Gibraltar in art
A Tiny Finger in Gibraltar by Reg Reynolds
Russian composer Edison Denisov said it was one of his favourite works, a quirky composition based on a Spanish poem of a little girl’s finger that ends up in Gibraltar. The song about a Tiny Finger was the final part of Denisov’s chamber ensemble Sun of the Incas which debuted at Leningrad in 1964 and gave him international recognition. A reviewer of the work wrote: “It contains three vocal chamber works which marked his real birth as a composer having his own original voice. Though Denisov created a lot of works before ‘Sun of the Incas’ he considers this chamber cantata as his opus 1. ‘Italian Songs’ were written the same year and together with ‘Sun of the Incas’ they represent two different kinds of expression which are typical of Denisov the first one is more bright and effective, while the second one is more personal and strict.” Denisov’s biographer Peter J Schmetz wrote: “...it is the final movement of the work, ‘Song about a Tiny Finger’ that he prized the most calling it the ‘centre of the work’ and the ‘most important movement’.” The original poem was written by Chilean poet, educator and diplomat Gabriella Mistral *[see note] in 1924 while she was on a tour of Europe. An Oyster bit off my finger,
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Then and there it [the oyster] was cut down by fatigue, And it fell to the sand. And was picked up by a wave. Ahh... A whaler caught it in the sea, And brought it to Gibraltar And the fishermen sing in Gibraltar: “Whoever lost [it], search in the bazaar”. Give me a ship, I need my finger. On the ship must be a captain; And the captain must have dinner and supper, Many sailors and a drum. The drummer will go to the city of Marseille: Squares, towers and ships. An organ grinder there sings a song about a finger: On the distant sea, far from land They found the girl’s tiny finger.
The poem is quite odd and as Schmertz wrote, “...there is no resolution to this absurd yet pitiful quest. After all, the finger is taken to Gibraltar and in the course of
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the song never returns to the girl, its rightful owner, preventing the drama, such as it is, from coming to a satisfactory conclusion”. Edison Denisov was born at Tomsk, Siberia on 6th April, 1929. His father was a radio physicist and named his son Edison in honour of the great American inventor Thomas Edison. Denisov studied mathematics before deciding to become a composer. He graduated from the Moscow Conservatory and later taught orchestration and composition there. Among his students were the composers Ivan Sokolov and Yuri Kasparov and the renowned painter Sergie Pavlenko, Denisov has been described as “...a strikingly innovative Russian composer of Siberian extraction, a leading figure of his generation and a hugely influential teacher”. But to the disfavour of Soviet leaders he gravitated toward European styles of composition and his modernist
...it is the final movement of the work, ‘Song about a Tiny Finger’ that he prized the most calling it the ‘centre of the work’ and the ‘most important movement’.
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leanings provoked severe official disapproval. He was considered to be anti-collectivist and non-conformist and in 1979 was blacklisted by the Sixth Congress of the Union of Soviet Composers for his unapproved participation in some festivals of Soviet music in the West. Of his own music Denisov said: “Beauty is a principal factor in my work. This means not only beautiful sound, which, naturally, has nothing to do with outward prettiness, but beauty here means beautiful ideas as understood by mathematicians, or by Bach and Webern. The most important element of my music is its lyricism.” With the collapse of the Soviet Union Denisov became the leader of the Association for Contemporary Music, which was re-established in Moscow in 1990. He later moved to France and after a long illness died in a Paris hospital on 24th November, 1996. n Note: Gabriella Mistral (1889-1957) was the pseudonym for Lucila Godoy Alcayaga. She is the only Latin American woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature (1945). She served as Consul for Chile in Naples, Madrid, Lisbon, Nice and New York. Her portrait is on the Chilean 5000 peseta bank note.
GIBRALTAR MAGAZINE • SEPTEMBER 2012