En la arena escrito (“Written on the Sand”) is based textually on a sonnet by the Spanish author Juan de Tassis, Count of Villamediana (1582-1622). The piece consists of two movements connected by an interludio.

Space and resonance play an essential role. The interludio is, in fact, a transition, to create a change in the spatial dramaturgy between the two movements. In Movement I, in addition to the group that is in the main space along with the three instrumentalists and the audience, there is a group of voices that is some distance away, like a choir in echo. In the second movement, however, the voices of the main group change and a more complex spatiality emerges, based on two distant choirs: Remote Choir I is far away, but in the main room; Remote Choir II is very far away, in another room with no direct visual connection to the main room.

The work and its subject matter are deliberately linked to the theme of death and mourning. In particular, this diptych is very close to Heinrich Schütz’s Musikalische Exequien. En la arena escrito, based on a text composed almost at the same time as when Musikalische Exequien was written, forms a kind of dialogue between the two works. In the second movement, Remote Choir II even quotes stylistically some elements from the third part of Schütz’s work.

(José M. Sánchez-Verdú, 2022)