Ariel Ramírez – La Missa Criolla
Ariel Ramírez (September 4, 1921 – February 18, 2010) was an Argentine composer, pianist and musical director. He was considered “a maximum exponent of Argentine folk music” and stood out for his “iconic” musical compositions.
Ramírez is mainly known for his Misa Criolla (1964) and for the song Alfonsina y el mar. It allowed him to travel through Europe and Latin America to build his reputation. However, he wrote more than 300 compositions during his career and sold millions of albums.
In 1964 the Philips record company released the album Misa Criolla, which was immediately a worldwide success.
This work was carried out based on the Castilian text drafted by the Commission of the Churches of Latin America, after the Second Vatican Council ordered the performance of religious services in the vernacular languages, abandoning the exclusive use of Latin, and It had the support and collaboration of the priest Osvaldo Catena, Liturgy Advisor for Latin America, the priest Jesús Gabriel Segade (director of the Chantry of the Basilica del Socorro) and the priest Alejandro Mayol.3
Published the following year, Misa Criolla. For tenor, mixed choir, percussion, Andean instruments, and harpsichord or piano, it presents a remarkable set of inspired original melodies by its author, based on regional rhythms of the Argentine and Latin American musical tradition. The interpretation is in charge of a soloist, a choir of mixed voices, piano and an instrumental group based on sound media linked to the American ethnophony in which charango, quena and siku appear, among others.
It consists of five parts of the common liturgy: Kyrie baguala-vidala, Gloria carnavalito-yaraví, Credo chacarera trunca, Sanctus carnaval cochabambino, Agnus Dei pampean style
Misa Criolla marked the irruption in the world of Argentine liturgical music with an artistic level that allowed it to be admired by sectors of the European, American and other latitudes public.
The public premiere was held in the German city of Stuttgart, on March 9, 1967, in the Mozart-Saal of Liederhalle, with the participation of the now dissolved group Los Fronterizos, Ariel Ramírez, Chito Zeballos, Luis Amaya, Jaime Torres, Domingo Cura and the Easo and Maitea Choir conducted by Maestro Bastida.
It was performed for the first time at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires with a stage version by Roberto Oswald and Aníbal Pencil, and fifteen days later at the Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center in New York, and at the Cathedral of San Patrick from the same city. That version featured Ariel Ramírez himself (piano), Zamba Quipildor (voice), Jaime Torres (charango) and his ensemble, with Domingo Cura (percussion), Jorge Padín and the Buenos Aires Province Bank Choir, directed by Fernando Teran.
Internationally distributed, it was released in more than 40 countries with more than 3 million record labels and was sung, among others, by George Dalaras, Mercedes Sosa and José Carreras (Plácido Domingo sang the Kyrie with Dominic Miller).< /p>
He participated in the most important folk festivals in Argentina, such as Cosquín and Jesús María.
On Friday, December 12, 2014, the Creole Mass was interpreted in the Basilica of San Pedro, in the Vatican, directed by Facundo Ramírez, son of the author. and performed by Patricia Sosa and the Roman choir Música Nuova. This concert was organized by the Ministry of Culture of the Nation and the Minister of Culture Teresa Parodi was present at it. The celebration was in the framework of the acts in honor of Our Lady of Guadalupe and said event was presided over by Pope Francis.
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