Miserere

This ‘Miserere’, dedicated to my wife, Hélène Giraudier, is certainly the work that has taken me the longest to finish. I started in 1997 and, after having composed the introduction, the first theme and the second idea, i set it aside, delayed by other projects. In the second idea, I had introduced an element from a ‘Sanctus’ for soprano and organ on a text by Verlaine (1995), that I had also used in the first movement of my ‘Tríptic de Sinera’ (1996). A year later, I took up the ‘Miserere’ where I had left it and I composed the fugato part in the Allegro moderato that I had started years before and which leads to a conclusive reprise of the first theme.
I had initially thought of a soprano soloist merging in in the second part (Adagio) and I dressed it, turning it into a re-exposition of the introduction, linked to the first theme. The text’s collective-prayer-ish character prompted me to introducing, at the end, the participation of the audience, as I had already done in my Christmas cantata ‘Ho sap tothom i és profecia’ on a poem by J.V. Foix (1973) and in ‘He mirat aquesta terra’ on a text by Salvador Espriu (1994), that conforms the third movement in ‘Tríptic de Sinera’.

The Autor