La pell de brau

LA PELL DE BRAU [THE BULL’S COAT]

A commission by ESSO Espanola on the occasion of the II Festival de Música d’Amèrica i Espanya,
“La pell de brau” was premiered on October 20th 1967 at the Ateneo de Madrid by the Orquesta de
Cámara de Madrid, under conduction of Franco Gil and with my own collaboration as a narrator. The
piece was published in Barcelona by EDIGSA (C. M. 239 MS Stereo) in 1969.
Written for instrumental ensemble and narrator (there is also an orchestral version), “La pell de brau”
is a selection of 15 poems out of the 45 of the homonymous work by Salvador Espriu.
Due to its dramatic intensity, I immediately conceived “La pell de brau” as a recited work, in which
music would have to act as a sonorous frame in order to emphasize the text’s character. Therefore it was
not about writing a “musical background” for a poem, but about alternating and making music have a
conversation with the text, conceiving it as a music to be sung, and conceiving the text as an essential
part of music, but leaving it at its total and original poetic freedom.
I have used a limited number of instruments to achieve this goal, trying not to surpass the limits of
chamber music. And I added another –voluntary– thematic limitation: the whole work has been written
on the basis of one single element formed by five notes, which is used according to all resources of
inversion, augmentation, diminishment –horizontally and vertically.

Narcís Bonet