Las ínsulas extrañas

This work, commissioned by the Granada International Festival of Music and Dance in 2024 (as “Composer in Residence” for that festival) enters into dialogue with Manuel de Falla’s Concerto for Harpsichord and Five Instruments.

The title is taken from Spiritual Canticle by Saint John of the Cross. The connection between the saint, Falla, and Granada reveals some surprising interrelations. For me, it is truly remarkable that on the hill of the Alhambra, at the so-called Convent of the Martyrs (which no longer exists; the Carmen de los Mártires now stands on its site), Saint John of the Cross lived for five years as prior. Within the spaces of that monastery, some of the most fundamental works of Saint John’s poetry and mysticism came into being. Not only did the Spiritual Canticle reach its fullness there, according to the sources, but also Dark Night of the Soul and the great commentaries, including that on the Canticle itself, Ascent of Mount Carmel, and Living Flame of Love. The fact that Manuel de Falla composed his last great work, the Concerto, just a few meters from that slope of the Sabika is nothing short of intoxicating.

My piece, far from emulating the Concerto, describes an almost mystical journey through seven landscapes that trace an ascent in perception. The musical material unfolds in ostinati, in blocks that expand like concentric mirrors, in echoes within organic transitions between landscapes, always keeping the harpsichord as the center of the itinerary. There is a very brief passage from Falla’s Concerto that I have always found surprising, profoundly fascinating, and evocative: the measures at rehearsal number 7 of its second movement. These distant, deep, dark chords, articulated in a slow, rhythmic manner, have served as a generative foundation for several moments in the processes of my own work. As a whole, the dialogue with Falla – highly filtered and distilled – extends into the planes of space and time, converging in the figure of the Castilian saint. The harpsichord, as the center, remains engaged in a continuous resonance with the five instruments of the ensemble, like inseparable entities that shape processes leaping from island to island through unknown landscapes. Like the ascent of Mount Carmel – which the saint himself described and even designed in a very special drawing in his own hand – the musical piece brings together the search for mystical and spiritual fulfillment through a terrain that is mystical by nature: the path.

Las ínsulas extrañas is a cartography of all these mirrors and resonances, with Saint John and Manuel de Falla, and with the space of the mountain that unites them, in spaces and times that enter into dialogue.