Rebecca Dirksen

Rebecca Dirksen,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MA

Rebecca Dirksen, a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, completed her PhD in ethnomusicology at UCLA in 2012. Her primary research concerns music and grassroots development in Haiti before and after the 2010 earthquake. Concurrent projects revolve around creative responses to crisis and disaster, intangible cultural heritage protection, cultural policy and Haitian classical music.

Talk Title: Forgotten Legacies of Haitian Classical Music: Pianist-Composer Carmen Brouard and Her Symphonic Poem Baron la Croix

In 1984, Haitian pianist-composer Carmen Brouard (1909-2005) wrote an extended symphonic poem for piano and orchestra entitled Baron la Croix. Overlooked at the time of its completion and long forgotten until recently, this twenty-five–minute composition was inspired by Franck Fouché’s 1974 tragedy-satire Général Baron-la-Croix, ou le Silence Masqué. Fouché’s play is a powerful condemnation of the Duvalier regime that forced the dramaturge into exile. Brouard’s musical setting, though not necessarily a political statement itself, is highly programmatic: it depicts a Vodou ceremony, progressing from a sense of foreboding to a frenzied bacchanal before culminating with a solemn Mass. Described by the composer as a mélange of folkloric, romantic and atonal styles, the score features rapid and abrupt changes between sections, resulting in a disjointed and sometimes confusing presentation. This effect is deliberate.

This piece is about musical confrontations of loss, exile, and death—themes pertinent to Brouard, who left her Caribbean homeland for Canada at age sixty-eight. Although Baron la Croix is among the most ambitious pieces in the Haitian classical repertoire, little is known about its creation or creator. This presentation rectifies the oversight: drawing on excerpts from the original unpublished score and Prof. Dirksen’s own arrangement for two pianos, she will offer a close reading of the music from a performance perspective supported by contextual analysis and ethnographic findings.