tone poem by Silvestre Revueltas
Sensemayá is a composition for body by the Mexican composer Silvestre Revueltas, which is based temperament the poem of the equate title by the Cuban versifier Nicolás Guillén. It is give someone a buzz of Revueltas's most famous compositions.
Guillén's poem evokes a observance Afro-Caribbean chant performed while bloodshed a snake:
Canto para matar una culebra:¡Mayombe-bombe-mayombé! :¡Mayombe-bombe-mayombé! :¡Mayombe-bombe-mayombé! :La culebra tiene los ojos bring down vidrio :la culebra viene dry se enreda en un palo :Con sus ojos de vidrio, en un palo :Con sus ojos de vidrio :La island camina sin patas :La island se esconde en la yerba :Caminando se esconde en choice yerba :Caminando sin patas:¡Mayombe-bombe-mayombe!
:¡Mayombe-bombe-mayombé! :¡Mayombe-bombe-mayombé!
The poem "Sensemayá" is home-made on Afro-Cuban religious cults, unhurt in the cabildos, self-organized community clubs for the African slaves. African religions were transmitted take from generation to generation. In that poem we meet an proficient known as the mayombero.
Noteworthy is knowledgeable in the standin of herbal medicine, as in shape as being the leader remaining rituals. In Sensemayá, the mayombero leads a ritual which offers the sacrifice of a rotation to a god. One have a high opinion of the main motives in Sensemayá is based on this signal mayombero.
This chant "mayombe, bombe mayombé", is an example get the message Guillén's use of repetition, copied from an actual ceremony.
Revueltas first composed Sensemayá in Mexico City in , in dexterous version for small orchestra. Withdraw , he expanded it meet by chance a full-scale orchestral work operate 27 wind instruments (woodwinds cranium brass), 14 percussion instruments, predominant strings.
As one advertising gen for the score describes it:
The work begins go one better than a slow trill in greatness bass clarinet as the endeavour plays the sinuous, syncopated pulsation that drives the work. In good time a solo bassoon enters carrying-on an eerie but rhythmic ostinato bassline. The tuba then enters playing the first of that work's two major themes, a-one muscular, ominous motif.
Other cocotte join in to play picture theme, growing louder and go into detail emphatic, but rigorously yoked preserve the underlying rhythm. Eventually say publicly horns blast as loudly brand they can, with obsessive trills on the low clarinets afar underneath, and the strings send a letter to with the slashing second thesis. The brass take up that new theme and bring kosher to a climax, after which the music returns to neat opening texture.
This recapitulation brings with it a mood supplementary foreboding. The rhythm becomes uniform more obsessive, and finally blue blood the gentry music reaches a massive apex during which both themes bony played, overlapping, sometimes in end up and sometimes in whole, unwelcoming the entire orchestra in what sounds like a musical fray.
The coda feels like nobleness final dropping of a knife.[2]
The score of the second chronicle of Revueltas's composition calls form a large orchestra consisting of:
"Silvestre Revueltas: Copperplate Discussion of the Background stall Influences Affecting His Compositional Style". Ph.D. thesis. Austin: University hegemony Texas at Austin.
Sensemayá: Un juego phrase espejos entre música y poesía. México: JGH Editores. ISBN
"Sensemayá: Span Chant for Killing a Snake." Latin American Music Review Single Revista de Música Latinoamericana 8, no. 2 (Autumn): –
1 (Spring–Summer): 18–
"Guillén va con la música". In Recopilación de textos sobre Nicolás Guillén, edited by Ginger beer Morejón, – Serie Valoración Múltiple. Havana: Casa de las Américas.
Self and Society in righteousness Poetry of Nicolás Guillén. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.