Soap Madrigals (2023)

Live recording from the premiere. DiMenna Center for the Arts, November of 2023

Ekmeles is: Charlotte Mundy, soprano. Elisa Sutherland, mezzo. Timothy Parsons, countertenor. Tomás Cruz, tenor. Jeffrey Gavett, baritone. Steve Hyrcelak, bass.

  • Soap Madrigals is comprised of 41 short fragments, some spanning as little as three seconds. These fragments are grouped into three movements of roughly three minutes each. The texture of Soap Madrigals is nocturnal and fragile. It is designed, fundamentally, in two layers: a melody that hockets between the six singers and an ornamental layer that colors and embellishes the hocketing melody.

    The source of the text for Soap Madrigals is a translation into English of five tangos from an old Argentine melodrama entitled Cita en la Frontera (1940). These tangos (as many tangos do) deal with issues such as loss, displacement, and the impossibility of love. By splicing and rearranging their lyrics through a collage-type technique, I set out to highlight the lamenting nature of the original songs. The result is a sequence of sorrowful stanzas that somehow resembles the Italian madrigalist tradition circa 1600.

    Soap Madrigals was written for ekmeles and is dedicated to my parents, Monica and Guillermo, in loving memory.

    Text

    Movement 1

    1. Sentimen-

    2. Sweet torment

    3. Sudden-

    4. (ly) Caressing

    5. Distant starlight

    6. Aimlessly drifted

    7. Trembling silently

    8. Tenderly, sweet sadness

    9. Grieving murmur

    10. Peaceful song

    11. Alone and cornered

    12. Thousand wounds

    13. This is so much (grieving soul/no desti-)

    14. (ny) For ever ramble

    15. Lament, misfortune, happi-

    16. Not my heart

    17. My torment, sudden-

    18. (ly) Sweet burning sadness

    19. Painful laughter, calling voice. Sweet whimsical song caressing tenderly

    Movement 2

    20. Misfortune

    21. Sadness, sweet pain

    22. Slowly burning my slumbering heart

    23. Astray emotion sings tenderly, whimsi-

    24. Joyful, whimsical

    25. This is not what I was looking for and…(silently weeping)

    26. Heart, arms, lips, live, leave, love, voice, wind

    Movement 3

    27. Sweet torment, my grieving soul

    28. Burning sadness

    29. Trembling, distant…

    30. Voice (it was the mur-)

    31. (mur) of the wind. Falling starlight

    32. Peaceful song longed happiness and joy. Suddenly…

    33. Murmur calling tender-

    34. (ly) Sentimental

    35. Voice dreaming happi-

    36. (ness) My grieving soul. Silent, trembling lips. Live, loving. This is…

    37. Not what I was looking for and you know it…

    38. Very joyful song (this is so much)

    39. Sentimental, caressing, tender.

    40. Love, leave, live, lips, arms

    41. My heart, burning sorrow