The Library of Congress

CoolidgeAuditorium
Thursday, March 14, 2008
8 p.m.

POST-CLASSICAL ENSEMBLE
Angel Oil-Ordonez, Music Director
Joseph Horowitz, Artistic Director
Eugenia Leon, voice
James Demster, piano

~~

"FOUR VOICES OF SILVESTRE REVUELTAS"

I
National Self and Its Representations

8 X Radio

Magueyes
Eugenia Leon and Ensemble
El Gavilan
Eugenia Leon and James Demster, piano
Homenaje a Federico Garcia Lorca
I. Baile
III. Son

19

II
The Black Poets

Caminando
Eugenia Le6n and Ensemble
Canto a una muchacha negra
Eugenia Le6n and James Demster, piano
Sensemaya (preceded by an excerpt from a recording of the poem read by Nicow.s Guillen)

Intermission

III
Spain in My Heart
Canci6n de cuna
Eugenia Le6n, voice

Homenaje a Federico Garda Lorca

II. Duelo

IV
'~ainst the ancestralapathyand cavernousobsrnrityof academicmusicians"
Batik
Planos

The appearance of Post-Classical Ensemble is made possible with support from the Mexican Council
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and the DC Commission

on the Arts and Humanities.

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20

POST-CLASSICAL ENSEMBLE
Angel

Gil-Ord6nez,

Violin
Oleg Rylatko,
concertmaster

Eric Lee
Viola
Lisa Ponton

Music Director

Joseph

Clarinet
David Jones
Marguerite Levin
Ed Walters

Bassoon
Don Shore

Cello
Gita Ladd
Bass
Ed Malaga

Trumpet
Tim White
Chris Gekker

Flute
Sara Stern
David Lonkevich

Trombone
Lee Rogers

Horowitz,

Artistic Director

Tuba
Mike Bunn
Percussion
Bill Richards
John Spirtas
Tom Jones
Greg Akagi
Jonathan Rance
Doug Wallace
Piano
Naoko Takao
Personnel Manager:

Sue Kelly

~~

POST-CLASSICAL ENSEMBLE AND SILVESTRE REVUELTAS

In our fiveyears,Post-ClassicalEnsemble has performed the music of SilvestreReveultas

more-much more-than that of any other composer. Our debut, in fact, was a May 1st
(significant date) presentation of the classic Mexican film Redes,with Revueltas's indelible score-a film music masterpiece-performed live with the movie.
'
It is, in short, our conviction that Revueltas is a composer whose time has come. In
addition to the "four voices" Robert Kolb eloquently discerns in these pages, Revueltas
also possesses a predominating "fifth voice" that is at all times instantly recognizable.
Shrill trumpets and booming tubas infuse his instrumental palette with the sonic bit of
a village band. Equally typical is his eschewal of prefabricated structure. As he himself
21

once put it with reference to Planosand other sound murals:"[Theyare]subjectto the

rhythm of life, not to the exact distance from one sidewalk to the other. There is
nothing I can say about the technique behind the music because it doesn't interest me.
Some good-humored people claim I have mastered composing technique; then again,
some ill-tempered ones claim I haven't. Well, they surely know better. . . " He also wrote,
unforgettably:
I was very young, three years old, [mymother] tells me, when I heard music
for the first time: the little village band playing its evening concert in the
square. I stood listening for a long time and with what must havebeen spectacular concenttation because it was so intense that my eyescrossed. And
cross-eyed I remained for three or four days after. . . . As a small boy. . . I
always preferred banging on a washtub or dreaming tales to doing something useful. . . I have had many teachers.The best of them, with no degrees,
knew more than the others. For that reason I have alwayshad little respect
for degrees. Now, after many years I still study, have teachers, write music,
dream of distant countries and sometime bang on washtubs.
- Joseph Horowitz
REFLECTIONS ON REVUELTAS

Working on Spanish repertoire-the music I am most familiar with-helps me to

understand the music of all cultures. Consider the internationally popular Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodovar. The fact that Almodovar is so unusual, so local (not just to
spain, but to Madrid), so true to his own vicinity in rendering feeling and experiencethis is what makes him so universal. The more I study the composers of my country, the
more I am able to appreciate the German or French repertoire-or, in the caseof tonight's
concert, the music of Mexico.
What attracts me to Silvestre Revueltas, first of all, is that he is so Mexican, so com--------------------------------------pletely local. When you listen to Revueltas, you smell the marketplace and taste the
---------------tamales. You are in a cantina-a piano bar-drinking tequila. And you are in a culture
saturated with music, with marimbas and mariachis. Music is a continuous component
of Mexican life. The young men of Mexico actually still serenade their girlfriends-with
trumpets, violins, and guitars. In Mexico City, the Plaza de Garibaldi is filled with mariachis all playing at the same time; you go there to hire a band. The tamborasare often
out of tune, with clarinets clashing with tubas. This is the sound of Revueltas. It also
suggests something common to Ives-the clash of simultaneous bands-or to Mahler's
imitations of street musicians. Revueltas is also the sound of Mexican popular singers
like Eugenia Leon or Chavela Vargas, or of people in the streets and in the parks whose
talking is always loud.
Revueltas's writing for chamber ensemble is very original, very surprising. The han------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------dling
of texture and color is alwaysorganic and well organized. Of course, he was aware
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------of the music of his time and before-Stravinsky's T'11
Rite of Springis a clear influence
on the rhythm and ritual of Revueltas's signature composition, Sensemayd,based on a
poem by Nicolas Guillen. Tonight we hear the original version for chamber orchestra.
Revueltas setsnot only the story,but the rhythms and accentsof the words. LikeRevueltas,
Guillen wasa Communist, an intellectual passionate for socialjustice.And like Revueltas,
Guillen was searching for his cultural roots. In Spain, Lorca and de Falla searched for
their roots in the gypsycaves of Andalusia. In Cuba, Guillen searched for African and
22

Spanish roots. Sensemaydis a spell to kill a snake; it is Afro-Cuban black magic. And
there is a Cuban flavor to the rhythms of Sensernayd.
I very much like to explore a composer's first thoughts-such as the first, chamber
version of Falla's El ArnarBrujo,which I have conducted many times. Of course the composer wants to make things betrer, more spectacular, and he discovers material that asks
to be developed.But, as with El Arnar Brujo,the original 1937versionof Sensemayd
is
revealingly harsher, more elemental. Instead of the massive orchestra of the later 1938
version, Revueltas uses only three strings-two violins and a double bass-in combination with piccolo, clarinets, bassoon, ttUmpets, trombone, piano, and percussion. This
, version, little known and rarely performed (though I have previously conducted it here
in Washington, D.C.), was only published in 1978; the score is in Revueltas's fastidious
hand. It is also about sixty measures shorter than the 1938 version. The revision adds
new counter-melodies; the tempos are slower;he takes more time to introduce the themes
and repeats them more often. One can actually say that these two versions of Sensernayd
are two different pieces.
Typically
in Revueltas there is a quality of intimate compassion alongside all that is
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------festive
and
noisy.
------------------- You find it even in music as raucous as 8 X Radio-the slow middle section, with its expresivoduet for clarinet and ttUmpet. He was a troubled soul.
- Angel Gil-Ord6fiez
FOUR VOICES OF SILVESTRE REVUELTAS

Trying to find common traits that would allow us to approach Silvestre Revueltas's
oeuvre in an orderly fashion is a futile enterprise. This Mexican composer could experiment with the most advanced grammars of his time one day, jump back to writing a
romantic tone poem the next, and then mix the old with the new the day after. One
moment he was satirical, and a moment later, he was dead serious. He claimed to com-----------------------------pose for the common people of his country, but his language was strident and complex.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------He was at once an adamant cosmopolitan and a sentimental Mexicanist. He defended
the educational virtues of the Orquesta Sinf6nica de Mexico, while at the same time
using it to provoke and ridicule its audience. One cannot speak of a clear beginning or
a logical sequence or an end in the erratic unfolding of his compositional practices.
Hence, we will follow his example and begin at the end.
IV
'~ainst thi:AncestralApathy and CavernousObscurityof AcademicMusicians"
Sometimes one needs to be far from home in order to define oneself. While in
Republican Spain in 1937,visiting the Second International Congress of Writers for the
Defense of Culture, Revueltas was called upon to do just that:
Carlos Chavez, the iron musician-which is what I used to call him when
we were working together-organized Mexico's musical activity and production. We were a small group with a common drive and a lot of destructive energy. [. . .J Our fresh and joyful impetus fought against the ancestral
apathy and cavernous obscurity of academic musicians. We washed, cleaned,
swept out the old Conservatory which was crumbling under the weight of
tradition, termites and glorious sadness. The Orquesta Sinf6nica de Mexico
was founded, and Stravinsky,Debussy,Honegger, Milhaud, and Varese star23

tled millenary professors who cultivated termites and audiences anesthetized

by a Beethoven that was prescribed to them every other year and the year
after [. . .Jwith ghastly performances that were nonetheless well-liked by the
docile listeners.

This is the voice of a modernist enfant terrible.It is also the voice that can be heard
on and off in pieces composed early (or not so early) in his career. It could first be heard
in the music Revueltas composed while working as a violinist in silent movie theaters
in San Antonio, Texas, and Mobile, Alabama. It was there that he concocted an initial
experiment, which he gave the enigmatic name of Batik (1926). Contrary to what one
might expect, there is nothing exotic about the music: if anything, it points to the modernity of composers such as Milhaud and Auric, whose works Revueltas had performed a
year earlier in a concert of new music that Chavez had organized in Mexico City.
But the composition that most overtly declared its modernism was composed eight
years later, in 1934.Dedicated to his architect friend Ricardo Ortega, he entitled it Plaws,
which was erroneously translated by American editors as "Planes." In Spanish, plaws
can refer either to architectural blueprints or to layers. Revueltas plays with both meanings. He introduces the music metaphorically, as "functional architecture, which does
not exclude feeling. [. . .JThe rhythm and sonority are reminiscent of other rhythms and
sonorities, just as one construction material may be simil,ar to or the same as another,
but is used for a construction that differs in meaning, shape and expression." He also
suggests the presence of two different layers of music: one that springs from an older
impulse, from emotions associated with earlier works, and another engulfing it, which
he characterizes as music with an "obstinate rhythm" and a "sonority that may seem
strange, because it is unconventional."
It is not hard to identify these two musical expressions: one is overtly tonal, and the
other modern and non-tonal. The first is melodious and reminiscent of Romantic music;
the other is harsh and provocative. They are never blended: in fact, one gets the definite
impression that the old is being "attacked" by the new. The Romantic melody leads
nowhere; it is never allowed to develop. It is also fragmented into smaller and smaller
pieces, and squeezed into ever tighter and louder episodes of modern sonority. It is as
if the past were being forced to make room for the new: in a manner of speaking, a modernist manifesto.
The National Self and Its Representations

When Revueltas launched his career as a composer, he was confronted with an audience who demanded music that was recognizably Mexican. Many artists defined themselves as either nationalist or modernist-as if such stances were mutually exclusive.
Revueltas refused to get caught up in this false dilemma. -----------------------------------------He was proudly Mexican as
well as modern. His choice of local sources and the way they appeared in his works
--------------------revealed his varying viewpoints regarding the problem of the national self and its representation.
In order to prove and define their local filiation, composers chose symbols strategically.The older Romantic generation tended to incorporate music from the past, often
derived from the Spanish folklore that had profoundly marked Mexican culture as a
result of so many years of colonization. Younger composers turned to Mexico's many
ethnic groups in search of symbols that were free of colonial stigma. Revueltas's
choices
----------------------------reflected
the
avant-garde
aesthetic
and
political
vindication
of
"low"
culture,
infusing
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------24

his compositions with the coarse mestizo music associated with urban "soundscapes":
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------the
music that could be heard in Mexico City's cantinas, and which came mainly from
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------the region known as Los Altos de Jalisco.
----------------------------------------------------One such tune was the loveand drinking song "Magueyes"(named for the plant from
which both pulque and tequila are derived), which falsely posed as the leitmotif for
Revueltas's Second Quartet (see the note for last night's concert). Revueltas's interest in
this song, however, could not have been more personal. It comes from Jalisco, as did
most of his favorite Mexican music. Moreover, Revueltas was already becoming known
for his fondness of alcohol, and it is probably no coincidence that he chose, perhaps
satirically, a drinking song as a kind of personal signature. The folklore of Los Altos has
since become very famous. It drew the interest of Juan Rulfo-born in Sayula, Jaliscowhose world-renowned novels display an expert knowledge of the region's rural culture.
Among the samples of folklore that Rulfo collected was the text of the picaresque "EI
gavilan" ("The Sparrowhawk"), recently set to music by the young Mexican composer
Marcial Alejandro.
Most localistic composers expressed their nationalism by resorting to a time-honored
formula: writing music which prominently featured traditional tunes, thus guaranteeing the audience's self-recognition and ensuing celebration. ------------------------------------Revueltas, however,wasgenerally reluctant to use literal quotations of local tunes because, paradoxically, they drew
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------the listeners' attention awayfrom his musical ideas, to the point that they tended to dis--------------------------------------------------------------regard what was really happening musically around and beyond the quotations. This
became painfully clear in the comments of chroniclers, who dwelled on Revueltas's
"spontaneous" and "real" Mexicanness, while ignoring what he had to say as a modernist in search of new musical ideas. Thus, Revueltas's use of quotations should not
alwaysbe taken at face value.
In 1931 he composed his Second Quartet, which uses "Magueyes"to create the false
expectation of a "true" nationalistic piece, only to end up with harshly modernistic
music. In 1934 an invitation to compose a piece for public radio provided Revueltas
with the opportunity to deliver the death stroke to sentimental nationalisms and establish his stance as a modernist above all. The playfully Dadaistic title of the new composition, 8 X Radio, responds to the debate between nationalists and modernists-it is in
itself a representation of this debate, suggesting that "folklorists" and "cosmopolitans"
are irreconcilable.
8 X Radiois radical in its critique of facile and accommodating nationalism. A medley of highly Mexicanistic melodies-thirteen in all-are heard one after another, just as
a casual selection of Mexican curios would be displayed in the stalls of a tourist market.
But the folkloristic pastiche is dramatically superseded by a modem, non-tonal language,
presumably representing the composer's voice. Grotesque gestures continuously interfere, precede, interrupt, and even cancel out the folksy material. We hear two voicespresent vs. past, modernity vs. nostalgia-not only confronting each other, but in fact
competing with each other at all times.
8 X Radio commences with a celebratory fanfare. But this voice of tradition graduallythins out as the piece draws to a close.As might be expected, the final gesture belongs
to Revueltas's modernistic and satirical voice. Something similar happens in the curious note that Revueltas wrote for the premiere. Teasing his nationalistic audience, he
referred to 8 X Radio as an "algebraic equation with no possible solution, unless one
possesses a profound knowledge of mathematics."
Two years after writing 8 X Radio,Revueltas mysteriously turned his back on his mis. chievous antinationalist provocations, composing two straightforwardly nationalistic
25

pieces. They are contained as movements of his popular Homenaje a FedericoGarcia

Lorca(Homageto FedericoGarcia Lorca, 1936). The draft of the first movement, "Baile"
("Dance"), bears the subtitle "cuasi [sic]indio" ("quasi-Indian") but there is nothing to
suggest an ironic intent here or in the music itself. Not unlike Chavez a year earlier in
his Sinfonia India (Indian Symphony), Revueltas draws melodic and rhythmic inspiratiOIl from surviving ethnic melodies which were presumed to have pre-Hispanic origins. The main theme flows forth without a trace of Revueltas's usual harshness and
strident contrapuntal noise. In essence, we hear an often repeated and only slightly
varying tune in a setring of very Petrushkian ostinato textures. The third movement"Son"-employs one of Revueltas's favorite signs of local identity: the popular musical
genre from Los Altos de Jalisco named son. It is presented here as a dominant, pervasive theme, leaving behind an unquestionable Mexicanistic taste and assuring the corresponding applause.
How can we explain such a radical change of heart regarding the representation of
the National Self?Had Revueltas joined enemy ranks? Homenajewas composed and performed for an entirely different listener: first performed at a political rally organized by
the League of Revolutionary Artists and Writers (LEAR) in collaboration with the
Communist Youth of Mexico and the Republican Frente Popular Espanol, and soon
after, in representation of LEAR at the government-sponsored Congress of National
Writers and Artists, which had a much broader political platform. It was also performed
during Revueltas's visit to Republican Spain in 1937.These were audiences of political
peers that needed to be seduced rather than provoked. A desire to meet their nationalistic expectations-which seemed to be the same for both the Right and the Left-is easily understandable. The strange combination of the two nationalistic styles- "Baile" and
"Son"-with Homenaje'ssecond movement, "Duelo" ("Mourning") forced into their midst
(thus appealing to the audience's sympathy with the Republican cause), mirrored the
political identity of the rally's participants: a marriage of convenience.
II
The BlackPoets
Whatever the balance between nation-building and emancipated cosmopolitan modernity in Revueltas's music, its interest clearly cannot be reduced to the presence and role
of Mexican symbols. For one thing, he also resorted to the popular music of other cultures, such as the Blues and Mro-Cuban rhythms. He did so not in order to paint other
landscapes, but to represent political concerns. These played a much more important
role than the issue of musical patriotism in his life and his music.
Political concerns surface in most of his compositions, from his first one in 1924El afilador(The Knife Sharpener), for violin and piano-to his last, the ballet music for
La Coronela,heroine of the Mexican Revolution. The subjects of Revueltas's political
passion are usually represented by the voices of the poor street vendor or musician, but
on occasion by others as well, such as the slavesin colonial Cuba or the black girl "way
down south in Dixie." It might come as a surprise that America's famous black poet
Langston Hughes spent some time south of the border during his childhood and returned
there to teach English in 1920.As a poet, he became quite popular in Mexico during the
1930s,and severalof his poems were translated and published in an important modernist
journal, Contemporaneos.This might have been Revueltas's inspiration when he chose a
translation of Songof a bark Girl to compose his heartbreaking Canto parauna muchacha
negrain 1938. Revueltas, for his part, might have coincided with Hughes in Spain, where
26

the latter worked as a newspaper correspondent for the BaltimoreAfro-American.Although

nothing is known about an actual encounter between poet and composer, the chances of
it are hardly remote.
But the work of another Black poet left an even deeper impression on Revueltas than
that of Hughes. In January of 1937, the celebrated Afro..Cuban poet Nicolas Guillen
had been invited to participate in a congress organized in Mexico by the previously men..
tioned LEAR, headed by Silvestre Revueltas at the time. This encounter led to a solid
friendship, further deepened by their joint travels to Republican Spain. During Guillen's
stay in Mexico, he wrote his collection Cantosparaso/dadosy sonesparaturistas(Songs for
Soldiers and Sones for Tourists), which contains not only the poem "Fusilamiento"
("Execution"), dedicated to Revueltas, but also "No Sfporque piensastu, so/dado. . ." ("I
don't know, soldier, why you think. . ."), which the composer set to music in a number
of different versions.
Around the same time, Guillen must have introduced Revueltas to his earlier collection, West Indies Ltd., written in Cuba in 1934, soon after the Batista coup. While
remaining faithful to the Afro-Cuban language that the poet had distilled from mulatto
rhythms and traditions, this collection of poems took a significant turn into the domain
of the political. The combined expressivefonnat-a poetry drawn from music and imbued
with social significance-must have appealed to Revueltas's political side. He set a first
poem from West Indies Ltd.- "Caminando" ("Walking")-~o music in two versions: one
for voice and piano and another for voice and small orchestra, the latter dedicated to
the poet. Perhaps significantly, Revueltas scored the orchestral version so that the voice
could be omitted: thus poetry that had been derived from music would be returned again
to its original medium.
Three months later, Revueltas musicalized a second poem, "Sensemaya"-this time
leaving out the words altogether. Guillen's poem has been interpreted as an allegory for
the need for, and means of, definitive liberation. The act of liberation is played out by
two characters: the snake-charmer and the snake, presumably representing imperialism
and the oppressed. The music also brings two actors face to face, each one represented
by an identifying musical code. The sense of "struggle" is quite evident throughout the
piece, as is the defeat of the "snake" at the end.[*]
II
Spain in My Heart
It is hard to understand today why artists the world over became so emotionally
involved with the Civil War in Spain. For many Mexican artists and intellectuals, it
was surely the disillusion caused by the Revolution whose ideals they considered to
have been betrayed. Therefore, they put all their hopes for change in the arms of the
Spanish Republic, in the songs of its militia, in the pens of its writers and poets. On
his long voyage to Spain, Revueltas was accompanied by prominent creators, including future Nobel.. prize winner Octavio Paz, writer Elena Garro, and poet Juan de la
Cabada, but it was Revueltas who displayed the greatest devotion to the Republican
cause, and it was also he who suffered the most from its eventual defeat. Spain gave
Revueltas the energy we feel in his 1937 arrangement of the popular "Song of the
Loyalist Fronts."
But the cause and the country would mostly come to mean pain and loss of hope to
him. Spain was very much in his heart when he composed the "Duelo" ("Mourning")the middle movement of Homenaje,his homage to the poet-and "FiveSongs for Children,"
27

composed in 1938based on poems and texts by Garcia Lorca. Written shortly afterward,
Itinerarios(Itineraries) seems to embody most clearly all the anguish and sadness which
Spain's looming defeat had awakened in Revueltas.
The Republic had meant everything to Revueltas, and its defeat robbed him of the
energy to go on living. His brother-the equally famous writer Jose Revueltas-recalls the
composer's physical and spiritual agony.
Near the end, Silvestre became very quiet, taciturn, the victim of terrible
melancholy. This began.following Spain's defeat.
It was only natural: Silvestre had experienced the most beautiful and
profound moments of his life alongside the vast and great Spanish people.
While in Spain, he tried to join the battalion of Mexican colonel Juan B.
Gomez, as the director of the small, anonymous military band which played
on the frontlines. Everyeffort and reason was needed to dissuade him, but
Silvestre was alwayspained by the fact that he did not achieve his goal.
Spain was ttuth, the truth of the struggle, of humanity's hopes. And
those men [ . . . ] were the men of that world. [In Spain] he was able to
contemplate the future. He was finally able to believe that he was not
alone and that a destiny advances from every corner of the world to complete man, to set him free and to restore him to his loftiest and most sacred
dignity.
And yet Spain fell: to state it in a few words.
Nevertheless, Silvestrewould never recover from the immense pain that
this caused him. He had lost children, he had lost brothers, he had lost his
mother, but he never thought he would lose Spain. [ . . . ] The black lightning of the Spanish defeat was more than he could bear, and then came
the threat of some sinister light striking those eyesblind, those eyeswhich
had suffered the most extreme pain a man can feel. From that day forward,
Silvestre's silences grew longer and longer.
In October 1940, not long after the Republic had collapsed into Franco's dictatorial hands, Revueltas's own life came to an end.

- Roberto Kolb
Universidad Nacional Aut6noma de Mexico

[* SENSEMAYA,CANTO PARAMATARUNA CULEBRA(Sensemaya: A Chant for the Killing of a Snake

by Nicolas Guillen) Mayombe-bombe-mayombe!
[three timesJ/ The snake has eyes of glass; / The
snake coils around a stick; / With his eyes of glass, around a stick, / The snake moves without legs;
/ The snake wants to hide in the grass; / Slithering, he hides in the grass, / Moving without any
legs. / Mayombe-bombe-mayombe!
[three timesJ/ If you hit him with an axe he will die: / Hit him
now! / Don't try to kick him or he'll
the snake / sensemaya, / Sensemaya,
sensemaya. / Sensemaya, with his
snake can't hiss; / he can't move, /

bite; / Don't try to kick him, or he'll get away. / Sensemaya,

with his eyes / sensemaya, / Sensemaya, with his tongue, /
mouth, / sensemaya. A dead snake can't eat; / a dead
he can't run!/ A dead snake can't see; / a dead snake can't

/ he can't breathe, / he can't bite! / jMayombe-bombe-mayombe!/

Sensemaya, the snake /
jMayombe-bombe-mayombe! / Sensemay:i, isn't moving / jMayombe-bombe-mayombe! / Sensemaya,
the snake. . . / Mayombe-bombe-mayombe!
/ Sensemaya, he's dead!]
drink;

28

Text Translations
MAOUEYES (Agaves)

Anonymous song from the State of Jalisco

I pray to heaven that the Magueys wither and die / For those magueys have been my downfall: / I'm
a drunkand don'tlikeanythingat all / Forthe woman I lovedso will not be mine.
I ordera glass and drink it with pleasure,/ Thenordera second,whichI like,thenanother./ I go
out onto the street and let out a cry, / For the woman I loved so will not be mine.

EL GAVILAN (The Read-Tailed

Text from

Hawk)

Los Altos de lalisco

In the first verse, the speaker compares his lady love to two endemic flowers: that of
the pitahaya or dragonfruit, known as the moonflower, and that of the garambullo cactus, and professes his undying love for her, even if he one day leaves.He also expresses
his pride in the fact that no one else can ever rule his roost, meaning that no other man
can get close to his woman (or women).
The second verse describes the woodpecker's act of bowing down to find the hole
and then digging in repeatedly with his beak. This is clearly an extended double entendre equating the pecking motion of a woodpecker to the'speaker's sexual acts with his
lover.
In the third verse, now speaking as a horse, he complains of different pains: in his
hindquarters and where the saddle is too tight-similar to the idea of tightening one's
belt against hunger pangs, though in this case the pangs are caused by his sexual abstinence. He toys with the idea of performing an act of derring-do like leaping over a hurdle to see how much he swellsfrom the impact. This may refer to the temptation to cheat
on his girlfriend and his fear at getting caught, because in the last two lines he says,"Even
with so many fillies about, only mine can make me whinny."
Only in the final verse is any mention made of the song's title: "A red-tailed hawk
am 1/ With red wings on which to take flight / I'm not afraid to go to sleep / Nor to
stay up until late at night / Justtalkingwithmysweetheart,/ Thoughdeath by stabbing
may be my plight." Again, the stabbing motion from the final line is a double entendre
for the long awaited sexual act.
CAMINANDO

Text: Nicolas Guillen, from the collection WestIndies,Ltd., 1934

Walking, walking / walking! Without direction I'm walking / walking; / without money
I'm walking, / walking; / feeling so sad I'm walking, /walking. / Far away is the one
looking for me, / walking; / the one waiting for me is farther away,/ walking; / and I've
already pawned my guitar, / walking. / Ay, / my legs start getting stiff, / walking; / my
eyes see from a distance, / walking; / my hand grips hard and doesn't let go, / walking.

/ The one I grab onto and squeeze, / walking, / he'll pay the price for everyone, / walking; / I'll cut the throat of that one / walking, / and though he asks for my forgiveness,
/ I eat him up and drink him down, / I drink him down and eat him up, / walking, /
walking, / walking. . .

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SONG FOR A DARK GIRL

Original

text: Langston

Hughes

(Spanish

translation:

Xavier Villa urrutia)

Way Down South in Dixie / (Break the heart of me) / They hung my dark young lover
/ To a cross roads tree. / Way Down South in Dixie / (Bruisedbody high in air) / I
asked the white Lord Jesus / What was the use of prayer. / Way Down South in Dixie
/ (Break the heart of me) / Love is a naked shadow / On a gnarled and naked tree.
CANCI6N DE CUNA (Lullaby)
based on Blood Weddingby Federico Garcia Lorca

Wife: Sleep, clove pink. / The horse won't drink.

Mother.in.Law:Sleep, rose tree. / The horse will weep.
- Translations:

Michelle Suderman

~~
ABOUT THE PERFORMERS

"More than an orchestra," POST-CLASSICAL

ENSEMBLE
performs music in the context of its cultural heritage, incorporating folk song, dance, film, poetry, and commentary to offer deeper engagement and to cultivate adventurous new listeners. Founded by
Angel Gil-Ord6fiez and Joseph Horowitz in 2001, Post-Classical Ensemble made its oft!.
cial debut in May 2003, breaking out of classicalmusic with its implied notion of a high
culture remote from popular art. Since then, it has performed more than two dozen concerts and recorded two DVDs and a CD. On April 6 Post-ClassicalEnsemble will present "Artists in Exile," a program exploring the New World fates of the composers Kurt
Weill and Arnold Schoenberg, and the filmmaker Fritz Lang. Weill's Walt Whitman Song3
will be performed for the first time in the United States with orchestral accompaniment.
Post-ClassicalEnsemble's 2007-08 Season is made possiblewith support from the National
Endowment for the Arts. For more information log onto www.post-classicalensemble.org.
Former associate conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra of Spain, ANGEL
GIL-ORD6NEZhas led performances of symphonic music, opera, and ballet throughout
Europe, the United States, and Latin America. In the United States he has led the
American Composers Orchestra, Opera Colorado, PacificSymphony,Hartford Symphony,
Brooklyn Philharmonic, and the National Gallery Orchestra. Abroad, he conducted the
Munich Philharmonic, Solistes de Berne, and at the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival
and Bellas Artes National Theater in Mexico City. In the summer of 2000, he toured
the major music festivalsof Spain with the Valencia Symphony Orchestra in the Spanish
premiere of Mass. Born in Madrid, he worked closelywith Sergiu Celibidache for more
than six years in Germany. Gil-Ord6fiez has recorded four CDs devoted to Spanish composers, in addition to a VirgilThomson CD/DVD. Currently he is the director of orchestral studies at Wesleyan Universityin Connecticut and the music director of the Wesleyan
Ensemble of the Americas. In 2006 the King of Spain awarded him the country's highest civilian decoration, the Royal Order of Queen Isabella.
30

JOSEPHHOROWITZhas been a pioneer in classical music programming, beginning

with his tenure as artistic advisor for the annual Schubertiade at the 92nd Street Y.As
executive director of the Brooklyn Philharmonic Orchestra, he received national attention for "The Russian Stravinsky," "American Transcendentalists," "Aamenco," and
other festivals exploring the folk roots of concert works. An artistic advisor to various
American orchestras, he has created more than three dozen interdisciplinary music festivals since 1985. Horowitz is author of seven books dealing with the institutional history of classical music in the United States, notably Classical Music in America: A

Histcrry,

named one of the best books of the year by The Economist,and the recently published
Artists in Exile:How Refugeesfrom War and RevolutionTransformedtheAmerican Performing
Arts. A former New YorkTimesmusic critic, Horowitz writes regularlyfor the TimesLiterary
Supplement(UK) and contributes frequently to scholarly journals. Earlier this season, he
inaugurated the New York Philharmonic's new "Inside the Music" series, writing, hosting, and producing a presentation on Tchaikovsky'sPathetiqueSymphony.josephlwrowitz.com.
Guest Artists

EUGENIALEONis one of Mexico's most prominent artists. She began her career in
the 1970s, singing with groups that reflected the political concerns of young students.
Mter her debut solo performance in 1982 she started buil~ing her repertoire with works
by Mexican songwriters of her generation-Marcial Alejandro, Pepe Elorza,Jaime Lopez,
David Haro, and Guillermo Briseno. In 1985 she won at the OTI Festival in Sevilla,
Spain, with the song "El fandangoaqui" by Marcial Alejandro. Eugenia Leon has performed with the UNAM Philharmonic Orchestra, Cuarteto Latinoamericano, Mexico
City Philharmonic Orchestra, Philharmonic Orchestra of the Americas, and Mariachi
Vargas de Tecatitlan, and has shared the stage with such artists as Lola Beltran, Ramon
Vargas, Lila Downs, Jose Jose, Oumou Sangare, and Susana Zabaleta, among many others. In 1998 the Mexican state of Veracruz awarded her the Agustin Lara Medal for her
interpretations of the renowned composer's music. She creates theater showswith actress
and director Jesusa Rodriguez, appears in her own television program, AcUstico,and is
featured on a weekly radio program,"Meeting Eugenia Leon."
JAMESDEMSTERis the musical director of the Compania Mexicana de Zarzuela
"Domingo-Embil," the company originally founded by the parents of Placido Domingo.
For the past five years he has been the artistic director of the Coro de Madrigalistas de
Bellas Artes of the National Institute of Fine Arts in Mexico City. In New York City he
has conducted over thirty Japanese operas as the musical director of the Harmonia Opera
Company, Inc. Demster is a professor at the Escuela Superior de Musica, Mexico's leading music school.

~~

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