Misa Criolla

Ten years earlier Ramirez has wanted to write a mass in folkloric idiom, but clerics had advised him that a mass sung in Spanish was not permissible. When the Vatican Council refuted the longstanding sole legitimacy of Latin, Ramirez had already written most of the Misa Criolla. He quickly enlisted the help of the Liturgical Advisor to Latin America, Padre Catena, to finesse the text, and the director of the Choir of the Basilica del Socorro in Santiago, Padre Segade, to craft choral parts.

Ramirez, An Argentinean himself, did not simply set a text in Spanish: he infused his Misa with Hispano-American flavor, using traditional melodies, rhythms, harmonies, and instrumentation.

The Kyrie ("Lord, have mercy upon us") captures the vast solitude and aridity of the plateaux of the Andes. Two Andean songs, vidala and baguala, are combined. Vidala, a song of Argentine Indians, has two voices in parallel thirds, accompanied by drums and guitar. The baguala's rhythm pattern is long, short-short.

The Gloria ("Glory to God in the highest, and peace to all people on earth") is in three sections with an introduction. A plaintive and haunting instrumental call, the yaravi, opens the movement. This breaks into the first carnavalito, a joyful, catchy duple-meter dance found collectively in north-west Argentina, Bolivia, and Peru. A reprise of the soulful yaravi heard in the introduction is now given to the choir and soloists as a recitative, asking for the forgivemess of sins. The festive, carnival scene returns with even more ebullience than the first.

The Credo ("God almighty who made heaven and earth"), the confession of belief in Jesus Christ is underscored by the chacarera trunca, in which duple rhythms interlock with triples in the percussion and alternate between measures in the voice parts, setting up a heightened excitement.

The Sanctus ("Holy, holy, holy") is fuelled by the tension of the cochabambino: again, two rhythms butt against each other: one a defiant short, long; the other a more loping long, short, long. At times as many as seven different rhythms are played simultaneously.

The Agnus Dei ("Lamb of God") is a pampa: reverential and tender, it nobly beseeches peace and brings to a close a work that has run the gamut from earthy exuberance to innermost spiritual yearning.

Ironically and magnificently, this music, so rooted in a specific regional folklore, has profound resonance that is both personal and universal.

Program notes © Shulamit Hoffmann