Carles M. Eroles

Nocturno III

A day, that I was looking some poetry books in a bookstore, I found the poem Nocturno III from the colombian poet Jose Asuncion Silva (1885-1896). This poem greatly impressed me and I was sure that some day I will put it in music. Only one month after, I was writting the score for Sphera Ensamble for a concert at the Centre de Cultura Contemporanea from Barcelona into the Fifth Avuimusica Season. The poem is enormously tragical, romantic and very deep. We can see in it two parts, so the score follows this structure. With a enicmatics bass drum strokes in pianissimo (the percussion always draw the drammatic sence of the text) start the first part, sweet and evocative one, where a declaim voice is following by a violin in a medium and a high register, and then appears the violocello, playing in these same registers. With the impact entrance, even brutal of the piano at the end of the first part, the music goes to a tragical way and those initial bass drum strokes in pianissimo now become a very strong ones, like a very incisive bells, maked between the piano and the tam-tam, the second part come in. Here the music is lower, serious and deeper, except the part when the text speak about 'the cold', here the music is static and sweeter, reaching the highs registers of the instruments, above all the piano. Finally, the work goes to a drammatic final, in fortissimo and can hear some 'leit-motiv', like that of 'la sombra' (the shadow) played always by the percussion.