Joseph Maria Guix

Repertoire

JOSEP MARIA GUIX Songs for Júlia for soprano and orchestra (2023) 12′ – World premiere, commissioned by L’Auditori.

The work is both a commission and a gift. Josep Maria Guix finds inspiration in the creative universe of two Chinese poets from the 8th and 9th centuries; it is based on a juxtaposition of elements that, although seemingly contradictory, coexist in harmony. A shy spring and a passionate autumn, that moment of the day when it is no longer dark but not yet light, a cold bed, a night filled with light, a silence that is broken. The discovery of these authors, he explains, coincided with the time when his eldest daughter committed to studying professional singing in London; at that moment, he decided that, if the opportunity arose, he would offer her a version of these verses for female voice and orchestra as a gift.

The opportunity came eight years later, with the commission that is being premiered in this concert: a cycle of three short songs made of “quiet lyricism,” in which timbre plays a fundamental role. In this, a single note passes from one instrument to another, and the resonances linger until they fade into space; “everything appears from nothing and returns to nothing,” he explains. It is also worth noting the choice of certain interpretative practices in the percussion, which aim to create a mysterious and subtle tone, or the selection of specific instruments that place us in this harmonic ambiguity. Songs for Júlia is a score composed “with the desire that light and beauty always accompany her, far from disenchantment and darkness.”