Miserere (MO)

This ‘Miserere’, dedicated to my wife Hélène Giraudier, is trully the work whose completion has taken me the longest. I started in 1997 and, having composed its introduction, first theme and second idea, I let it fall into slumber while I was entangled in other projects. 

In that second idea, I had introduced an element coming from a ‘Sanctus’ for soprano and organ, on a text by Verlaine (1995) and which I had also used in the first movement of my ‘Triptic de Sinera’ (1996).
Years later, I took the ‘Miserere’ from where I had left it. I composed the fugato part in the Allegro moderato I had started years before, and that leads to a conclusive reprise of the first movement. 

I had initially projected a soloist soprano voice integrating in the second part (Adagio) and I arranged it towards a kind of restatement of the introduction, linked to the first theme. The collective prayer character of the text spurred me to
introduce, near the end, the participation of the audience - just 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), which constitutes the third movement of the ‘Tríptic de Sinera.’
This ‘Miserere’ was premiered on the 8th June 2013 at the Maison Internationale de la Cité Universitaire de Paris by the Chorale and Orchestre de la Cité Internationale Universitaire, conducted by Italo Marchini.
Narcís BONET