Memories of Barcelona – Sagrada Familia

Sagrada Familia is the second movement of my memories of Barcelona. The Sagrada Familia, or the church of the sacred family is truly one of the wonders of Barcelona and I would say one of the wonder s of the modern world. It is a must see for everyone who goes to Barcelona. If you see nothing else go to see the Sagrada Familia.

I wanted to create or recreate the memory of the Sagrada Familia in music, in music played on a classical guitar. When I started to think about what I wanted to say about the Sagrada Familia, its grandeur kept coming back to mind. I also wanted to express that fact that it has been a long time in the making and will probably continue to take a long time before it is completed. It is definitely a work in progress, a continuously evolving work of creation.

I thought I would go back and research Spanish medieval church music which I did. I found several examples or Spanish church music that dated back to the 10th through to the 14^th century that spoke to me in a way that seemed to express the ethos of the Sagrada Familia. In the end, I extracted a ground base which you can see in the first part of the piece. It is played very low and very slow. It is supposed to evoke the foundation, the roots of the Sagrada Familia on which the rest of the edifice is built. Structurally, the rest of the piece is built on this ground base in medieval fashion.

You could consider that the rest of the movement is a series of variations on the ground base that develop slowly but inexorably towards to the peak of the yet to be finished cathedral. The first iteration of the ground base is slow and ponderous, as would be the first layers of the foundation of a grand cathedral. Each iteration or layer of the movement is built up in this fashion. Each layer is a little higher in pitch. Each layer moves a little faster until the very end of the movement, the guitarist is playing quickly at the very top of the range of the guitar. I hope that I reasonably portrayed the sentiment that I was looking for.

There were several precedents that I had in mind when I wrote this movement. They are not classical guitar pieces but piano pieces although I have heard both pieces played on classical guitar. The two pieces that most clearly influenced me were Debussy’s La CathedraleEngloutie and Ravel’s Pavane Pour UneEnfante Defunte, two pieces which have always been close to my heart.  In La Cathedrale Engloutie, Debussy paints a wonderful tone poem of a legendary cathedral rising up out of water, sounds of chanting priests, chiming bells and an organ being played could be heard across the water. I have no problem visualizing the cathedral rising out of the water as I listen to the music.

With Ravel’s Pavane Pour Une Enfante Defunte, it is the ethos and sheer delicate beauty of the piece that I love. It is ancient and modern, tightly formal yet it gives you the feeling of being broad and expansive. My desire was to emulate these elements of these immortal pieces, even to a modest degree. The Pavane was a dance that was performed in the Spanish courts in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. I felt that the pace and rhythm of the Pavane was expressed in the towering edifice of the Sagrada Familia. 

Here is the score for the second movement of Memories of Barcelona - Sagrada Familia.

Here is the link for the video and music. https://youtu.be/Mpnd821OIB4

Memories of Barcelona

It has been some time since I last wrote a post. A good many things have happened in that time. What I want to write about is music.

Over the last year or so I have renewed my activity in music. I never lost interest in music but I always found a reason to delay it or tell myself that there would always be time for music later. Well, later is now!

Last year, I gave my piano to a piano student who needed a piano but could not afford to buy one. I can't say that I regretted giving it away but I miss having a piano, especially now that I have started writing music again, after 20 years.

After the piano was gone I started playing my classical guitar again. I played every day but I was always playing someone else's music. It was fun but not as satisfying as playing my own music. One day I was sorting through some old paper that I was going to throw away and I came across some of my compositions from years ago, 20 years ago when I lived in Michigan. There was a string quartet that I had not finished. I had drafted two movements and left it for some reason. Did I lose interest? Did I not know where to go after the second movement? I could not remember. It was too long ago. I found a guitar piece that I had started. There were only a few bars of music but the melody was nice. I could see why I had written it down but could not remember why I did not develop it. The idea came into my head to finish it. I took the fragment and put it on my music stand and played it over and over to get a sense of where I might take it. Eventually, I began to have images and memories of the trip that my wife and I took to Barcelona, Spain. I decided to call the piece, Memories of Barcelona. The first movement of the piece brings back memories of the street life and night life of Barcelona which was quite lively and varied. I have finished two movements of what I conceived to be a three movement guitar piece.

About the music. Nominally, the key signature is E minor but I don't strictly follow the E minor scale. In fact, I use a tonality that is more modal in nature. This is what I heard in my head when I wrote the piece. It is more important for me to realize what is in my head than to follow some academic rule that says I have to keep within a specific tonality. In this day and age, almost anything goes regarding tonality. In the last hundred years, we have experienced everything from Serialism where tonality was more or less destroyed by Arnold Schoenberg to Philip Glass' minimalism where tonality is kept to the barest minimum. I feel completely justified in following my own sensibility regarding what tonality I chose to follow in a piece.

Here is the first movement. I hope you like it! I will give you the second movement next post. It is too bad that I could not attach a midi file to give you an idea of how the piece sounds.

I have been trying to attach the audio of this piece of music to the post by putting together a video but I could not attach it to the post so I uploaded it to Youtube. I hope this works.

https://youtu.be/u1zg--P01KM