Earlier this
year I was introduced, courtesy of a friend, to the music of Osvaldo Golijov (b. 1960). The music of Golijov, who was born and grew up in Argentinia of East European and Judaic
descent, draws upon a wide spectrum including experimental
and electronic, Jazz and Pop, Klezmer music, the Tango and the folk traditions of World music. In addition to these varied musical influences Golijov has been well-qualified to absorbing world-wide music languages in his career. He moved from Argentina to Israel in 1983 to study music at the Rubin Academy at Jerusalem. In 1986 he relocated to America where he has taught music at the College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, Massachusetts since 1991.
The music-making of the Latin-American world, the city of Jerusalem and medieval Spain are of special inspirational value to Golijov. Each of these locations were once seminal places at the crossroads of overlapping cultures, where Christian, Muslim and Jew once peacefully co-existed.
I was probably
in a highly-charged emotional state last winter anyway when first hearing the
electrifying incantation by singer Dawn Upshaw which opens Ayre (2004). Golijov's song-cycle was influenced by a
creative urge to create a companion work
to Luciano Berio’s Folk Songs (1964) which draws upon traditional melodies from
America , Armenia ,
Sicily , Genoa ,
Sardinia, the Auvergne and Azerbaijan .
Golijov’s song cycle is no less eclectic and diverse than Berio's. It features the music of southern Spain and the
intermingling of Christian, Arab and Jewish cultures with texts from the Sephardic, Arabic, Hebrew and Sardinian
languages.
The influence of Berio’s
folk-song cycle is most evident in the gentle and traditional Sephardic song
which follows the incandescent opening. The next song Tancas serradas a muru in stark contrast is defiant and aggressive, near punk and urban rap-like in style, comes as a complete shock to those who imagine the performing persona of classically-trained singer Dawn Upshaw to be confined to the demure. Her reciting of Be a string, water, to my
guitar a calm, reflective, unaccompanied poem is insightful, while the song Yah , annah emtza’cha, aurally and vividly depicts the era of medieval Spain in which
Muslim, Jewish and Christian cultures once lived harmoniously. Golijov explains why Medieval Spain and the era of peaceful inter-relationship of religious faiths is close to his heart when commenting upon his song-cycle-
'With a little
bend, a melody goes from Jewish to Arab to Christian. How connected these
cultures are and how terrible it is when they don’t understand each. The grief
that we are living in the world today has already happened for centuries but
somehow harmony was possible between
these civilizations’
The song-cycle Ayre is one of several Golijov
compositions written specifically with the qualities and
interpretative insight of the mezzo-soprano Dawn Upshaw and her gorgeous singing voice in
mind. The subject of the strengths and weaknesses of composers writing with specific voices in
mind may well re-surface in musical discussion next year when the centenary of the
British composer Benjamin Britten (b.Lowestoft 1913) occurs. Britten wrote many song-cycles and opera parts specifically with the voice of his longtime partner the tenor Peter Pear in mind. Whether or not vocal works written for one specific voice in performance
and interpretation can be completely replicated by another, remains an open question.
Dawn Upshaw’s
recording of the song-cycle Ayre
concludes evoking Greek mythology with the tale of Ariadne in the labyrinth, a tense, mysterious and coiling musical theme
which highlights the instrumental
playing of the chamber ensemble, the Andalucian Dogs, as it slowly
fades into silence. Golijov’s final song in the cycle perfectly highlights the cross-fertilization of musical cultures within the Mediterranean
basin far better than words ever can. Golijov himself spoke of the creative
motivation of composing his song-cycle-
The idea is to
create a forest and for Dawn to walk in it. There is no real sense of ‘form’ –in
the sense of Beethovian development – but rather lots of detours and
discoveries’.
The title alone
of the opera Ainadamar (Arabic: Fountain
of Tears) appealed to me as the next work by Golijov work worth hearing. The opera’s title alludes to an
ancient well near Granada in Spain where the
poet Federico Garcia Lorca was murdered by Spanish Fascists in August 1936. First performed at the Tanglewood Festival in August 2003 Ainadamar is primarily based upon traditional Spanish music, in particular the Flamenco style. Once more the hypnotic voice of Dawn Upshaw is featured, this
time performing as Margarita Xirgu, a Catalan tragedian and Lorca's lover and muse, who collaborated with him on several of his plays. Without wanting to post spoilers there's a very startling moment in Golijov's opera about Garcia Lorca’s murder. In recent times the terror and trauma of
the Spanish civil war is the backdrop for film-director Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) a harrowing account of an episode in
the Spanish civil war interlinked with a fantasy world of magical
realism.