En el nombre del padre
Written with the sponsorship of Fondo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes.
Premiered in May 1998 at Foro de Música Nueva, Mexico city by Vocal Soloists Ensemble of Bellas Artes, Ensemble Tambuco, percussion with Armando Merino, piano.
The text of this piece is taken from the poem Algo sobre la muerte del Mayor Sabines that the Mexican poet Jaime Sabines wrote after the death of his father. Like him, I was not brought up in any religion, but while setting, choosing and structuring fragments of his poem, I found myself going through a mourning process, which is well defined in the mass of Requiem. Each of the five sections of this work describe each stage of this process and each section bears a title that corresponds to those in the Mass of Requiem.
Sabines recreates the sound of community prayers in our catholic country in sections in which he repeats no podrás morir (you cannot die). This is the sound that was also in my memory for many months after the wake of my father, which I tried to recreate in my setting.