Yanomami - Music for Choir and Guitar (Castelnuovo-Tedesco; Suriñach; Moruja; Nobre)

Yanomami

Music for choir and guitar

Coro Cervantes

Carlos Fernández Aransay (conductor)

Mario CASTELNUOVO-TEDESCO (1895-1968)

Romancero Gitano Op 152

Jagoba Fadrique (baritone), Fabio Zanon (guitar), April Fredrick (soprano), Laia Cortés (alto), Anthony Hawgood (tenor), 

Carlos SURIÑACH (1915-1997)

Sonatina

Via Crucis 'A cycle of fifteen Saetas'

Fabio Zanon (guitar), Karen Cull (soprano),Alan Widdowson (tenor) 

Fernando MORUJA (1960-2004)

Piezas sacras

Susan Jiwey (soprano)

Marlos NOBRE (b.1939)

Yanomami Op 47  Eh, o, a, aye, baye, ue, o, a

Julian Stocker (tenor), Fabio Zanon (guitar)

“We are the two most fortunate composers in the world: you have Florence as your home city, I have Granada”. So said Manuel de Falla in Florence to the 25 year-old Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco (1895-1968), who was just starting to compose. Mario had first visited Granada in 1913 as a reward for his brilliant results at the end of his school days. In 1932, this time in Venice, Falla introduced him to Andrés Segovia, who would commission him to write numerous pieces for the guitar. “It is the first time I have met a composer who immediately understands how to write for the guitar” said Segovia of Variazioni attraverso i secoli, Castelnuovo-Tedesco´s first piece for him.

Castelnuovo-Tedesco was descended from a family of Spanish Jewish bankers, who had fled Spain many centuries earlier, during which time the original surname Castilla Nueva was “Italianised”. Neither was this the only time when his family had to flee their homeland, for in 1938 the increasing anti-Semitism of Mussolini´s regime forced the family, outspokenly Jewish, to leave for America. It was only thanks to Mario´s influential friends such as Jasha Heifetz and Arturo Toscanini that he managed to get a migrant´s visa for his whole family. Within a few years of moving, Castelnuovo-Tedesco was established in Beverly Hills as a successful composer of film scores (including Agatha Christie’s “And then there were none”) and his students included the young André Previn, John Williams, Jerry Goldsmith and Henry Mancini.

The Romancero Gitano (1951) links Castelnuovo-Tedesco back to Granada, where Federico García Lorca was born. The texts belong not to a “Gypsy Romance Book” but to Lorca’s Poema del Cante Jondo of 1921 (Poem of Deep Song, a type of Flamenco singing). In 1922 García Lorca and Falla had organised the first International Competition of Cante Jondo in Granada.

The Spanish composer Carlos Suriñach (1915-1997) also migrated to the U.S. Unlike Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Suriñach (who changed his surname to Surinach) used an openly Andalousian idiom for his Via Crucis: A cycle of fiteen Saetas (1970) and his Sonatina (dedicated in 1959 to Andrés Segovia). Both composers—who would become American nationals—portrayed in their music the passion and fervour of the Spanish Holy Week. Castelnuovo did so in the central and most substantial movement of his Romancero Gitano – Procesión, paso, saeta (Procession, float, saeta)—and Suriñach in his Via Crucis, a depiction of the Fourteen Stations of the Cross, during the Passion of Christ. Saetas are improvised songs typically performed a cappella by a singer from a balcony. They are dedicated to a particular image of Christ or the Virgin, represented by a float carried during Holy Week processions. There is no more spine-chilling moment during a procession than when an impromptu saetero bursts into song: the whole procession comes to a halt, and the singer—in a state of semi-trance—spins his deep and plaintive song. Suriñach depicts this trance—perhaps toying with minimalism—with small melodic cells in the choir and the use of repetitive flamenco rasgueado chords in the guitar.

Some of the Sacred Pieces (1998) by Fernando Moruja (1960-2004), all of which constitute a testimony to a life dedicated to choral music, also feature minimilism. “Fefe”, as he was universally known in his native Buenos Aires, was killed by a bus on New Year’s Eve 2004, when he was only 44 years-old. The Argentinean choral community has been mourning him ever since, for here was a promising conductor and composer who brought a contagious enthusiasm to his music-making. This enthusiasm is still spreading posthumously all over the world: his sacred pieces—Lux aeterna and O bone Jesu in particular—are quickly becoming favourites of choirs and audiences alike.

Marlos Nobre (1939), a pupil of Ginastera, Messiaen, Malipiero, Copland and Dallapiccola, has dedicated several pieces to the native people of Brazil—his country—including Ukrinmakrinkrin Opus 17 (dedicated to the Xucuru people), Xingú Opus 75 and Yanomami Opus 47 (sometimes spelled Yanomani), which was commissioned by the Swiss choir “Choeur des XVI” in 1980 and was dedicated to the memory of a Yanomami chief. During a trip to Germany, Nobre heard of this death and the struggle of his people, who live on the shores of the Orinoco River, artificially divided between the national boundaries of Venezuela and Brazil.

Written for solo tenor, guitar and choir, Yanomami sets to music a mix of words in their original language and some in Portuguese. When their chief dies, the people gather to mourn him, crying, clapping and dancing with the shaman. After the ceremony, they return to their huts and wait for the arrival of dawn. During the night, the spirit of the dead leaves his body and reaches the celestial forest where thunder reigns. In the middle of the piece, a moment of silence marks this moment. The chief returns then to a different form of life, and this transformation affects the music, which is now inverted, both in its rhythm and melody.

Later his remains are cremated, accompanied by the words “O cacique é morto” (“The chief is dead”, in Portuguese) in a motet written with a twelve-tone serial technique. After a month has gone by, the shaman and the elder of the community will mix his ashes with fruits and food. For the Yanomani, death is always the result of evil spirits sent by their enemies to inflict pain on their community, and grief gives way to a desire for revenge: “Mata, mata, mata” (“Kill, kill, kill”) they cry together.

Carlos Fernández Aransay