Tribute: a Piece dedicated to Oswaldo Payá and Harold Cepero
A piece composed by Luis Alberto Mariño Fernández and dedicated to Oswaldo Payá and Harold Cepero
Tribute is a piece composed in August 2021 by Luis Alberto Mariñno Fernández. It is a tribute to Oswaldo Payá and Harold Cepero, whom Luis Alberto believes (as many of us do) were assassinated by the Cuban dictatorship. The piece captures the violence and tragedy evoked by the killing of two larger than life human beings and democracy leaders. If you would like to find out more about the life, legacy and ideas of Oswaldo Paya, we recommend this article titled “Oswaldo Paya´s Ideas for the Right to have Rights”
That is why I decided to make it like an epitaph piece, a piece concentrated practically in little more than a minute, and which I intend to dialogue on several levels with emptiness, with silence, with violence. I seek this certainly abstract relationship by establishing two contrasting temporal zones, the two interventions of the string trio with their expressive and condensed gestures, and the alternating unison of clarinet and flute. The string trio emphasizes brutality and tragedy, while the unison duet attempts to manage a temporal density extended in the void itself.
— Luis Alberto Mariño Fernandez
The first victory we can claim is that our hearts are free of hatred. Hence we say to those who persecute us and who try to dominate us: “You are my brother. I do not hate you, but you are not going to dominate me by fear. I do not wish to impose my truth, nor do I wish you to impose yours on me. We are going to seek the truth together.” This is the liberation which we are proclaiming.”
— Oswaldo Payá, December 17, 2002
Article in Spanish: “Tribute’: notas sobre un doble homenaje”
English translation below by Democratic Spaces.
Tribute is a piece composed in August 2021, written for flute, clarinet and string trio.
By Luis Alberto Mariño Fernández
English translation by Democratic Spaces
Brief introduction
I composed this short piece for the Oregon Bach Festival Composer Symposium 2021, which organized several weeks of meetings, discussions and performances. As a final result they prepared four virtual concerts under the general title Music of Hope & Resilience. With this broad title in mind, I decided to compose a work in homage to Oswaldo Payá and Harold Cepero, who, in my opinion, were assassinated by the Cuban dictatorship on July 22, 2012.
Brief commentary and description of the work
At first I thought of writing a longer piece that would go through different contrasting zones, taking as a model the piece composed in 2013 for solo viola Lamentación, also dedicated to the memory of Oswaldo and Harold and performed at the first mass held in homage to them in Havana, in the church of the Colón Cemetery. While I was putting together the material for the piece, the historic demonstrations of July 11, where the Cuban people raised their voices asking for freedom, took place. The serious events, all the repression unleashed by the Cuban dictatorship to subdue the voices and just claims necessarily occupied my attention and my will; however, that did not make me abandon the project of composing this piece, but rather to search more effectively for the center of the drama I want to evoke.
That is why I decided to make it like an epitaph piece, a piece concentrated practically in little more than a minute, and which I intend to dialogue on several levels with emptiness, with silence, with violence. I seek this certainly abstract relationship by establishing two contrasting temporal zones, the two interventions of the string trio with their expressive and condensed gestures, and the alternating unison of clarinet and flute. The string trio emphasizes brutality and tragedy, while the unison duet attempts to manage a temporal density extended in the void itself.
The beginning of the piece is established as a rupture; the silence prior to the performance is violently broken; an expressive and condensed zone is opened by the string trio, which quickly leaves the clarinet alone. The diverse rhythmic subdivisions of the string trio, the glissandos, accents, vibratos, scratches, and the different intervals with micro-tonal affectations, produce a saturation of information that necessarily produces confusion. When the clarinet is left alone on the E-flat pitch, the center of the piece begins, which is this dialogue between the clarinet and the flute on the same pitch.
The unison is for me an image of emptiness. Holding a tone and extending it so long (considering the contrast with the condensation at the beginning) can equally provoke a lot of tension. The transitions between flute and clarinet establish another level of rhythmic events on a very slow and unpredictable plane. The duality of pure and impure sound in the flute contrasts with the impassivity and purity of the clarinet sound. More and more time is left to the flute until the string trio intervenes for the second time. Once again, this produces a surprising and unpredictable cut, a saturation of information that quickly disappears leaving this time the flute, which sustains the E-flat sound with a mixture of air; finally the clarinet concludes with a very rapid transition of intensity on this same pitch, and so concludes the work.
Conclusion
This abrupt ending, which probably leaves many in uncertainty and extends that contrasting emptiness that arose after the work, but is part of it, is also an important and central message. In the face of the horror provoked by violence and injustice we are perplexed. There is a void that wounds us deeply; our intentions, our desires are suspended and reveal their weakness. However, right there, from that same deserted place, we can find the mystery of God's love, which, like José Martí after living the extreme experience of imprisonment in colonial Cuba, made him say before the executioners: "God exists and I come in his name"; and later: "I will neither hate you nor curse you".
Finally, thinking of Cuban examples of hope and resilience, I focused on Oswaldo and Harold, because they were two people full of life and desires for a different Cuba where respect, diversity and democracy were possible. Despite all the risks and threats, they sustained hope, because their struggle is the eternal struggle to achieve the social good, and the sacred hope of the transcendent Good. This brief and condensed musical work proposes, from the sound abstraction itself, a direct encounter with the tragedy of injustice and the violent abuse of power, but always sustaining the hope and resilience born from the rawness and desolation itself.
With this brief work I hope to open a door towards the knowledge of their lives, and the message they give to all Cubans and to all those who seek the good. With this small tribute I am grateful for the example that they will eternally give us, because, as Oswaldo rightly said and as they both demonstrated, many times, with their life testimonies: "The first victory that we can declare is that we have no hatred in our hearts".
I