Dedicated to Margot Par茅s-Reyna.
Alucinaci贸n, poems by Gabriela Mistral (2023)
Song cycle for voice and piano. Composed between April and September 2023.
Total duration: ca. 12 minutes
Songs:
I. La memoria divina (ca. 5 min.)
II. Riqueza (ca. 2 min.)
III. La medianoche (ca. 3 min.)
IV. Para铆so (ca. 2 min.)
To play the piece, please write to:
be-mikael@proton.me
Recordings
Santiago Cortez, viola; the composer, piano.
Live concert, Biblioteca de Frutillar, February 2024.
I. La memoria divina
II. Riqueza - III. La medianoche
IV. Para铆so
(see the poem and/or the score below).
Program note
Alucinaci贸n is a musicalisation of poems included in the homonymous chapter of the book Tala, published by Noble Prize winner Gabriela Mistral in 1938.
While writing them I have always kept in mind the natural prosody of spoken and recited Castilian, trying to get across the emotions evoked by the poetry through the possibilities that Music offers as means of expression.
Translated poems
(See the Spanish version of the page to see the original poems. See the score below to see the original and the translation side-by-side).
La memoria divina
A Elsa Fano
If you give me a star,
and then abandoned it, bare in my hand,
I won鈥檛 know how to close it,
to defend my newborn joy.
I come from a land
where nothing was lost.
If you find me the cave,
a marvel, like fruit,
purple and gold in core,
and fills the gaze with immense wonder,
I wouldn't close the cave,
to neither the serpent nor the light of day,
For I come from a land
where nothing was lost.
If you extended to me vessels,
cinnamon and sandalwood, capable
of fragrancing the earth's root,
to halt the wandering wind
I would entrust them to any shore,
For I come from a land,
where nothing was lost.
I held the living star in my embrace,
and burned whole, like a sprawling sunset.
I also had the cave where the sun hovered,
and where the day never ended.
And I didn't know how to keep them near,
nor did I understand that to oppress them was to love them.
I slept in peace upon their beauty
and without trembling, I drank from their sweetness.
And I lost them, without a cry of agony,
for I come from a land
where the eternal soul never lost.
Riqueza
I have faithful delight,
and lost delight:
one like a rose,
the other like a thorn.
Of what they stole from me,
I was not dispossessed;
I have faithful delight,
and lost delight,
and I am rich in purple
and in melancholy.
Oh, how loving is the rose,
and how beloved the thorn!
Like the sweet contour
of two twin fruits,
I have faithful delight,
and lost delight.
La medianoche
Delicate, the midnight hour.
I hear the rosebush's knots:
sap rises, ascending to the rose.
I hear
the burnt stripes of the royal tiger:
they won't let him sleep.
I hear
one's stanza,
and it grows in the night
like a dune.
I hear
my mother asleep
with two breaths.
(I sleep inside her,
at the age of five).
I hear the Rh么ne
descending, carrying me like a father
blinded of blind foam.
And then I hear no more,
but I am falling
into the sun-filled walls
of Arles . . .
Para铆so
Stretched sheet of gold,
and in the golden spreading,
two bodies like coils of gold;
One glorious body that listens,
and one glorious body that speaks
in a meadow where nothing speaks;
A breath that goes to the breath
and a face that trembles from it,
in a meadow where nothing trembles.
Remembering the sad time
when both had Time,
and they afflicted by it,
At the hour of the golden clove,
when Time was left at the threshold
like stray dogs . . .
Score
Notes for performing
The first three songs may be played (each one) separately.
The last movement is written for solo piano and the poem might be read verbally, projected or be presented to the public in some other way
The songs may be transposed at will.
The songs may be played as songs without words by any appropriate combination of instruments. If this is the case, it is suggested to project each verse as it is played, or to present the poems to the public in some other way.
It is suggested as a possibility to play the third movement attacca after the end of the second.