Sombra para mis Gritos | guitar duo by Frank A. Wallace

Guitar duo for Lorca

ChromaDuo at Festival 21

Sombra para mis Gritos [Shadow for my Cries] is from Federico Garcia Lorca’s poem Epitafio a un Pájaro.

Tonight I beg of you
water for my eyes,
shadow for my cries!

Remember

I have laid the singer
down upon a great chrysanthemum
and I write her epitaph.

After their performance at Festival 21 (a new music Festival in Boston which I organized), ChromaDuo expressed interest in having me write a piece for their next CD. I felt that musical ideas from a recent work, Epitafio a un Pájaro, were not yet spent. I wrote Epitafio early in 2011 in memory of a friend. It was ALSO the 75th anniversary of Lorca’s untimely death at the hands of fascists on a murderous rampage at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, 1936. The scoring for that piece is for two guitars, flute and voice so I borrowed textures, turned themes upside down and followed the new forms to create Sombra. When work on this piece wound to its close, I felt unfinished still, and so La Perla del Pico was next. The entire set includes: Epitafio a un Pájaro; Sombra para mis Gritos; La Perla del Pico; De la Muerte Oscura, and finally Un Establo de Oro.

Gyre Publications
Copyright ©2011 Frank A. Wallace
Cover photography and design by Nancy Knowles
All rights reserved.