The lessons of darkness with which in the Renaissance and Baroque the passion and death of Christ were commemorated for three days fell into oblivion when Haydn’s The Seven Last Words of Christ on the Cross burst into classicism. And although there have always been those who have set biblical texts to music for these dates, especially Jeremiah’s Book of Lamentations, it is still surprising that a contemporary composer who has not turned 40 declares his desire to revisit this kind of funeral intended for the liturgical. This Friday (11 p.m.), Joan Magrané (Reus, 1988) premieres the Festival’s commission for this 2nd Easter edition in the Carme de Peralada church. Some Tenebrae Responsoria (Feria sexta in Parasceve) – Good Friday in the Christian liturgy – that will be served by ten musicians from the GIO Symphonia directed by Francesc Prat and two soloists: the soprano Maria Hinojosa and the cellist Pau Codina.
“This is not an update of the same liturgy, but a new proposal based on the bases of the tradition of this liturgy,” says Magrané, a great lover of the madrigal, who had already collaborated in 2019 with Peralada, premiering his opera Diálogos de Tirant. e Carmesina. “There are things that do correspond, such as the division into three nocturnes and four motets within each one, but then there is a lot of eclecticism: cello solos, two poems in Catalan… it is not a recreation but a revisitation of the genre.”
“There is great expressive power in the text of the Lamentations itself, with that poetic and human force they contain, of shared pain. It’s what moved me –Magrané confesses–. That’s why I wanted to add poems by Blai Bonet, a poet I wanted to put to music, that go in the sense of the human example of Christ and his death… something very real. It is not heavenly music, on the contrary: it is very human, heartfelt, very fleshly, more Christ than God. In fact, the Lamentations are already that, the lament of all people for the loss of Jerusalem. It is not a pietà where the Virgin laments, it is we who lament.”
The piece would be a summary of everything Magrané has been doing in recent times: it contains the idea of ??polyphony, although instrumental, or the idea of ??the theatricality of baroque opera, of making the text visible on an expressive level –Couperin, Charpentier –, more than that of Tomás Luis de Victoria or Gesualdo, which was more polyphonic. Their model is Couperin’s Leçons de ténèbres with two sopranos, although here one is the cello: a wordless voice that wants to pronounce the text. “We have applied that same work to the more polyphonic parts, which are only instrumental,” he points out.
It was listening to that Couperin in the version by Montserrat Figueras, Cristina Kehr and Jordi Savall that Magrané was moved years ago. “Then I began to learn about polyphonies; I remember an experience in Paris listening to Gesualdo’s three lessons in the same night, next to the Louvre, ending at 2 in the morning… Very shocking.”
The artistic director of the Peralada Festival, Oriol Aguilà, assures that in the first Easter edition “a very special atmosphere was created among the public, the artists and the festival team that we consider an expression of the personality of the cycle that characterizes for recollection”. And he has also announced that the Vespers of Darkness will become part of the festival’s corpus. The next editions will continue to commission composers from the country to renew, he affirms, the repertoire and bring it into a dialogue with contemporaneity.
Aguilà remembers that on the last day of this Easter edition, after the premiere of the Tenebrae Responsoria, the Choir and Orchestra of the Royal Opera of Versailles will perform in the church, precisely with lessons on darkness by Couperin and Charpentier. “So that a very interesting dialogue and game of mirrors will be established between classicism and modernity.”
That same Saturday, a great violin promise, the Korean Yunchan Lim, was scheduled to perform at the festival in the afternoon. However, an injury forces him to cancel and he will be replaced by the infallible Javier Perianes.
