Mortally Wounded
Program Note
Mortally Wounded is a collection of eight songs with text by Federico García Lorca, a prolific young Spanish poet tragically assassinated during the Spanish Civil War in 1936 at the age of 38. In this cycle, Lorca shares his deepest desires with us, often through haunting symbolic and surrealist Andalusian imagery. The music, too, seems like a dream: hazy, smoky air flavored with Spanish turns and mordents swirl into a cloud of nightclub cabaret songs. Our singer is accompanied at times by something reminiscent of flamenco guitar, which aggressively pounds and pierces through his vocals. Through it all, he both celebrates the thrill of new love and warns us of devastating heartbreak. But for Lorca, perhaps the inevitable pain and sadness is worth the price of admission in the end.
Helpful Videos
Mortally Wounded: III. Orange
Timothy Stoddard, tenor; Ellen Fast, piano
Michael Markowski on “Mortally Wounded”
Timothy Stoddard on “The Guitar”
Timothy Stoddard on “A Star”
Timothy Stoddard on “Trees”
Timothy Stoddard performs “The Guitar,” “A Star,” and “Trees”
Commissioned For
Timothy Stoddard, tenor
Publisher
Markowski Creative (ASCAP)
Instrumentation
Tenor & Piano
Errata
No known errata.
Year Completed
2022