SENIOR COMPOSITION RECITAL Gerardo Lopez
Thursday, April 13, 2023
7:30 pm
Recital Hall
A Space Opera: Fantasia on Various Opera
Themes and a Theme of Bach for Modular Synthesizer (2020)
Blues, Fugue, and Riffs (2019)
Charlotte Han, violin
Abigail Van de Water, viola
Nick Trobaugh, cello Pause
Volverán las oscuras golondrinas (2020)
Ria Patel, soprano
Joseph Kruse, piano
This recital is presented as a requirement for the Bachelor of Music degree in music composition.
Gerardo Lopez (b. 2000)
Gerardo Lopez (b. 2000)
Gerardo Lopez (b. 2000)
Gerardo Lopez is a senior music composition major and studying music composition with Eric Wood.
Notes by the composer
Gerardo Lopez: A Space Opera: Fantasia on Various Opera Themes and a Theme of Bach for Modular Synthesizer
A Space Opera: Fantasia on Various Opera Themes and a Theme of Bach for Modular Synthesizer practically describes itself in title. The piece is an assortment of themes from various operas and a theme of Bach passed through various electronic manipulations. I came up with the idea after having listened to Pauline Oliveros’s Bye Bye Butterfly in which she blends the sounds of the Buchla synthesizer with those of Puccini’s Madame Butterfly. I decided to take a very similar approach. In this piece you will hear various electronic manipulations of Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries,” Bach’s Prelude in E major from his Partita No. 3 for solo violin, Purcell’s “When I Am Laid in Earth” from Dido and Aeneas, and Verdi’s “Follie, follie . . . Sempre libera” from La traviata. Some of these more manipulated than others to the point of no recognition.
Gerardo Lopez: Blues, Fugue, and Riffs
Inspired by composers such as Leonard Bernstein and George Gershwin who managed to merge jazz and classical music. This piece fuses the same ideas by taking a jazz idiom and writing it as a classical piece for strings.
The piece opens with a blues based on modified twelve-bar blues structure. Without a pause we enter into a fugue that uses a jazzy sounding theme and recalls the structure of a Bach fugue, therefore clearly presenting the fusion of classical and jazz elements. The cello then brings us into riffs by playing a repeated bass line while plucking the strings. The violin is the first instrument to present the bebop like “riff.” The entire movement then presents new material as each string instrument plays a solo over the bass line only to return to the “riff.” The piece closes with all three instruments stating the “riff” together.
Gerardo Lopez: Volverán las oscuras golondrinas
The text of this song is taken from a poem by Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer. Bécquer was a nineteenth-century Spanish poet who also happened to write librettos for zarzuela, a form of Spanish opera or musical theater. It was during this time that he fell in love with his muse, Julia Espín, an operatic soprano. The relationship did not end well and Bécquer ended up marrying a woman he did not love. In recognition of the poet himself writing texts for music and his knowledge of opera along with the fact that his muse was an operatic soprano, I decided to set this beautiful Spanish poem as a song for high voice and piano. The poem,
much like the music, is on a search to try to find that ideal love and thus the music is never quite centered in any key but searching though nostalgia until at the end all hope is lost and said love is unresolved. In essence this song is a search for that ideal love that people search for but sometimes cannot be found and only leaves them longing to find it.
Volverán las oscuras golondrinas
Text and Translation
Volverán las oscuras golondrinas en tu balcón sus nidos a colgar, y otra vez con el ala a sus cristales jugando llamarán.
Pero aquellas que el vuelo refrenaban tu hermosura y mi dicha a contemplar, aquellas que aprendieron nuestros nombres . . .
¡esas . . . no volverán!
Volverán las tupidas madreselvas de tu jardín las tapias a escalar, y otra vez a la tarde aún más hermosas sus flores se abrirán.
Pero aquellas, cuajadas de rocío cuyas gotas mirábamos temblar y caer como lágrimas del día . . . ¡esas . . . no volverán!
Volverán del amor en tus oídos las palabras ardientes a sonar; tu corazón de su profundo sueño tal vez despertará.
Pero mudo y absorto y de rodillas como se adora a Dios ante su altar, como yo te he querido . . . ; desengáñate, ¡así . . . no te querrán!
— Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer
The dark swallows will return to nest on your balcony, once again with their wings against its window playfully they will call.
But those who paused to contemplate your beauty and my bliss, those that learned our names . . . those . . .will not return!
The honeysuckles will return to climb the walls of your garden, and once again in the afternoon more beautifully their flowers will open.
But those, covered by dew whose drops we watched tremble and fall as if they were the day’s tears . . . those . . . will not return!
In your ears again will return love’s ardent words to sound; your heart from its deep sleep might awaken.
But mute and on their knees how God is worshipped at his altar, how I have loved you . . . ; don’t deceive yourself, they will not love you as I have!