Despertar

“Despertar” is a collaboration with the acclaimed poet Carlos Pintado. It was commissioned by a consortium of four choirs: Consonare Choral Community, founding & artistic director Sarah Kaufold; Peninsula Women’s Chorus, artistic director Anne K. Hege; West Village Chorale, artistic director Colin Britt; and the Yale Glee Club, director Jeffrey Douma; and the premieres are taking place March 2022-April 2023. The poem that Carlos wrote for this project is full of surreal imagery and emotional ambiguity. It speaks to me of the beauty in self-understanding and “labilidad,” openness to change. I attempted to bring out musical colors to paint the beauty of Carlos’ words, using “overtone trills” (vowel alternations that result in flickering overtones) to create a shimmering texture. The harmonic language illustrates the continual change of the poem, shifting through a dizzying array of keys, ultimately completing a journey to the parallel major of the opening minor key.

Despertar

Despertar y verse, no en la hoja, no en el árbol, siquiera en el campo que se extiende sin remedio. Despertar y verse tan solo en la semilla, en su conciencia, pujando, y saber que nada de eso existe, que pronto seremos consumidos por el paisaje, que lloverá sobre nosotros, que una mano más o menos hermosa, humana siempre, nos lanzará al polvo y que el polvo hará lo mismo que la mano y que nadie vendrá a hablarnos de sosiego, de labilidad, porque todo pasará tan rápido como un canto de estrellas en el cielo.

—Carlos Pintado

Awakening

To awaken and see oneself, not in the leaf, not in the tree, not even in the field that stretches relentlessly. To awaken and see oneself only in the seed, in its conscience, striving, and knowing that nothing of this exists, that soon we’ll be consumed by the landscape, that it will rain upon us, that a hand that’s more or less lovely, always human, will cast us into the dust and that the dust will do the same as the hand and that no one shall come to speak to us of tranquility, because everything will happen as fast as a song of the stars in the sky.

—Carlos Pintado, translated into English by Lawrence Schimel

About Carlos Pintado

Poet, writer, essayist, and playwright Carlos Pintado (Pinar del Río, Cuba, 1974) is the recipient of the Paz Poetry Prize, awarded by The National Poetry Series for his book Nueve Monedas, which was published in a bilingual edition by Akashic Books and included in the magazine World Literature Today among the most notable books of 2015 as well as the Vancouver Poetry House in its list of the 10 best books. He is also the recipient of the San Jordi Poetry Prize for Habitación a oscuras. His other publications include El Arbol Rojo, La Seducción del Minotauro, Los bosques de Mortefontaine, Los Nombres de la noche, El unicornio y otros poemas, Cuaderno del falso amor impuro, Taubenschlag, and La sed del último que mira. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The American Poetry Review, World Literature Today, and Raspa Magazine, among others.