Joaquim Homs

Les Hores: Dos poemes de S. Espriu

Les Hores: Dos Poemes de S. Espriu for voice and clarinet. On January 5, 1938, in the middle of the civil war, the excellent Majorcan poet Bartomeu Rossello-Porcel passed away in the Sanatorium of Brull (Osona) at the age of 24. His close friend Salvador Espriu was with him in his lasts days of life and expressed his awful experience in fifteen short poems under the title of 'Les hores', first published in 1952. In 1955, I set two of them to music, 'Espera' and 'Nova claror,' where only two melodic lines are composed, in a way that is similar to the exchange of sensations and feelings that express the poems. The music tends to suggest and to deepen in our spirit the emotive climate and the deep sadness that come from all the poems. The next year, I composed five more songs of the same series for voice, flute, oboe and clarinet, and eventually in 1970, another six for voice and string quartet. The premiere of the last two series of songs took place in 1956 and 1974 respectively. The premier of the first series of 1955 took place the 21st of November 1988 by the Group L.I.M at the Contemporary Arts room of the Museum of Fine Arts of Bilbao within the framework of the Ninth Music Festival of the 20th Century.