Gabriela Lena Frank
PACHAMAMA MEETS AN ODE
for Orchestra and SATB Chorus
Full Score
From the G. Schirmer Rental Library
Date of Printing________________
G. Schirmer, Inc.
New York, NY
Gabriela Lena Frank
PACHAMAMA MEETS AN ODE
for Orchestra and SATB Chorus
Full Score
Commissioned with the generous support of The Tang Fund on behalf of Agnes Hsu-Tang and Oscar Tang, for The Philadelphia Orchestra and Yannick Nézet-Séguin.
Co-commissioned by Uppsala Kammerorkester, Rebecca Miller, Chief Conductor.
G. Schirmer, Inc.
New York, NY
2 Flutes (2nd doubling Piccolo)
2 Oboes
2 Clarinets in B b
2 Bassoons
2 Horns in F
2 Trumpets in C
Timpani
Percussion (2 players)
1. Marimba, Suspended Cymbal
2. Tam-tam, Triangle, Tubular Bells, Xylophone
SATB Chorus
Strings
Score is transposed.
Program Note:
I am a believer of human-driven climate change, reluctantly so. That is what five straight years of apocalyptic fires in your beloved home state will do. And I’m left asking: How on earth did we get here?
Many climatologists attribute the origins of humankind’s destructive behaviors to the Industrial Revolution, the backdrop to Ludwig van Beethoven’s life. Just as the iconic 9th Symphony (Ode to Joy) was coming to life, across an ocean, the exploitation of the New World’s natural resources (along with those from Africa and the Indian subcontinent) fueled Europe’s churning engines of commerce and technology, with brutal results for native Americans.
Among these people, the Cusco School of Painters were in quiet revolt. Reaching the peak of their expressive power as Beethoven was achieving the same, these largely anonymous Peruvian indios, who had been drafted into a service of pictorial evangelism, mastered oil and canvas to portray scenes from biblical stories. Yet, amidst depictions of European countrysides and visages, images of native birds, animals, flowers, and trees were snuck in, an act of subversive preservation of the gifts of Pachamama (“Mother Earth” in the Inca-Quechua language).
In my choral-orchestral work Pachamama Meets an Ode, Beethoven is treated to a scene of an indigenous painter plying his trade in a Spanish church with Moorish (Mudéjar) arches constructed on the remains of a demolished Inca temple. The painter hides spirits from bygone native cultures (Chavín… Moche… Huarí) amidst European figurines, equipping them with protective natural talismans (huacas) and friendly fauna. He is readying his subjects for their journeys, as paintings, into lands violently transformed by colonization. Even old indigenous myths take on new meanings as a Peruvian pistaqo is no longer simply a highland boogie man, but also an urban capitalist murdering indios for their body fat to grease factory machines.
In our modern day global climate crisis, lands are increasingly fallow, polluted rivers astonishingly burst into flames, and animals (such as the amanto fish, the puna grebe duck, and the viscacha chinchilla rodent) disappear into extinction. Gifts from the past–especially odes–must be looked at with new and searching eyes.
Pachamama asks, challenging us: What of joy?
This work is dedicated to my niece and nephew, Camila and Alexander Frank, who shall inherit the earth.
—Gabriela Lena Frank
Pachamama Meets an Ode:
Great Man, there is no joy if we set aflame, flood, starve our home.
Great Man, behold across the sea, your contemporary, a witness to appetites: A man of a conquered race, anonymous, a painter, an artist like you.
It was not strange, in the shadows of the Mudéjar church built on Inca stone, that endearments could be heard. A painter murmurs to his children, insistent spirits from the past yielding before his brush: a Chavín jaguar-god, a Moche monkey, a Huarí harpy in the shadows of the Mudéjar church built on Inca stone.
“My children, I must hide you… I tuck your wings, Huari harpy, Inside the sleeves of San Asisi. I pin your claws, Ai Apaec To the lapel of San Gabriel. Your brow, O Lord of Sipán, I bury under the hat of a Conquistador.”
The painter readies his children for lands he no longer recognizes. Mountaineers becoming fishermen… fishermen becoming miners… miners planting deserts… deserts becoming a city… city pistaqos hunting mountaineers.
“My children, I release you. I shall paint you protector huacas: This gleaming stone, this lush river, this verdant mountain… And I shall paint you Pachamama’s glorious creatures.”
In the shadows of the Mudéjar church built on Inca stone, a witness to appetites lays down his brush.
Great Man, the river is on oily fire! Great Man, the land is dry as dust! Where is the amanto fish, la puna grebe, la viscacha chinchilla?
The canvas empties. Pachamama asks: What of odes? What of joy?
—Gabriela Lena Frank
PACHAMAMA MEETS AN ODE
Gabriela Lena Frank (2020)
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