NotesSor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1648-1695) had an amazing and unique life. Born in the countrysidenear Mexico City, most of her life was spent as a nun in the convent of San Jerónimo, whichtoday forms the campus for Universidad del Claustro de Sor Juana in Mexico City.
Her life was filled with academic pursuits: reading, learning, and writing. It's clear that shechose the life of a nun solely to be able to devote her life to study, this avoiding the usual busydomestic life of a woman in her time. Sor Juana wrote in many forms, from religious treatises,to sacred plays, to romantic poetry. Threatened and bullied by men -- mostly her religioussuperiors -- nevertheless she persisted. Her life in the convent , while bound by religious ritualsand duties, still allowed her freedoms that she would never have had in the normal women'sworld of the 17th century, which revolved around sex, marriage and children.
Many women in her time never learned to read and write, and Sor Juana addressed this timeand time again. She revered the work and legends of historical women, such as the goddessesPersephone, Diana and Selena, and the 3rd century philosopher-nun Saint Catherine ofAlexandria. Sor Juana was also fascinated by the life of Mary, the mother of Jesus, and wroteand taught a great deal about her power and importance, which Juana believed had beenunderstated in the usual, male-oriented stories of the life of Christ.
My vision of Sor Juana, which I aim to present in the this work, is of a woman deeply committed toknowledge, and unafraid to explore and examine truths and concepts. I am intrigued by SorJuana and her life: her early feminism, and the strength she showed in standing up to theendless instructions from the men in her life - men of the church, bishops, confessors,archbishops -- who continually sought to censor her.
There are many religious and philosophical issues that were the cause of serious debate in SorJuana's time, and one of them, the debate over the greatest "fineza", or blessing from God, wasa reason for her silence in the last few years of her life. Threatened by her church superiors,and with the shadow of the Catholic Inquisition not so far away, Sor Juana foreswore writing,gave away many of her books and possessions (she had quite a collection of musicalinstruments and scientific tools in her convent quarters), and wrote a letter asking forforgiveness and signing it "I, the worst of all". Sor Juana's life ended in silence.
I believe Sor Juana's study of the fineza has parallels with my interest in and study of silence.Sor Juana writes that the greatest blessing from God is nothing, because in the spacegranted by nothingness, one may find real love, real thought, and real spirituality. Similarly, in music the space granted by silence in the musical score may provide some of the mostprofound and meaningful moments in performance and in listening.
In this work you will hear much text written by Sor Juana herself: for the most part this isspoken, so that the words are clearly understood. The sung sections, presented as a structuredimprovisation, are my own words, based on my understanding of Sor Juana's inner thoughts.
The musical material on which this work is based comes mostly from what is arguably SorJuana's most famous writing, the "Response". This is a letter written to one of her superiors,the archbishop Manuel Fernándes de Santa Cruz, who had written a letter warning her to stopwriting heretical material and ideas. In response, Sor Juana wrote an astounding "Response"that gives many details of her life and experiences, as a defence of her position on issues thatwere often deemed "too sacred for women". One of the details of this letter outlines themusical intervals related to the ratios of good people in the cities of God. I have based mymusical material on these intervals, which work out to the pitch classes E, D, C, and G.
Two stand-alone areas in the work are based on existing musical material. My setting of "YouFoolish Men", one of Sor Juana's most famous poems, is based on "Tocotín a la Asunción deMaria", a Nahuatl (Inca language) ode to the assumption of Mary. This ode was originallywritten in 1676 with text by Sor Juana; I have borrowed ideas from the melody and dance-likerhythms of a 20th-century setting by composer Emmanual Arias y Luna. The other borrowedmusic is used in my setting of Sor Juana's poem "Óyeme con los ojos" ("Hear me with youreye"). Here, I have used melodic ideas from a motet, "Christus factus est", by HernandoFranco (1532-1585). Franco was the music master at the great Catholic cathedral in centralMexico City in the century before Sor Juana's time, and she would surely have heard his musicat the Cathedral, which she attended before entering the convent of San Jerónimo. Keen earswill also note a brief quotation from Samuel Barber's "Hermit Songs" in this work. Credit for thetext translations goes to a number of different publications on Sor Juana.
Many thanks to the Faculty of MAP and its Dean, Rae Staseson, aand UR International, forinitiating this project by inviting me to go to Mexico on a U of R partnership-building trip in216. And huge thanks to the faculty and staff at Unversidad del Claustro de Sor Juana inMexico Centro Histórico: especially to Lina Pulido, Director of Humanities Studies, and Danielde Lira Luna, Librarian. They supported a week-long research trip at Claustro in 2017, andmade me feel very welcome. Their help was invaluable.
I'd also like to thank Peter Grace and Cathy Golf, and Kamaya Lundquist and Mark Hamilton, who provided quiet and beautiful spaces in BC and NB for creation and rehearsal of Sor Juanaand the Silences. Thank you to WL Altman who listened to early versions and provided supportand helpful feedback. Thank you to the Nixdorf family for help with props, and thank you toKennedy Sembaliuk for terrific lighting design and Kenneth Young and Morley Crowle forexcellent technical support.