Misa Criolla

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The Misa Criolla (German: " Creole Mass") is a mass by the Argentine composer Ariel Ramírez for 2 solo tenors , mixed choir , percussion , piano and traditional instruments from the Andean region .

background

Ariel Ramírez composed the mass in 1963 and 1964. His first inspiration for writing a religious work came to him in the 1950s, when he was still an unknown musician and lived in a monastery in West Germany (Würzburg) far from his South American homeland. There he met the sisters Elisabeth and Regina Brückner one day, who told him that a beautiful mansion in front of the monastery had been a concentration camp (KZ) during the era of National Socialism - only a few years earlier - and that they both were subject to the death penalty it said to bring food to the prisoners night after night.

In 1954, Ariel Ramírez took up his idea again on a boat trip from Liverpool to Buenos Aires and decided one day to write a musical work in honor of these two German sisters. Often, due to a translation error, it is claimed that they are nuns. In fact, there were five sisters. But only two of them spoke enough Spanish.

In the 1960s, Ariel Ramírez discussed his idea with a childhood friend and priest, Father Antonio Osvaldo Catena, then President of the Episcopal Commission for South America, who had the idea of ​​"composing a mass with rhythms and musical forms from this country".

After the first drafts were made, it was another priest and choir director, Father Jésus Gabriel Segade, who made the choir arrangements. Father Segade was also the director of the choir (Cantoría de la Basílica del Socorro) in the first version of the Creole Mass.

The Misa Criolla, together with Navidad Nuestra, is considered to be the most famous composition by Ramírez and is therefore considered to be the most important work of Argentine sacred music far beyond the borders of South America . In Latin America it is one of the most popular works of Christian music, which is also very popular with amateur choirs. She is considered an example of the inculturation of Christianity in South America.

Conception

The Misa Criolla was composed at the time when the Second Vatican Council, through the Constitution Sacrosanctum Concilium of December 4, 1963, allowed the respective national language to be accepted as the liturgical language of Holy Mass . The text corresponds to the official Spanish Mass liturgy , but the individual parts are each interpreted with a different rhythm that comes from a different region of Argentina.

It consists of five liturgical parts:

Sound recordings

The first record was released in 1964 with a print run of 2000 copies that were sold within a single day.

There are numerous recordings of Misa Criolla in their original version with two tenor solo parts, as conceived by Ramírez. In the two more recent recordings, however, a tenor solo part was eliminated and the remaining part was sung by José Carreras (1988) and Mercedes Sosa (2000).

First public performances

In 1967 Ariel Ramírez also performed the fair in Germany, Holland, Belgium and Switzerland. The first concert of this European tour took place in the Düsseldorf Rheinhalle and was also the first public performance of Misa Criolla . Previously there had only been studio recordings.

Individual further performances

  • In 1968 Misa Criolla was performed by the university choir "Branko Krsmanovic" in Belgrade under the direction of the then conductor of the Belgrade opera Bogdan Babic . The composer provided the sheet music directly.
  • In 2014, an Argentine choir (with Patricia Sosa) led by Facundo Ramírez, the composer's son, sang Misa Criolla in St. Peter's Basilica for Pope Francis .

The Misa Criolla as film music

The beginning of the mass is used as a film score in Léolo (1992).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The sisters and the composer, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 20./21. December 2014, p. 76
  2. ↑ Ramírez, Ariel (2006): La creación de la “Misa criolla” , Raíces Argentinas