CMRC Seminar: Setting Lorca’s El Diván del Tamarit with David Dies

Event details

Composer David Dies is currently setting the twenty-one poems of Federico García Lorca’s El Diván del Tamarit. In this collection, Lorca re-imagines two Persian/Arabic poetic forms—the ghazal (Sp. gacela) and the qasida (casida)—infusing them with common Lorcan themes of love and desire, death and mourning, vivid invocation of color and Andalusian culture—all cast in a surreal lyricism. Many of the poems in this collection reflect a profound despair and a longing for mutual destruction after lost love, though others maintain the lachrymose atmosphere and explore loss and grief in other situations. Dies was drawn to this collection for the possibilities afforded by the Arab-Andalucian influence and references, the re-workings of the forms, the dark and distinctive re-framing of themes of love and death, and the rich, elegant, surrealist language of Lorca. Dies will present on his compositional approach, how specific features of the poems have been translated into musical gestures and forms, and general concerns around text setting both Spanish and English. He is also currently developing an article on the pedagogy of text setting in English, and may informally present on his work in that area if
there is interest.

The music of composer David Dies has been described as having a "sensitivity to subtle shades of timbre, exploitation of spare textures...and predilection for a certain ceremonial austerity that evokes ancient, remote, or hieratic ritual” (American Record Guide). His music has been performed on three continents (notably London; New York; Chicago; York, UK; Lima, Peru) by a range of nationally and internationally known artists. In 2015, Dies was the subject of a composer portrait at the York Spring Festival for New Music at the University of York, England. In 2013, Dies’ music was featured on “Live on WFMT” in Chicago, performed by mezzo-soprano Julia Bentley and the Anaphora ensemble. In 2011 Albany Records released a CD of his chamber music, agevolmente.  Dies’s most recent major work is his 2018 oboe concerto, alchemy/transmutation/translation, written for Adam De Sorgo and ensemblenewSRQ in Sarasota, FL. As a theorist, his 2013 book chapter, “Defining Spiritual Minimalism,”
in the Ashgate Research Companion to Minimalist and Postminimalist Music, has been cited regularly since its publication and is the definitive article on Spiritual Minimalism.

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