Duration: 10 minutes
Instrumentation: bassoon and piano
Program note:
The murder of poet Federico García Lorca at the hands of General Francisco Franco’s Nationalist troops in Granada during the summer of 1936 was one of the first of a myriad of tragedies inflicted on Spain, and indeed the world, at the outset of the Spanish Civil War. The poetry and persona of Lorca embodied the most salient attributes of the school of composers, poets, artists and thinkers known to historians as the “Generation of ’27.” Among Lorca’s contemporaries in this group included composers Manuel de Falla and Roberto Gerhard, and poet Pedro Salinas. The group came to prominence in the days leading up to the liberal Second Republic, only to fracture upon the outbreak of the war, and the deaths and exiles of a number of its members. Aesthetically, the group sought to connect and preserve Spanish high culture with folk life. Lorca’s La Poema del Cante Jondo (‘The Poem of the Deep Song) is an ethereal, yet passionately visceral tribute to the culture and collective mythical ethos shared by those in the Andalusian region of southern Spain. The poem extols the dry wind through the olive groves, the forlorn cries of gypsy flamenco singers, and the primordial weeping of the guitar. Indeed, Lorca’s vision of Andalusia is an ancient one that seems to evoke the days of the Islamic caliphate and the Moorish influence deeply felt since the 8th century. Behind the work’s facade of celebration is a pervasive tone of foreboding and sadness—the irrepressible sense of impending loss.
Cuatro Escenas del Cante Jondo (‘Four Scenes from the Deep Song’) sonically meditates on four lines—four distinct moments—of Lorca’s work. The first, entitled “…por cosas lejanas” (‘for far away things)’ comes from the poem “The Guitar” and is embedded in a line that translates to “[the guitar] weeps for things far, far away.” It’s music is marked by a sense of meandering and remote polytonality. The second ‘scene,’ entitled “Adónde vas, siguiriya, con un ritmo sin cabeza?” (‘where are you going, siguiriya, with such a mindless rhythm?’), refers to the ubiquitous 12 beat flamenco rhythm divided metrically as 2+2+3+3+2. The grouping of ‘2s’ and ‘3s’ gives the music a perpetual freshness, but also a confounding camouflaging of the downbeat. “Tierra de luz, cielo de la tierra” (‘Earth of light, Sky of earth’) follows. Here, Lorca seems to create a circular relationship between sacred and profane, as though the Andalusian soil, its tangible source of life and abundance is heaven itself. Musically, motives and gestures are inverted and otherwise adapted from prior iterations, reflecting the circularity of the textual image. The final scene, “no queda más que el silencio” (‘Nothing remains but silence’) comes from a line in the poem coupled with this resigned declamation “Everything has broken in the world. Nothing remains but silence.” At once evoking something apocalyptic, but in a spirit of surrender and inevitability, initial gestures return until the figures themselves seemingly evaporate in an exhale—with only silence remaining.
Commissioned by bassoonist Ryan Reynolds for premiere at the 2018 International Double Reed Society Conference in Granada, Spain