Cesonia y El Espejo
I first encountered the music of Colombian composer, Luis Miguel Delgado Grande through his chamber music. MANA Quartet was working on his Estudio De La Luz (2018) for a concert at Brooklyn’s alternative art space Roulette in 2021. I was immediately struck by the way he heard the saxophone and I knew a work for soprano saxophone by Luis Miguel would be quite special.
When discussing what a new piece for soprano saxophone might look like, I mentioned to Luis that I had yet to hear a composer write the sort of counterpoint that Telemann demanded of the flute. Telemann had intimate knowledge of the one-keyed baroque flute and this informed many compositional decisions. He was well aware of the different colors that each key would make available. When discussing the new work, I shared with Luis that a solo work full of counterpoint that exploited the various pizzicato effects of my saxophone would be of great interest!
Caligula!
Cesonia y El Espejo is the second work of Luis Miguel’s Caligula Cycle. Caligula is a play by Albert Camus and depicts Caligula, Roman Emperor, torn by the death of Drusilla, his sister and lover. In Camus' version of events, Caligula eventually deliberately manipulates his own assassination. (Historically, Caligula's assassination took place on January 24, AD 41.)
Albert Camus wrote of his piece "Caligula, a seemingly kind prince, realises upon the death of Drusilla (his sister and his mistress) that "men die and they are not happy." Obsessed by the quest for the Absolute and poisoned by contempt and horror, he tries to exercise through murder and systematic perversion of all values, a freedom, which he discovers in the end is not truly freedom. He rejects friendship and love, simple human solidarity, good and evil. He takes the word of those around him, he forces them to logic, he levels all around him by force of his refusal and by the rage of destruction which drives his passion for life."
"But if his truth is to rebel against fate, his faculty is to oppose, and deny other men. One cannot destroy, without destroying oneself. This is why Caligula depopulates the world around him and, true to his logic, makes arrangements to arm those who will eventually kill him. Caligula is the story of a superior suicide. It is the story of the most human and the most tragic of errors. Unfaithful to man, loyal to himself, Caligula consents to die for having understood that no one can save himself all alone and that one cannot be free in opposition to other men."[Wikipedia]
In Cesonia y El Espejo, Luis Miguel has taken the character of Cesonia as well as her conversations with the mirror (Espejo) and has fashioned a musical monologue out of her lines in Act 1. He has taken melodic ideas and distorted them in a mocking tone of slap tongues to represent the character of the mirror. In this way you hear both sides of the conversation between Cesonia and her reflection (El Espejo).