“If you wish to see the immensity of heaven and sea, reflecting the sunlight like a prism, tear out my heart, come, and bow to the vastness of my pain.”

“Chôro,” Portuguese for “crying,” refers to a Brazilian genre of urban popular music developed in Rio de Janeiro in the late 1800s. Villa-Lobos’s series of Chôros is an extension of this genre of music into a symphonic style that embraces the many elements of Brazilian music and culture. Chôros No. 10 is regarded as the masterpiece of the series and contains a song that was famous at the time: “Rasga o Coração.” The choir joins the orchestra in the final of three sections, first rhythmically chanting nonsense syllables and then singing the verses of the celebrated song, building to the grand finale on the words “Rip it open, and you will see! Ah!” As the poem states, the work tries to hold in itself both the sea and the sky, the vastness of pain, and every color under the sun.

This new choral score was created for Border CrosSing’s collaboration with the Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra, and includes an IPA transcription and word-for-word translation of the Brazilian Portuguese text.

Text

Rasga o Coração

Se tu queres ver
a imensidão do céu e mar,
refletindo a prismatização da luz solar,
rasga o coração,
vem te debruçar
sobre a vastidão do meu penar!

Sorve todo o olor
que anda a recender
pelas espinhosas florações do meu sofrer!
Vê se podes ler nas suas pulsações
as brancas ilusões
e o que ele diz no seu gemer

E que não pode a ti dizer
nas palpitações!
Ouve-o brandamente, docemente palpitar,
casto e purpural, num treno vesperal,
mais puro que uma cândida vestal!

Rasga-o, que hás de ver
lá dentro a dor a soluçar!
Sob o peso de uma cruz de lágrimas,
chorar!
Anjos a cantar
preces divinais,
Deus a ritimar seus pobres ais.

-Text by Catulo da Paixão Cearense.

TRANSLATION:
Tear My Heart Apart

If you desire to see
the immenseness of sky and sea,
reflecting an array of colors made from sunlight,
tear my heart apart,
come peer over
the vastness of my pain!

Drink in the scent
that returns conjured
by the thorny blossoms of my suffering!
See if you can interpret in its pulsing
faint impressions
and the meaning of its wailing

And what it cannot yet express
in palpitations!
Hear it gently, softly beat,
chaste and renewed in an evening lament,
purer than virginal innocence!

Rip it open! You will see
the sorrow there inside, weeping,
bearing the weight of a mournful cross,
crying.
Angels singing
divine prayers,
god, beat out its humble woes.

$6.00 per licensed PDF