La Noche Fragmentada, Opus 67
Austin Audu
La Noche Fragmentada (Fragmented Night), Op. 67 is a work consisting of 20 small nocturnes. These pieces try to summarize memories, daydreams, feelings, images, and experiences of my early childhood.
The first seven years of my life were spent in a dwelling house full of rooms and nooks, arched corridors, and a backyard that had more resemblance to the Mato Grosso—Brazilian savannah and woodland—than to a garden. In the evenings, soft and healing breezes made intricate labyrinths in the interstices of the house; imagination and ancestral family ghosts were mixed with the reality of the living, creating a wonderful and hallucinating atmosphere. The aromas of swamps and marshes, brought by the seaside breezes interlaced with jungle sounds and noises of distant trains. Under the light of the full moon, remote rumbas permeated along nightly–melancholic sones—traditional music of Veracruz... memories of dance stages, marimbas, sounds, dialogues, words, silences, sonorities, and stories at night sweetly fill this period of my life.
Some of these nocturnes have for title people’s names such as Eulogio, Antonio, Maria Luisa, Raquel, Aurora, Rosaura, Adelina, y Violeta. All of them were maternal relatives who, at that stage of my life, lived and moved in the foreground. I only met two of them in person: Antonio and Violeta; the others took refuge in my imagination and ghostly roamed throughout nocturnal dreams. “De la Selva y su Sonrisa” (‘The Jungle and its Smile’) and “De la Brisa y su Laberinto” (‘The Breeze and its Labyrinth’) are nocturnes belonging to my mother and father respectively. The remaining nocturnes highlight night moments and relate to situations belonging to my tropical, coastal and jungle nights.
For interpretative purposes, La Noche Fragmentada, Op. 67 may be performed in any order. The performer can also play them in small groups or individually in combination with other pieces of my music.
Nocturno De la Marimba de Antonio
Ernesto García de León dedicates La Noche Fragmentada, Op. 67 to his friend guitarist–producer Austin Audu. The composer and his dedicatee met in 2007 in Texas at the premiere of Ernesto García de León’s Fantasía Tropical, Op. 66. In that occasion, the producer asked the composer about the source of inspiration for his music. To this effect Austin Audu comments the following.
“La Noche Fragmentada is a set of 20 Nocturnes that Ernesto wrote after I asked him about his music because sometime ago I had a beautiful dream in which I heard the Ballad from Ernesto’s Cinco Bosquejos. The music was coming from all around that other world; it was very uplifting. On waking up, the music continues to hunt me with its beauty and it struck to me that all of Ernesto’s music comes from an inner world of beauty and divinity. During our conversation he confirmed also hearing music in this way before writing, so I asked him to write something that would parallel in beauty and subtleness the preludes of Scriabin. Hence we have 20 Nocturnes which are very Ernesto but definitely a different world all together. When I play these pieces, I am always moved into another world of beauty and love, the very air becomes infused with a divine tranquility that I cannot describe but it's very tangible ...I can only wish for more.”