This poem, also known as ‘Noche Oscura’ or by its refrain, ‘Aunque es de noche’, is an old one from Spain. Be not impatient with the austerity of the music here, my drama-loving friends. This melody was written a century ago by Federico Mompou of Barcelona, and is much the way I imagine the canonized 16th century author may have wished to hear it, serene and pious. Don’t worry; we’ll fix that soon enough.
The poem speaks of a fountain, and from various websites reading about him I have inferred that the poem alludes to John of the Cross’s devotional frame of reference which included the ‘fountain of Elijah’ on Mount Carmel, though it’s clearly also about the origins of all life.
The Catholic church declared him a saint, and his suffering was in- and poetry arose out of time spent imprisoned by people unhappy with the reforms he worked to bring about in the Carmelite monastic order.
[translated segment:]
“…I don’t know its origin, for it has none,
Yet I know that every origin comes from it,
Even though it is by night.
I know there can be nothing more beautiful,
And that heaven and earth drink from it,
Even though it is by night,
Even though it is by night,
Even though it is by night.
I know that no ground for that spring can be found,
And that no man can wade across it,
Even though it is by night.
Its luminosity can never be darkened,
And all light comes from it,
Even though it is by night.
And its currents are so fast-flowing
That they flow through heavens, hells, and people,
Even though it is by night,
Even though it is by night,
Even though it is by night.
https://lyricstranslate.com/en/aunque-es-de-noche-even-though-it-night.html
Throwing propriety and austerity to the four winds; Enter the cantaor(a), the flamenco singer. While her official music video offers quite a punch, the Spanish pop/folk fusion artist Rosalía’s live performances are even better. In the following one her accompanist Raül Refree shines at times, and at others, for me, loses a bit of the feeling when his strumming sounds more generic and stilted, departing from the ornamentation and subtlety I expect from Spanish guitar. (3:33 timestamp)
While in their concert in the monastery Veruela (not linked) he switches at one point to strumming on the backbeat instead of the downbeat giving it a curious rock’n’roll feel that I didn’t appreciate with this song, in the next video Raül carried that portion near the end a little more subtly, and Rosalía plays games with the microphone as well as her voice to achieve a dynamic volume control that left people swearing and crossing themselves as the two artists fell silent.
Moving on from Rosalía we have one of her fans from Venezuela, singing with a looping machine to his own exciting back track of palmas and harmonies. He admits to not being a cantaor of flamenco, and for a fan video, this is inspiring:
Now, before I offer you my two very favorite versions discovered in all my wanderings across Youtube’s landscape, marked as the terrain is by invisible ‘do not detour’ signs in the all-restricting algorithmic undercurrent, it is required to share one from Enrique Morente, whom many commenters point to as the ‘definitive’ singer of this poem. There is an older studio recording, but I like the collaboration he did more recently with a Bulgarian Voices choir:
Now for a video uploaded 8 years ago, before Rosalía recorded her first rendition, as far as I know. This is one of my two faves and it anticipates significantly the dramatic style she employs:
And finally, we come to the child of Enrique Morente, Kiki Morente, possessed of several voices in one. While Johnny boy of Yepes might not approve of such emotional wallowings, might shake his harp at us while looking down from his cloud, this flamenco gitano approach to his poem clearly has won the vote of the masses:
Ok, and just in case you’re trying to sleep, here’s another reserved setting of Mompou’s melody. You know that old joke about what you call a Latino with his hands tied behind him… Mute… well just compare the hand movements of Marisa Martins to those of Rosalía!
¿Qué pedo? 