Canto General is Pablo Neruda's tenth book of poems. It was first published in Mexico in 1950, by Talleres Gráficos de la Nación. Neruda began to compose it in 1938. "Canto General" consists of 15 sections, 231 poems, and more than 15,000 lines. This work attempts to be a history or encyclopedia of the entire American Western Hemisphere, or New World, from a Hispanic American perspective.
Thirteenth Canto. New Year’s Chorale for the Country in Darkness
Fourteenth Canto. The Great Ocean
Fifteenth Canto. I Am
The Heights of Macchu Picchu
"'The Heights of Macchu Picchu" is Canto II of the Canto General. The twelve poems that comprise this section of the epic work have been translated into English regularly since even before its initial publication in Spanish in 1950, beginning with a 1948 translation by Hoffman Reynolds Hays in The Tiger's Eye, a journal of arts and literature published out of New York from 1947–1949, and followed closely by a translation by Waldeen in 1950 in a pamphlet called Let the Rail Splitter Awake and Other Poems for a Marxist publishing house in New York. The first mass-marketed commercial publication of the piece did not come until 1966 with Nathanial Tarn's translation, followed by John Felstiner's translation alongside a book on the translation process, Translating Neruda in 1980. Following that is Jack Schmitt's full translation of Canto General—the first to appear in English—in 1993. In recent years there have been several partial or full new translations: Stephen Kessler in 2001 for a photo/journey book on the ancient ruins and Mark Eisner's re-translation of seven of the twelve poems for an anthology celebrating the centennial of Neruda's birth in 2004, The Essential Neruda.
Musical versions
The "Canto General" has been set to music by several musicians.
The best-known musical setting is by Mikis Theodorakis, a composer and politician from Greece. He completed four movements in 1973, recording these the following year. In 1975 and 1981, he expanded the work to seven and thirteen movements, respectively, recording the complete "oratorio" live in Munich in 1981. Vocals, in Spanish, on the incomplete 1974 recording are by Maria Farantouri and Petros Pandis.
Canto General , oratorio by Mikis Theodorakis, recorded various times:
* Canto General, studio recording following the 1974 Paris première, incomplete
* Canto General, live recording from Piraeus and Athens, complete recording of the then-valid form of the oratorio
* Canto General, live recording from East-Berlin
* Canto General, live recording from Munich, first recording of the complete oratorio
* Canto General, performed by the Hamburger Sängerhaufen
* Canto General, live recording from St. Paul, Minnesota, first recording of the complete oratorio in the United States, conducted by Mikis Theodorakis and Stefan Sköld, soloists Mary Preus and Petros Pandis, produced by Patricia Porter and recorded by Ralph Karsten, from the July 27, 1986 performance in the O'Shaughnessy Auditorium of the College of St. Catherine
* Canto General, studio recording for a ballet performance, conducted by Loukas Karytinos in Berlin 1989
Orquestra de nuestra Terra and Chor der EÖ under Leopold Griessler 2014.
Of no less importance is Alturas de Macchu Picchu on texts from The Heights of Macchu Picchu by the prominent Chilean band Los Jaivas; the rendering of Sube a Nacer Conmigo Hermano present in this album, a recording of the Canto XII from the "Heights of Macchu Picchu" section nearly in its entirety, is especially renowned. Alturas de Macchu Picchu by Chilean Rock Band Los Jaivas
