HE COMES

• DO NOT PASS BAY LIKE A DREAM
• EVER COMES
• EVER COMING
• RETURN TO HIM
• IN MEMORIAM

About the cycle: In 2005 I had composed a cycle of three choral songs with lyrics based on the writings of Rabindranath Tagore which I entitled «HE COMES». This work was commissioned by the Society for Universal Sacred Music (USA) and written while I was living in Paris.  The titles of these pieces were «EVER COMES», «EVER COMING» and «RETURN TO HIM».   Five years later (2010) I added a new score to this cycle:  DO NOT PASS BY LIKE A DREAM, commissioned this time by Eric Bank & The Esoteric (Seattle, USA).  With the recent composition (July 2013) of IN MEMORIAM, commissioned by Mark Anthony Carpio & the Philippines madrigal Singers in the occasion of the choir’s 50th anniversary, I am now closing this Choral Cycle which is inspired by a much pondered selection of poems from Tagore’s “Song Offerings” –the GITANJALI– a collection of exquisite verses imbued with an inner spiritual unity which I tried to describe some years ago when the first songs were written:

“The central message in the poems by Tagore, which I have chosen for this cycle of choral pieces, can be expressed simply in two words: LONGING and PRESENCE… The Longing  for a Presence… a Longing which in turn emanates from that mysterious Presence as it feeds on the Longing and brings itself ever closer. «He comes…», «He ever comes…», «Thou art ever coming…», ever and ever...  “He”? “Thou”? Who??!:  The Unnamed One, the One without a name who is however at the root of all names and has been named in countless ways.  It is HE in whom we have our being and from whom we spring.  The music which these poems inspired in me is no more than a humble personal tribute to that essential longing inherent in every human being so beautifully expressed along the verses of Gtitanjali, the secret longing for a YOU (for a «Thou» according to the Tagore´s verses) who is capable of steadying me, stretching me and recreating me”.