Music, Teacher

The portrait of Luis de Góngora made in 1622 by Velázquez, and kept in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.Photo: Getty

Literary fans enjoy a passion comparable only to that of hunters. Our art of venatory art consists of chasing a piece of literature through forests and sheepfolds until we find it. The prey is usually free and continues its flight or run; We come back satisfied and tired.

My last hunt was the pursuit of some verses by Luis de Góngora. The dam showed its snout in a superb edition entitled Góngora y la música, a CD recorded by two groups, Vandalia and Ars Atlántica, with songs that have used lyrics by Góngora in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Forty pieces, together with a remarkable essay on the musical knowledge of the Cordovan artist.

The snout was as follows: two members of the Luis de Góngora Chair (University of Cordoba) say, one that music goes very well with Gongor's verse, the other that music adds nothing to a poet who is most musical. Encouraged by the rich fur of the prey, I then went to the Fable of Polyphemus and Galatea to explore some forgotten harmonies, but I had to resort to a guide expert in this type of hunting, José María Micó, a musician and poet, who published more than 20 years ago a gloss of the fable, stanza by stanza, of the greatest interest.

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And so Góngora betrayed the inquisitor...

And there we stopped, the sound animal, my guide and I, in stanza XII when we heard some amazing sounds that kept us in suspense like a doubtful kestrel. They were thunderous sounds, but admirable, like some of Wagner's inventions. On one side, the syringe of Polyphemus, son of Poseidon, sounded, but on the other, the conch shell of Triton, son of the same father and a different mother. Both jealous and Cainites competed to make the most divine sound. Suddenly, there was a roar and silence came with such forcefulness that my prey took advantage of the absent-mindedness to flee with Micó and escape to the hunt. What had happened?

I had to turn to a new guide. This time a wise man whom I went to visit in the grotto where he stays most of the year, there in the valley of Baztán. I was received by Ramón Andrés, the man who knows the most about everything, but especially about musical instruments; it was covered with chirimías and violas de gamba like an Arcimboldo.

Once the mystery had been exposed, that is, how could it be, O most wise Andrew, that this titanic concert was suddenly interrupted? In a little voice that required a keen ear to understand, the sage showed me two instruments, the Cyclops' syringe and Triton's crooked snail. Thus began a long story that occupied the rest of the day, because in that stanza two heroes as big as mountains competed, one the monocular Polyphemus whom Ulysses mocked with an idiotic joke, and the great Triton, by the way very badly sculpted in his main fountain, that of the Moor of Rome, because what Triton blows is a huge conch shell and not a double snail (Aeneid VI, 171).

Well, carried away by their mutual hatred, both scions of the sea-god exhausted their strength to such an extent that Triton blew up his conch shell and gave the triumph to Polyphemus, thus came the silence that had so disturbed Mico and me. We had been to a gigantomachy.

And how, O Andrew, does the sweet syringa overcome the shrill conch, I asked. He made an evasive gesture. Perhaps, he said, because the syringa is, in fact, the nymph of the same name (Sýrinx) whom Pan pursued with fierce viciousness and when he caught up with her she asked for help from her sisters, who turned her into a cane field. Desolate, Pan cut some reeds and tied them with hemp rope. He then plugged the tubes with wax plugs at different heights and blew through them. The nymph's voice was now music of infinite grace and melancholy. That's what gave the Cyclops victory.

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