Lucid Insanity for Mezzo-Soprano and Ensemble | Sara Claro

Description

Lucid Insanity, for mezzo-soprano and ensemble, is a tribute to Walt Whitman, one of the great American poets of the 19th century.
The descriptive nature of his texts led me to explore the sound possibilities that these may or may not have associated with them. However, despite this present descriptive aspect, there is something undefined and vague in the way the subject is exposed. Almost as if we are listening to his most secret thoughts. This “indefinite description” originated the title “Lucid Insanity”.
The first movement can be seen as an introduction or presentation by the narrator, in which the reference to the ensemble is present in the text. The statism and the entirely unclear presence of the ensemble’s music serves the text, as for example in “That music always round me, unceasing, unbeginning, yet long untaught I did not hear (…)”.
The choice of the text for the second movement was due to the gradual transition of the subject’s state of mind, from extremely nervous to the final state of happiness (“It is Happiness”). Once again, the ensemble accompanies this passage, with quick motifs culminating in long notes and restful movements.
In the third movement we can hear an emotional farewell, whose narrator in his last breath still tries to remember happy moments shared in the past, to finally let himself be carried away, hearing “the heart-thud stopping” at the end.
Duration: ca. 11′ | Pages: 84 | Year: 2008
Instrumentation: Oboe, Clarinet, Bassoon, Horn, Piano, Mezzo-Soprano, Violin, Viola, Violoncello, Contrabass