Music notes for Canto Hispanico

Lamentaciones de Jeremias Propheta (Lamentations of Jeremiah) by Alberto Ginastera
For a cappella choir
Text from the Book of Jeremiah

Alberto Ginastera

Alberto Ginastera was one of the most important composers of classical music in Latin America of any period. Originally from Argentina, he wrote his Lamentations of Jeremiah in 1946, while in exile in America, during the time of Perón. The music explores the emotions inspired by intense grief, highly appropriate for its Biblical text—a Jewish commentary on the sacking of Jerusalem. There is dissonance and raw emotion, moving from screams of despair to wails of sorrow.

The first of three movements, for instance, opens with a howl, a furious sound in angular, irregular rhythms influenced by Stravinsky and Bartók. One hardly expects such in laments; it is not the mournful dirge most often inspired by this text, as exemplified in the classic setting of the Spanish Renaissance composer, Tomás Luis de Victoria. This is followed by an elegiac second section and a third of almost pastoral glow, suggesting the narrator's complete and total emotional depletion. There is a hope for renewal, becoming a desperate cry, in the text's final utterance. Ginastera ends the work with an ever-expanding final cadence on the word Domine to illustrate the ultimate regenerative power of faith.

Suite de Lorca by Einojuhani Rautavaara
For a cappella choir

Einojuhani Rautavaara

Finnish composer, Einojuhani Rautavaara composed his Suite de Lorca in 1973, a set of four poems by the Spanish Civil War-era poet Federico García Lorca. Through vivid text-painting and harmonic language, Rautavaara accurately captures the wide range of Lorca's poetic imagery, creating a striking and memorable partnership of text and music.

Soneto de la Noche by Morten Lauridsen
From Nocturnes
For a cappella choir

Morten Lauridsen

Born in Colfax, Washington, Morten Lauridsen is arguably one of America's most-performed contemporary choral composers, who writes both sacred and secular music. Much of Lauridsen's appeal comes from his coloristic harmonies and soft dissonances, always at the service of his texts, with large exciting crescendos and sustained, soothing singing.

The Seattle Choral Company has presented two successful performances of his five-movement work Lux Aeterna (written in 1997) for chorus and orchestra, as well as his motet, O magnum mysterium and his suite Les Chansons des Rose. Lux Aeterna has become extremely popular in the United States, and abroad, with numerous performances, recordings and radio broadcasts.

Lauridsen’s Nocturnes form a tryptich of settings by Rilke, Pablo Neruda, and James Agee. It was his intention to allow each setting to be performed separately. The Soneto de la Noche is the second of these rapturous works, written in 2005. It is a musical translation of the great love sonnet, Soneto de la noche, by the Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda. While the first and third movements of the Nocturnes have prominent piano parts, Lauridsen emphasizes the intimacy of Neruda’s romantic poem by scoring it for unaccompanied chorus. Here the music is reminiscent of a quietly passionate Chilean folk melody, varied by Lauridsen with great delicacy and unobtrusive skill.

Balada de Mallorca by Manuel de Falla
For a cappella choir

Manuel de Falla

Manuel de Falla (1876-1946) was born in Cadiz, Spain, where he was taught the piano by his mother and harmony by two local musicians. His ambition was to be a composer, which led him to Madrid where he studied with the famous Felipe Pedrell. It was Pedrell who imparted the doctrine that a nation’s music should be based on folk song. However, it was to the spirit rather than to the letter of Spanish folk music that de Falla turned.

De Falla wrote only two choral works, Atlántida, for chorus and orchestra, and Balada de Mallorca, for unaccompanied choir. In 1933, escaping from noise and social unrest, de Falla had retreated to Mallorca, where he composed the Balada de Mallorca to words by the Catalán poet, Jacinto Verdaguer. It is a double homage to both Mallorca and to Chopin, as it is based on Chopin’s F Major Ballade.

Romancero Gitano by Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco
For choir and guitar soloist

I. Baladilla de los Tres Ríos
II. La Guitarra
III. Puñal
IV. Procesión – Paso - Saeta
V. Memento
VI. Baile
VII. Crótalo

Mario
Castelnuovo-Tedesco

Born in Florence in 1895 into an old Tuscan family of Sephardic origin, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco was a pupil of Pizzetti, to whom he owed much. In the period between the wars he established himself as a pianist, appearing as a soloist, accompanist and participant in chamber music, and as a critic for various musical journals. His compositions were heard in Italy and abroad.

After the Italian racial legislation of 1938 and with the support of Heifetz and Toscanini, and with the assurance of employment, he moved to America. From 1940 to 1956 he worked for various film studios in Hollywood, contributing to some 250 productions. At the same time he continued his own work as a composer, with a series of some seventy works of all kinds, including oratorios and cantatas, songs, operas, concertos, guitar music and compositions for the piano.

In 1946 he had become an American citizen and until his death in 1968 he taught at the then Los Angeles Conservatory, where his pupils included Henry Mancini, Jerry Goldsmith, John T. Williams and André Previn. He died in Los Angeles in 1968.

His Romancero Gitano, Op. 152 is a superb suite of seven pieces, composed in 1951 for mixed choir and guitar. It draws its inspiration from the poetry of the martyred Spanish poet, Federico García Lorca, further expressing García Lorca's fascination with flamenco and its association with gypsies. Like many composers who found themselves in exile during the war years, Castelnuovo-Tedesco composed in a very neo-classical and neo-romantic style, reviving more traditional or antiquated ideas of melody, tonality and texture. The polyphonic style is that of ancient madrigals, but the lines are of a marked Spanish flavor. Despite the title, Castelnuovo-Tedesco did not use poems from Garcia Lorca’s Romancero Gitano but rather from a related collection of García Lorca’s poems, entitled Poema del Cante Jondo.

The poetry, passion, and violence of Federico García Lorca’s work and his own tragic and bloody death brought him enduring international acclaim. A joyous, versatile person, he was an accomplished musician and had an enormously original theatrical imagination. García Lorca's works combine the spirit and folklore of his native Andalusia with his very personal understanding of life. His 1928 Romancero Gitano (Gypsy Ballads) made him the most popular Spanish poet of his generation. Much to his chagrin, he became known as the “Gypsy Poet.” García Lorca was shot by Franco's soldiers at the outbreak of the Spanish civil war.