On the Castelnuovo-Tedesco Version of Platero y yo

Abstract

Music is feeling, then --Wallace stevens ROUGHLY fifty years ago there appeared two approaches to Platero y yo. On one hand, Michael P. Predmore published his thoroughgoing 1970 study of of Platero y yo, which Hispanic literary criticism has rightly regarded as foundational. Predmore defines structure as the underlying principle or principles which give shape to an expressive (56), which he identifies as the mysterious process of metamorphosis (64). On other, and only a decade earlier, Italian composer, Mario CastelnuovoTedesco, published his little-known Platero y yo, per voce recitante e chitarra, op. 190, 1960. My purpose in what follows is not to compare these two approaches to famous work but to see how well musician's world of Platero y yo reflects that depicted in poemario en prosa of Spanish poet. Can it be said to have done justice to Juan Ramon's masterpiece? At first glance prospect does not look promising: one hundred and thirty-eight pieces in Juan Ramon's poemario are drastically reduced in Castelnuovo-Tedesco's platero to a mere twenty-eight, divided into four books of seven items, as follows (titles and numbers at left are as printed in score, under C-T, original numbers are on right, under JRJ) (see p. 200). Platero y yo contains some fifty direct or indirect references to seasons, which include names of four seasons, of several months, and of seasonal religious festivals (Carnaval, Navidad, Reyes). Some of these form titles of specific poemas. These references do not always follow normal calendar sequence: one season often recalls or anticipates another. The use of internal flashback and flash-forward reminds us that, although of Platero y yo reflects seasonal cycle, temporal span of work is not confined to that one single year in which Platero may be seen to progress from birth in spring to death following winter. Juan Ramon has confessed that Platero is a composite of several donkeys who served as his companion during his life in Moguer. The year covered in work is thus a symbolic one of repeatedly changing seasons in which donkey and master each mature. (1) While only six of Juan Ramon's seasonal references occur in Castelnuovo-Tedesco's reduced cycle they represent all three categories of season, month, and festival, either in title or text. Both works begin in Platero's childhood and end on anniversary of his death and apparent resurrection. But while Platero y yo is structured on solar cycle of earth's four seasons, Castelnuovo-Tedesco's reduced version appears to be based on that of lunar month, each set of seven pieces corresponding to phases of moon. At same time each of these phases reflects beginning and end of complete solar cycle of original Spanish text. (2) If Castelnuovo-Tedesco's reduction of Juan Ramon's one hundred and thirty-eight prose poems into a new work of twenty-eight pieces divided into four groups of seven is indeed based on ordering principle of lunar month, composer would have found ample evidence in spanish text to support such a plan. There are fourteen settings of night sky in Platero y yo, eight clustered from poemas II-XIII, remaining six scattered from LIX to CXX. Castelnuovo-Tedesco uses five of these: II, III, X, XIII, and CXII. The word occurs in eleven poemas in Juan Ramon, eight between LII and LXXXIII. Castelnuovo-Tedesco uses five of these, including LII, LXXVIII, LXXXIII triad. The pivotal occurrence is La luna itself, brief but as full as an egg with imagery of circularity and transformation. In an almost casual visual echo of paradox of El pozo Platero drinks dos cubos de agua con estrellas (201), from barnyard well and lento y distraido (201) returns to his master lying in stable doorway. …