One of the great pleasures of writing the posts on this site is that I’m sometimes able to get in touch with living composers and badger them with nosy questions. I was extremely curious about this set of songs because they all have Spanish texts, and yet Sid Robinovitch is Canadian, has a Jewish background, and wrote the pieces as a commission for the Association of Canadian Choral Conductors. There didn’t seem to be much of a Latin tango connection in any of this. So originally I professed my mystification and moved on, but later it occurred to me that I could just ask. I e-mailed Robinovitch after looking up his contact info on his website, and here is part of his very gracious and prompt reply:
I became interested in Sefardic music and culture (you can check out my CD “Sefarad“), so it was natural for me to write a song with a Spanish flavour. No, I was given no direction by the Association of Canadian Choral Conductors when they commissioned me to write a piece to be premiered at their annual convention, Podium 2000. I had sort of a rudimentary knowledge of Spanish, and with the help of an English translation, could piece together the text.
Something in his words jogged my memory: hadn’t I written about the Sephardic-Spanish connection somewhere else? Yes indeed–back in December 2019, about a selection titled “Ocho Kandelikas” by a woman named Flory Jagoda. I would encourage you to follow the link and read all about how the Spanish Jews were expelled from their country in the 1400’s and thus their culture and language spread throughout parts of Turkey and eastern Europe. One Spanish dialect that these displaced people spoke was “Ladino,” which is the language that Flory Jagoda used. Robinovitch took the whole Spanish idea further, though, going with three different poets from Latin America who wrote in what I guess I’ll call “plain” Spanish. (Although the poems are anything but plain.) The most popular of the three Canciones, “Noche de Lluvia,” (“Night of Rain”) was written by the Uruguayan poet and feminist Juana de Ibarbourou, also known as Juana de América. The second-most popular (and here I’m going solely by how many YouTube videos I can find for each song) is “Sensemayá” by the Afro-Cuban poet Nicolás Guillén. And the third poem is “Olvido” by the Mexican poet Octavio Paz. He’s the most famous of the three, but the song with his text has only a couple of YT videos. All three poets lived during the 20th century. If you’d like to read the poems with translations, you can access that material below the performance videos.
Many of Robinovitch’s concert works are centered around Jewish themes, including Sons of Jacob, Three Songs from Medieval Jewish Life, and settings of the Hebrew liturgy. His most recent composition that I’ve been able to find is something with a very somber theme: Eddy’s Story, composed at the request of a Holocaust survivor named Eddy Sterk. I’d recommend reading this article if you’re interested in more details. He’s also written music for TV and theater, and his music has won or been nominated for numerous awards. With all this achievement you’d expect Robinovitch to be a bit full of himself, but he’s charmingly modest. I ran across an interview with him in a Canadian newspaper, and here’s how he described his early career:
Believe it or not, the only thing that I ever really wanted to be was a composer. Of course when I was young I had notions about becoming: a radio announcer (yes, I’m a child of the radio age!), a baker (I was pretty good at helping my Mom with her apple and raisin pies), or a rodeo performer (I had the whole cowboy outfit – boots, hat, chaps, shirt and string-tie). None of these things seemed practical so I just kept going to school, got a graduate degree and ended up teaching in the social sciences.
Makes it sound as if he was a high-school social studies teacher, doesn’t it? (Not that there’s anything wrong with that—I was a high-school SS teacher myself for several years.) But he was a little more high-powered than that, having earned a doctorate in communications from the University of Illinois and taught at York University in Toronto. Then he got back into music. I can’t resist quoting him again:
I started by writing little ditties for piano – then more involved pieces with other instruments and voices. My first big triumph was a public performance of a piece for choir entitled “The Eggplant Epithalamion” on a text by then celebrated novelist and poet Erica Jong. After the show we served egg-plant and humous at my apartment.
You have to love someone who provides the refreshments for his own concert! His musical career just took off from there. But with all his accomplishments he remains a little diffident about calling himself a “composer.” After all, he says, when people hear that word they think of Beethoven and Mozart, and he would never deign to put himself in their league.
Whatever he may say, it seems pretty clear that he can call himself a composer any time he likes.
Here are the YouTube videos for the three sections of Canciones.
This version of “Noche” has a nice intro by the conductor:
Text and translation for “Noche de Lluvia” (“Night of Rain”) by Juana de Ibarbourou; no translator credit given.
| Espera, no te duermas. Quedate atento a lo que dice el viento Yo a lo que dice el agua que golpea Con sus dedos menudos en los vidrios. Todo mi corazon se vuelve oidos Para escuchar a la hechizada hermana, Que ha dormido en el cielo, Que ha visto el sol, Y baja ahora, elastica y alegre. Escuchemos el ritmo de la lluvia. Apoya entre mis senos Tu frente taciturna. Yo sentire el latir de tus dos sienes, Palpitantes y tibias. Como estara de alegre el trigo ondeante! Con que avidez se exponjara la hierba! Cuantos diamantes colgaran ahora Del ramaje profundo de los pinos! Espera, no te duermas. Esta noche Somos los dos un mundo, Aislado por el viento y por la lluvia Entre las cuencas tibias de una alcoba. |
Wait, do not sleep. Listen to what the wind is saying And to what the water says tapping With little fingers upon the window panes. My heart is listening To hear the enchanted sister Who has slept in the sky, Who has seen the sun, And now comes down, buoyant and gay. Let us listen to the rhythm of the rain. Cradle between my breasts Your silent forehead I will feel the beating of your temples, Throbbing and warm. How gay the waving wheat will be! How eagerly the grass will thrive! What diamonds will cluster now In the deep branches of the pines! Wait, do not sleep. Tonight The two of us are a world, Isolated by wind and rain In the warmth of a bedroom. |
Text and translation for “Sensemayá canto para matar una culebra” (“Chant to Kill a Snake”) by Nicolás Guillén, trans. by Willis Knapp Jones
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¡Mayombe-bombe-mayombé!
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¡Mayombe**-bombe-mayombé! ¡Mayombe-bombe-mayombé! ¡Mayombe-bombe-mayombé! The snake has eyes of glass; The snake coils on a stick; With his eyes of glass on a stick, With his eyes of glass. The snake can move without feet; The snake can hide in the grass; Crawling he hides in the grass, Moving without feet. ¡Mayombe-bombe-mayombe! ¡Mayombe-bombe-mayombe! ¡Mayombe-bombe-mayombe! Hit him with an ax and he dies; Hit him! Go on, hit him! Don’t hit him with your foot or he’ll bite; Don’t hit him with your foot, or he’ll get away. Sensemayá, the snake, sensemayá. Sensemayá, with his eyes, sensemayá. Sensemayá, with his tongue, sensemayá. Sensemayá, with his mouth, sensemayá. The dead snake cannot eat; the dead snake cannot hiss; he cannot move, he cannot run! The dead snake cannot look; the dead snake cannot drink; he cannot breathe, he cannot bite. ¡Mayombe-bombe-mayombé! Sensemayá, the snake . . . ¡Mayombe-bombe-mayombé! Sensemayá, does not move . . . ¡Mayombe-bombe-mayombé! Sensemayá, the snake . . . ¡Mayombe-bombe-mayombé! Sensemayá, he died! |
Text and translation for “Olvido” (“Oblivion”) by Octavio Paz, trans. by Jim Simons
| Cierra los ojos ya oscuras piérdete bajo el follaje rojo de tus párpados. Húndete en esas espirales del sonido que zumba y cae y suena allí, remoto, hacia el sitio del tímpano, como una catarata ensordecida. Hunde tu ser a oscuras, anégate la piel, y más, en tus entrañas; que te deslumbre y ciegue el hueso, lívida centella, y entre simas y golfos de tiniebla abra su azul penacho al fuego fatuo. En esa sombra líquida del sueño moja tu desnudez; abandona tu forma, espuma que no sabe quien dejó en la orilla; piérdete en ti, infinita, en tu infinito ser, ser que se pierde en otro mar: olvídate y olvídame. En ese olvido sin edad ni fondo, labios, besos, amor, todo renace: las estrellas son hijas de la noche. |
Close your already darkened eyes, Lose yourself under the red leaves of your eyelids. Sink into those spirals of the sound that hums and falls and sounds there, remote, to the place of the eardrum, like a deafened cataract.Sink your being into the dark, drown your skin, and more, in your gut; to dazzle you and blind the bone, livid sparkles, and between chasms and gulfs of darkness open its blue plume to the wildfire Wet your nakedness in that liquid shadow of sleep; abandon your shape, foam that does not know who left it on the shore; get lost in yourself, infinite, in your infinite being, to be lost in another sea: forget and forget me.In that oblivion without age or background, lips, kisses, love, everything is reborn: the stars are daughters of the night. |
Here’s a bit of interpretation for Paz’s poem: “Paz believes that poetry could lead a reader to a perceptual and spiritual transcendence. By bending perception and manipulating the senses, Paz invites his readers to experience poetic transcendence with him.” from “Transcendent Synesthetic Poetry of Octavio Paz” by Lionel Michael.
© Debi Simons
