Repartido entre tiempo y espacio for soprano, trumpet & piano was commissioned and dedicated to Antoni Solé. The premiere took place in 2016 at Sala Sole Luthiers in Barcelona and was performed by soprano Margarita Natividade, and pianist Xavier Rivera.
This work is based on a poem in Spanish by Juan Eduardo Cirlot titled “A Osiris”.
Performance history
Text
Imitació del foc (Imitation of fire) for tenor & piano is a song cycle for tenor and piano based on four poems in Catalan by Bartomeu Rosselló-Pòrcel (1913-1938), a Spanish Balearic poet, who wrote in Catalan. He died of tuberculosis at the age of 24. He has a brief oeuvre but dense. His mature work, Imitation of fire (1938) turns him into the first Mallorcan poet who fully belongs to the twentieth century. Once the influence of the Mallorcan School has been overcome, the poetics of this last book are influenced by the generation of 1927, as well as by the avant-garde and specifically surrealism. There are also echoes of his interest in Spanish Baroque literature, along with a neo-populism similar to that of García Lorca or Rafael Alberti. In Rosselló-Pòrcel work is notable the presence of the symbol of fire, and related words, such as fire, flame, ash, charcoal burning and bonfires. The use of these symbol is not purely ornamental, but it reveals a deeper sense. The fire for Roselló-Porcell is purification, the struggle of opposites, light, life, rise, movement and perpetual change, immateriality and mastery. This vision of the fire connects Rosselló-Porcell directly with a pre-Socratic philosopher, Heraclitus, who found in fire an overcoming of all processes of change that view reality.
The four poems selected in this song-cycle come from the collection Imitacio del foc and Quadern de sonets (an earlier work).
Published by Hidden Oaks Music Company.
Duration 15′
Commissioned by the 2015 Barcelona Festival of Song and director/soprano Patricia Caicedo.
Premiered on June 27, 2015, by Patricia Caicedo, soprano, Lenine Santos, tenor, and Nikos Stavlas, piano.
Texts by Ibn Zaydun and Wallada (in Spanish)
Tiempo de amor (Time for Love) (2015) for soprano, tenor and piano is set to texts by Andalusi poet Ibn Zaydun (1003-1071) and princess Wallada (1011-1091). Both poets were born in Cordoba at the height of the Al-Andalous culture in Spain and were known as the lovers of Cordoba, due to their passionate love relationship. The text used in this work are fragments of the letters they wrote to each other, which have come to us through Wallada in the form of poems.
This song cycle includes six songs that are sung without a break. The tenor (Ibn Zaydun) and soprano (Wallada) sing alternate songs as if it were a dialogue, sometimes questioning each other or commenting on the state of their relationship. The text of the last song are the epitaphs written in a monument in Cordoba dedicated to them.
Published by Hidden Oaks Music Co.
Duration: 9′ 30″ Based on three poems (in Spanish) by Federico Garcia Lorca from the collections Diwan del Tamarit (1931-1934) and Canciones. Commissioned by and written for Christiane Meininger, flute; Jörg Waschinski, male soprano; and Rainer Gepp, piano. World premiere at the Zentrum for Information und Bildung in Unna, Germany. Sponsored by the American Embassy in Berlin, the Center for International Light Art in Unna (Germany) and a travel grant from the Peabody Institute of John Hopkins University.
See full concert program.
Read Concert review (in German) and in English).
I. El amor desesperado
II. Lucia Martinez
III. El amor maravilloso
Published by Hofmeister Musik Velag.
Duration: 12′
Poetry by Federico Garcia Lorca in Spanish
Commissioned by the Gotham Ensemble
New York premiere at the”Village Variations” Concert Series Greenwich House Music School, New York, by the Gotham Ensemble and guest soprano Cheryl Marshall (10/8/92).
Published by Hidden Oaks Music Company.
Duration: 10′
Poetry by Antonio Machado in Spanish.
Premiered by baritone Jacob Cantu and the composer at the piano at Our Lady of the Lake University on February 11, 2001.
Published by Hidden Oaks Music Company.
Duration: 6′
Arrangement of the piece of the same title for soprano and piano.
Published by Hidden Oaks Music Company.
Duration: 15′
Arrangement of the piece of the same title for soprano and piano.
Published by Hidden Oaks Music Company.
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(version available for mezzo soprano). Duration: 6′
Poetry by the composer in Catalonian.
Written for soprano Rachel Rosales.
Premiered by Catalonian mezzo soprano Anna Alàs at COMRadio.com (Spanish radio).
Village Scenes was inspired by memories of my childhood in the early 60s. In the summers me and my parents vacationed in Ullastrell, a very small village near Terrassa (Barcelona) during four or five years. The three poems that inspired the songs were written in early October of 2002, after returning from a trip to Spain. The poetry is in my native Catalonian language.
I. El Portal: In this poem I recreate the vivid image I have of me peeling corn husks at the door of a very old “masia” (Catalonian stone-made house) with other village children. I still remember the darkness and the cold temperature inside the house – with few windows and without lighting. I remember the contrasting feelings of the coldness inside the house and the outside warmth of the sun.
II. El Poble: Ullastrell was surrounded by fields and small hills with Mediterranean vegetation. During the summer it was so hot that everything was tinged with a golden color, a mix of dried vegetation and sunlight. My memories of Ullastrell are wam and happy like the sun that always baked the village.
III. La Pluja is inspired by the late summer stormy days. After the rain, the whole atmosphere smelled like fresh wet soil. The whole village was happy, the farmers and the animals, everybody was happy to cool off. The vegetation also breathed easier putting on a new green coat! During the summer the storms were very impressive but lasted little S?the sun was always ready to come back to bake us.
Published by Hidden Oaks Music Company.
Duration: 15′
Poetry by Federico Garcia Lorca in Spanish
Written for soprano Rachel Rosales
Read NATS article New Directions: “The Inspirational Lorca” by Sharon Mabry.
See Performance history.
This song cycle was inspired by five poems of the Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca (1898-1936). The poems El silencio, La luna negra, Las seis cuerdas, andClamor” are drawn from the collection Poema del Cante Jondo (1921), and La mano imposible is from El Diwan del Tamarit (1931-35). Lorca’s poetry is born from the continuous juxtaposition of contrasting and opposing symbols which attempt to negate each other. His obsession with death, which he referred to as the Spanish lover, also pervades his work.
In I. El silencio, Lorca materializes silence by telling us to listen to it. It is the quietest song of the collection with a certain purity imparted by the modal quality of the music.
In II. La mano imposible we are presented with a white marble-like, disembodied hand, an anxiously sought for (perhaps divine) hand that protects the dying. The anxiety of the search for this imposible hand is represented musically by questionning ascending melodies that pause in their climax, asking for answers. The accompaniment is highly chromatic and the meters shift constantly. Towards the end, the poem’s atmosphere of anxiety lessens and there is a glimpse of accepting the impossibility of finding such a hand, even though, as Lorca says, “nothing else matters” except that hand. The song ends with a peaceful and consonant duet or interweaving lines between the soprano and the piano.
Some symbols in Lorca’s work have dual meanings: the moon, for example, represents both death threats (personified by women that anchant men and lead them to death) and eroticism. In III. La luna negra , the “Black moon” is a terrible presence and a threat to the unwary. The music is given a floating quality by the lack of a tonal center and by the continuous trills in the piano part which surround the soprano melody. The eerie character of the music sustains the ambiance of magic and incantation that permeates Lorca’s poem.
In IV. Las seis cuerdas (“The six strings”) Lorca glorifies the guitar. This instrument is to Lorca a symbol of remembrance of lost souls and a connection with the dead; “the guitar makes dreams weep” and lets the sobbing of lost souls escape through its black wooden well. As in the previous songs, melodic dissonance in the vocal lines and piano writing portrays the anguish of the text.
Finally, in V. Clamor, Lorca personifies Death. We see her walking, crowned with withered citrus blossoms, and singing a song with her vihuela, while the church bells toll. Musically, the piece begins with the bell-tolling in the piano that sets up the appearance of Death (represented by a long and torturous chromatic melody in the soprano libe that starts in the low register, and slowly unravels as it reaches the higher register.) The melody’s accompaniment in the piano is dissonant, syncopated and rhythmically insistent.
Published by Southern Music Company.
