Cançons a Mahalta

Contents

When Màrius Torres was writing his poetry, Catalonia was in the middle of the Spanish Civil War, a time that was particularly difficult and painful for that poet from Lleida: in addition to seeing his ideals collapse, his country fall apart and his family going off into exile, the spent the prime of his life in the Puig d'Olena clinic, where he died of tuberculosis in 1942.
For him writing did indeed serve for the purpose of facing up to the offences of life ' to put it with the words of another poet, Cesare Pavese. It was in fact on account of his being sent to the clinic at the end of 1935 that he intensified his literary output, which had previously been sporadic and circumstantial.
All this personal and collective background so fully impregnated Torres' poetic heartstrings with melancholy that, when turned into verse, his words seduce the reader and prompt the musician to turn those words into sound.
From the poet's output, Francesc Vila has selected and set to music seven songs from the group of Songs to Mahalta, inspired by the woman, ill like himself, in whom Torres found company, friendship and love.
The songs are songs of the joys of living and loving, written from a stance of tenderness and hope, ones in which amorous feelings are described through the spiritualization of the landscape that lay just outside his inmate's room.
To preserve the delicacy of such very fragile lines, the composer has set them for mixed choir and women's choir, with piano accompaniment in both cases, in order to frame, stress and explore the nuances of the pulse of each poem. In putting the finishing touches to the score, Francesc Vila benefited from the assistance of his good friend Ramon Estrada, who reviewed and filled out the harmonisation.
Jordi Estrada