From 1962 to 1970 a large part of my creative activity was focused on the composition of an extended cycle of vocal works based on the poetry of Federico García Lorca. The cycle includes Night Music I (1963) for soprano, keyboard and percussion, Quatre livres de Madrigaux (1965-1969) for soprano and a variable combination of instruments; Songs, Drones and Refrains of Death (1968) for baritone, amplified guitar, amplified piano and harpsichord, amplified double bass and percussion; Nuit des Quatre Lunes (1969) for viola, banjo, alto flute, amplified cello and percussion, and Ancient Voices of Children (1970) for soprano and seven instrumentalists.

Of the eight works in this cycle, Songs, Drones and Refrains of Death is the most advanced from a conceptual point of view, and the most intensely dramatic due to the dark images conveyed by Lorca’s poems. Although the first sketches date back to 1962, it was only in 1968 that I felt that my musical ideas had taken on a definitive form. Songs, Drones and Refrains of Death was commissioned by the University of Iowa, the premiere having taken place in the spring of 1969.

The main formal elements are announced in the name of the work. They come from four of Lorca’s most beautiful black poems: La Guitarra, Casida de las Palomas Oscuras, Canción de Jinete – 1860, and Casida del Herido por el Agua. Each of these poems is preceded by an instrumental “Refrain” (sometimes containing vocal elements emitted by instrumentalists, in most cases purely phonetic sounds) which presents, in various forms, the fateful rhythmic motif heard at the beginning of the work. Finally, three long “Death-Drones” played by the double bass over a quarte interval, dominate the musical texture in the first and last “Songs”, as well as in the third “Refrain”.

García Lorca’s poetry, whose expression is tremendously rich and evocative, offers a fascinating support to musical creation. The Guitarra, a clearly fatalistic poem, depicts an atmosphere of desolation, which nevertheless reveals a sense of wonder and profound mystery. The first lines of the poem – “The lament of the guitar begins, the wine glasses of the dawn are broken, the lament of the guitar begins, It is useless to silence it, It is impossible to silence it…” – contain one of the most recurrent images of Lorca’s poetry: the guitar, embodying the voice of the primitive darkness of the world and evil (in another poem, Malagueña : “Black horses and sinister people pass through the deep paths of the guitar”). My musical interpretation of this poem includes cadenzas composed in a quasi-flamenco style, which played on electric guitar further amplify its surrealist character.

The Casida de las Palomas Oscuras, with its underlying irony (indicated in the score: “gently sardonic; in a bizarre, fantastic style”), offers a necessary moment of relief from the darkness and intensity of the work. I tried to increase the worrying fantasy of the poem by asking the baritone to sing in various ways (“mock-lyric”, “mock-menacing”, or “in mock-chant style”). The instrumental parts are laid out in the score in the form of circular notations, which symbolically represent “El Sol” and “La Luna” (The Sun and The Moon).

Canción de Jinete, 1860, is a poem of violence and terror. In my first books of Madrigals (Book II), I had only used the verses of “chorus” (“Little black horse. Where are you taking your dead rider? Little cold horse. What a scent of the flower of a knife! “), but through the complete form of the poem, I was able to transmit more faithfully the demonic force of Lorca’s imagination. The interpretation of the song is indicated by: “panting, leading the rhythm with determination! “, then the image of the galloping little horse is wildly projected by the hammered rhythms of the lujon, rattlesnakes, drums, baguette instruments, and the electric harpsichord. The song’s climax is marked by a thundering passage entitled “Cadenza appassionata for two drummers”. The prototype of the genre represented by Canción de Jinete, 1860 is obviously Erlkönig de Schubert.

Finally, Casida del Herido por el Agua is Lorca’s favourite poem among those I have had the opportunity to set to music in recent years. The dreamlike beginning of this song, with its gentle oscillations between the notes B / G# and the tender lyricism of the baritone melody, is a conscious reminiscence of Mahler. The third and last “Death-Drone”, announces the dark and passionate central verse of the poem. The bumblebee takes the form of an immense sustained crescendo; at the point of maximum intensity (“What a fury of love, what a hurtful edge, what nocturnal murmurs, what a white death!”) the crying voice of a flexatone overhangs the whole; the bumblebee seems to “explode”, and as the intensity gradually fades the music releases an aura of transfiguration. The first sounds of the work are heard again, this time punctuated by the deep notes of the drone of the piano and double bass. Two sentences, gently floating among the last harmonies, are played on tuned crystal glasses and conclude the work.

Lorca’s vision of her haunting and even mystical death is the original force of her tenebrous genius. In composing Songs, Drones and Refrains of Death, I wanted to find a musical language that would highlight this magnificent poetry.