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¿Esta música que tocan
en la velada del pueblo,
llega hasta la luna blanca
y triste del cementerio?
Las casas están cerradas,
nadie pasa... allá en el cielo
tiemblan, lejanas y mudas,
las estrellas... ¡Oh! ¡los muertos
que con sus bocas, un día
rojas de sangre, rieron
a esta hora, cuando el vals
se abría hacia los luceros!
Muertos que yo conocí,
que me besé, que me diéron
su mano, que se vestían
de seda roa y...
Silencio
para siempre... están cerradas
las puertas; allá en el cielo
conversan lejanamente
las estrellas. Y está el pueblo
blanco de luna y azul
de madrugada y de sueño,
al son de esta vieja música
que llega hasta el cementerio.
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Text Authorship:
- by Juan Ramón Jiménez Mantecón (1881 - 1958), appears in Las pastorales, first published 1905 [author's text not yet checked against a primary source]
Musical settings (art songs, Lieder, mélodies, (etc.), choral pieces, and other vocal works set to this text), listed by composer (not necessarily exhaustive):
- by Joelle Wallach (b. 1946), "¿Esta música que tocan" [ vocal quartet or chorus a cappella ], from La musica, los muertos y las estrellas, no. 3 [sung text checked 1 time]
Available translations, adaptations or excerpts, and transliterations (if applicable):
- ENG English (Joelle Wallach) , "Can this music, playing", copyright ©, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]
This text was added to the website between May 1995 and September 2003.
Line count: 25
Word count: 117
Can this music, playing
in the village square,
reach the white moon and
the sadness of the cemetery?
The houses are closed up
and nothing goes by... everything in the sky
trembles; the distant and silent
stars... Oh! the dead
who, with their mouths, once red as blood,
laughed at hours like these
when the waltz opened
toward the morning stars!
The dead whom I knew,
whom I kissed, whose hands
I held, who dressed
in red silk and...
Silence
as before... the doors
are all shut; in the sky
the stars converse distantly.
And this is the town,
white from the moon and blue
from the dawn and from dreams,
at the sound of this ancient music
reaching up to the cemetery.
Text Authorship:
- Translation from Spanish (Español) to English copyright © by Joelle Wallach, (re)printed on this website with kind permission. To reprint and distribute this author's work for concert programs, CD booklets, etc., you must ask the copyright-holder(s) directly for permission. If you receive no response, you must consider it a refusal.
Joelle Wallach. We have no current contact information for the copyright-holder.
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Based on:
- a text in Spanish (Español) by Juan Ramón Jiménez Mantecón (1881 - 1958), appears in Las pastorales, first published 1905
This text was added to the website between May 1995 and September 2003.
Line count: 25
Word count: 124