El Cimarrón is a composition by the German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 composer

Composer

A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...

 Hans Werner Henze

Hans Werner Henze

Hans Werner Henze is a German composer of prodigious output best known for "his consistent cultivation of music for the theatre throughout his life"...

, written when the composer lived in Cuba

Cuba

The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...

 in 1969-1970. It is subtitled Autobiographie des geflohenen Sklaven Esteban Montejo (The autobiography of the runaway slave Esteban Montejo), and is based around the autobiographical passages recounted by Montejo to Miguel Barnet

Miguel Barnet

Miguel Barnet is a Cuban writer, novelist and ethnographer. He studied sociology at the University of Havana, under Fernando Ortiz , the pioneer of Cuban anthropology. Fernando Ortíz's studies of Afro-Cuban cultures influenced many of the themes, both literary and scholarly, of Barnet.-Early...

 in 1963. Montejo was also a veteran of the Cuban War of Independence

Cuban War of Independence

Cuban War of Independence was the last of three liberation wars that Cuba fought against Spain, the other two being the Ten Years' War and the Little War...

 (1895-98).

Henze described the score as a recital for four musicians. They consist of a baritone

Baritone

Baritone is a type of male singing voice that lies between the bass and tenor voices. It is the most common male voice. Originally from the Greek , meaning deep sounding, music for this voice is typically written in the range from the second F below middle C to the F above middle C Baritone (or...

 who portrays El Cimarron himself, a guitar

Guitar

The guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...

ist, a flautist

Flautist

A flautist or flutist is a musician who plays an instrument in the flute family. See List of flautists.The choice of "flautist" versus "flutist" is the source of dispute among players of the instrument...

 and a percussionist, although all four musicians play percussion instruments during the work. The flautist also plays the Japanese ryuteki

Ryuteki

The is a Japanese transverse fue made of bamboo. It is used in gagaku, the Shinto classical music associated with Japan's imperial court. The sound of the ryūteki is said to represent the dragons which ascend the skies between the heavenly lights and the people of the earth...

and the Italian scacciapensieri, as well as the four conventional orchestral flutes.

The work received its premiere at the 1970 Berlin Festival, with William Pearson

William Pearson (baritone)

William Pearson was an American born baritone, who spent most of his career in Europe, especially in Germany. He was notable for his wide repertoire, stretching from Bach and Handel to spirituals, modernist and avant garde compositions....

 as El Cimarron, and the soloists Karlheinz Zoeller (flute), Leo Brouwer

Leo Brouwer

Juan Leovigildo Brouwer Mezquida is a Cuban composer, conductor and guitarist. He is the grandson of Cuban composer Ernestina Lecuona Casado.-Biography:...

 (guitar) and Stomu Yamash'ta (percussion) under the direction of the composer. The UK premiere was in June 1970 at the Aldeburgh Festival

Aldeburgh Festival

The Aldeburgh Festival is an English arts festival devoted mainly to classical music. It takes place each June in the Aldeburgh area of Suffolk, centred on the main concert hall at Snape Maltings...

 with the same forces.

Tableaux

The work is divided into fifteen "tableaux" which are essentially songs, although these make several vocal demands on the baritone, including laughter, whistling, shouting, screaming and even falsetto

Falsetto

Falsetto is the vocal register occupying the frequency range just above the modal voice register and overlapping with it by approximately one octave. It is produced by the vibration of the ligamentous edges of the vocal folds, in whole or in part...

.

1. Die Welt (The World)
2. Der Cimarrón
3. Die Sklaverei (Slavery)
4. Die Flucht (Flight)
5. Der Wald (The Forest)
6. Die Geister (The Spirits)
7. Die falsche Freiheit (False Freedom)
8. Die Frauen (Women)
9. Die Maschinen (The Machines)
10. Die Pfarrer (The Clergy)
11. Der Aufstand (The Uprising)
12. Die Schlacht von Mal Tiempo (The Battle of Mal Tiempo)
13. Der schlechte Sieg (The Evil Victory)
14. Die Freundlichkeit (Frendliness)
15. Das Messer (The Knife)

Sources

• Walsh, Stephen (1996) El Cimmaron, CD liner notes, Deutsche Grammophon.