A Concert of Music by Hispanic Composers

Tumbando Caña (Cuban Folk Song), arr. Howard A. Roberts

Duerme Negrito (Cuban Lullaby), arr. Robert DeCormier

San Sereni (Puerto Rican Singing Game), arr. Salli Terri

Galo Garnizé (Mineiro Folk Song), arr. Carlos Alberto Pinto Fonseca

Con Alas en Las Ojos by Alberto Balzanelli

El Paraná en una Zomba by Ariel Ramirez

Ojos de Tiempo by Carlos Guastavino

Hymn to the United Nations by Pablo Casals

Program Notes

by Michaelene Gorney

The republics of Central and South America boast a flourishing musical life in which the arts have been typically fostered by the state. There are ministries of fine arts that support conservatories, grants, and music festivals, as well as prizes, fellowships, and performances for native composers. The earliest natives of these lands hail either from the Americas or from Africa. Countries having Spanish cultures include Argentine, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, El Salvador, Uruguay, and Venezuela. Thus, Latin America combines the cultural strains of three continents - a truly rich heritage.

Pablo Casals (1876-1973), the great cellist and composer, was born in the region of Spain called Catalonia. At the age of 21, he was awarded the Order of Carlos III by the Queen of Spain, thus ensuring his career as a virtuoso. Thereafter, he toured extensively throughout the world in the course of his career, playing for United States Presidents Theodore Roosevelt in 1904 and John F. Kennedy in 1961. Casals ardently supported the Spanish Republican government and, after the Spanish Civil war in 1936, vowed never to return to Spain until democracy was restored. He even refused engagements in countries which supported the Franco regime. In 1956, at the age of 80, Casals made his home in San Juan, Puerto Rico, the birthplace of his mother. Casals did not live to see Spain liberated from dictatorship, but was posthumously honored by the Spanish government of King Juan Carlos I, which issued a commemorative stamp in honor of what would have been his 100th birthday.

Nigra Sum, for women's voices, is a setting of the Latin text from the Song of Songs, also called the Song of Solomon, 1: 5, 4, 10-12.

Hector Villa-Lobos (1887-1959) was born in Rio de Janeiro. After learning to play cello from his father, he made a living playing in cafés and movie houses of Rio. At 18, he made the first of several journeys to remote villages in Brazil to gather folk songs and native lore (an act of preservation in a world of shrinking differences). He also studied at the Instituto Nacionál in Rio. Upon returning from a sojourn to Europe, made possible by the Brazilian government, Villa-Lobos became Director of Music Education of Rio de Janeiro. He inaugurated a teacher training program which changed the entire school system, devised a method for teaching choral music without musical scores, established a conservatory, published choral arrangements of popular songs, and encouraged community involvement in music through the founding of performance groups and festivals. The music of Villa-Lobos freely uses native folk rhythms and tunes. He was preoccupied with sincretismo, the fusion of native and outside influences. "I compose in the folk style." he said. "I utilize the themes and idioms in my own way and subject to my own development. An artist must do this. He must select and transmit the material given him by his people."

The Ave Maria, the prayer said as "Hail, Mary" in English, is sung here in Portuguese. It was composed in Rio de Janeiro in 1938, six years after Villa-Lobos returned from Europe.

Ariel Ramirez was born in Santa Fe, Argentina, in 1921. A specialist in the Argentine folklore, he extensively studied its history and development. He also studied folklore of Central Europe while at the Academy of Vienna in the 1950s, the origins of Argentine music at the Institute of Hispanic Culture in Madrid.

The Misa Criolla, composed in 1963, is a folk mass based on rhythms and folk traditions of Argentina. The Kyrie adopts the rhythm of the vidala-baguala, a music characteristic of northern Argentina; it reflects the loneliness of life on a high deserted plateau. The rhythm of the carnavalito, also from northern Argentina, appears in the Gloria, and is meant to invoke the spirit of rejoicing implicit in this movement. The sections of the Gloria are separated by a recitative (yaravi) which renders the return of the carnavalito even more joyous. The chacarera trunca, a folk theme of central Argentina, is the basis of the Credo. Its obsessive rhythm accentuates this profession of faith, even to its final words reaffirming the triumph of everlasting life. The carnaval cochabambino, used in the Sanctus, is an unusual Bolivian rhythm with a marked yet subdued beat. The Agnus Dei, written in a style typical of the pampas (estilo pampeano), depicts the solitude and vastness of the grasslands. Its simple recitative expresses the universal longing for peace. The Misa Criolla, an example of faith conveyed through a popular medium of expression, has won the admiration of South American critics and public for its use of indigenous musical forms.

The sprightly melody of Tumbando Caña belies its tragic text, depicting the destruction of Cuban sugarcane crops by insects. Peasants, their lives dependent upon a fruitful harvest, could only look forward to a year of near-starvation. Yet they philosophically accept this fate, shrug their shoulders, and say, "Oh, well, that's the way of my beautiful land." Arranger Howard Roberts has enjoyed a career as musical director, singer, instrumentalist and teacher. He created the role of Robbins in the international company of Porgy and Bess and was the Robert Shaw Chorale's first black tenor soloist. He has received a composer's grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, a commission from the Alvin Ailey Dance Company, for which he conducted the premier of his work, and seven ASCAP Standard Music Panel Awards. Mr. Roberts is on the faculty of Borough of Manhattan Community College in New York.

Duerme Negrito is a Cuban lullaby arranged for chorus. Arranger Robert deCormier is also an accomplished conductor whose work takes him from Broadway to opera to concert tours with his own professional group, the Robert de Cormier Singers. He conducted the New York Choral Society for 17 years, served as arranger and conductor to Harry Belafonte for many years, and as music director of the folk trio, Peter, Paul and Mary. He has several choral works and arrangements to his credit, as well as recordings and choral conducting for television broadcasts, including Christmas at Carnegie with Kathleen Battle and Frederica Von Stade.

San Sereni ("The Saint of Children") is a naïve, merry song, in which sounds of a shoemaker hammering, women scrubbing clothes, and men ringing bells, are freely imitated by voices and percussion. Arranger Salli Terri was born in London, Ontario, Canada, and moved to Detroit with her father, a well-known conductor of theater orchestras. After teaching in California and Japan, Ms. Terri joined the Robert Wagner Chorale, with whom she was a featured soloist and recording artist. She has recorded solo folk material and has made two recordings with guitarist Laurindo Almeida.

Galo Garnizé, a Mineiro folk song of Brazil, will be sung for you today in English.

Con Alas En Los Ojos, by Carlos Guastavino with text by Santiago Matesanz, is a basically tonal piece with chromatic shifts. Its opening and closing sections are homophonic - voices moving together on the same syllables - while, in the middle section, voice sections are relatively independent, often imitating each other after one voice introduces the melody.

El Paraná en una Zamba, by Ariel Ramirez, is a song of summer and love, a time ripe for the zamba.

Ojos de Tiempo, with text by Alma Garcia, was newly-composed by Carlos Guastavino. The work is largely homophonic, with voices moving together to sing the words of a lover whose love has gone, perhaps never to return.