylistic elegance recall neoclassicism, while its folk-based theme firmly roots it in Brazil’s cultural soil. Historians of Brazilian music have viewed Vacariana as both a contribution to the Vargas-era national aesthetic of the 1940s and ’50s and a harbinger of the formal freedom that Mendes would later embrace. Since its modern edition, the piece has appeared in piano recitals across Brazil, often programmed alongside other nationalist works such as Lorenzo Fernandez’s Variações sérias to illustrate the stylistic diversity of the period.

By virtue of its conciseness and wit, Vacariana now stands as a distinctive item within Mendes’s oeuvre — the youthful work of a composer already forging a dialogue between Beethoven and the chimarrita of southern Brazil.