Scenes from Goya (2018)

A Chamber Sinfonietta in Five Movements
(1.1.1.1/1.1.1.0/timp.3perc/2.1.1.1)

50 minutes

I. Chaconne "The Sleep of Reason Breeds Monsters"
II. A Woman Holding Up Her Dying Lover
III. The Duchess of Alba
IV. Rondo Los Caprichos
V. La Folia: The Disasters of War

Performance Note: The first movement may be performed as a standalone piece. Augmenting the string section is also encouraged.

Program Notes

Scenes from Goya is inspired by an exhibition held at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, on the artwork of Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes. The exhibition contained nearly four hundred paintings, etchings, drawings, and sketches that represented the artist’s prolific life. Goya, who suffered from an unspecified illness that caused random fevers and terrifying hallucinations, went deaf at 37. As a result, his artistic output takes place both firmly within realms of 18th /19th century Spain, and outside of history and reality all together. His ebbing state of sanity and the constant sense of social and physical isolation brought him to produce works based on madness, witchcraft, the gruesome capriciousness of society, and the disasters of war. Most of all, Goya paid constant homage to his muse, María Cayetana de Silva, Duchess of Alba (the wife of a patron). Alba is painted and represented in countless works that portray her as both the source of suffering and idealization. The portrait featured in this work was a private painting known only to Goya. It features Alba in a traditional funerary dress signifying the death of her husband. On her hands, two rings side by side, reading Alba and Goya; and at her feet written in the sand, she points to “Solo Goya” (only Goya) as she stares longingly into the viewer’s eyes.

Scenes from Goya was a Hoefer Prize commission and was premiered by the San Francisco Conservatory of Music New Music Ensemble, conducted by Nicole Paiement, on May 2, 2019.

 

Perusal Score

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Performances

May 2, 2019 | San Francisco Conservatory of Music New Music Ensemble