MEMORIAS DE UN HOMBRE DE CIUDAD

(Memoirs of a city man)

Year of composition: 2003

Memoirs of a city man is a descriptive work which criticizes the current people denationalization  the routine, the work, the timetables, the speed and the machines dominating us… It tells a person’s life during a common day.

The seven movements composing this work follow in a continous way. The first, Sunrise in the city, tells the mysterious sunrise with a sadness framework of a common working day. This movement presents the three notes group (B-G-F#) which will be the work main motive.

Machines (and people) is a movement of violent rhythm. Two opposed themes attempt to understand each other on a evolving and obsessive cell of triplets which regulates the frenzied rhythm of the current life: people’s theme is an expressive melody which uses the former three notes group as an starting point and machines’ theme is a repetitive pentatonic melody.

10:30, Intermezzo: In this movement appears a new motive: it is an eight measures section of homofonic texture and a succession of minor chords without tonal context. After a new irruption of “Machines” where are developed the second movement elements, appears a short moment where,  in the nightfall, our story character wishes for a better life but rarely reachable (Dreams). The expressive people’s melody appears combined with Intermezzo elements.

Music is shaken again in Nocturnal Flights, the movement evokes the vertigo which is produces occasionally the nocturnal life. It is a development section where are combined and superimposed the different elements appearing in this work. After the climax of Grandioso the rhythm progressively dissolves until Sunrise in the city: This ends a cycle.

This work encloses a clear message: Current people life isn’t a succession of days, but it is one lonely day endlessly repeated.