La Virgen a Solas

Celesti’anna Jordan, soprano
Vlada Moran, organ

Recorded at Peace United Church in Santa Cruz, February 2025.

La Virgen a solas is a piece I’ve been writing and rewriting since the 1990s.
The inspiration for the piece began in the fall of 1997 when I encountered music
and text from the Songbook of the Duke of Calabria (1556, also known as the
Cancionero de Upsala), a collection of Iberian villancicos from the early 16th
century. A group of poems dealing with the Virgin Mary caught my eye. Not
only did they focus on her feelings on the night of Christ’s birth, but in many
instances were written from her point of view. I immediately thought of my
grandmother, a devout Catholic in a country that adores Mary. Lily (Floria
Liliana was her given name) was a very musical person with a sharp ear, who
never trained to play an instrument even though she grew up surrounded by
Western music. Both of her parents were conservatory trained musicians in
Guatemala in the early 20th century, but she only studied sporadically with her
mom when she was a child, and never pursued music professionally.

In the late 1990’s, while in her 60s, Lily began formal lessons on the piano. She
was, for all intents and purposes, a beginner. I decided to make her a gift: a simple
setting of one of the poems, something she could sing and play at the piano as a
Christmas carol. That piece, “No la devemos dormir”, is a two part affair: the
right hand of the piano part is the vocal line with the words underneath, the left
plays the simplest possible arpeggiated chords below. I faxed it to her just in time
for Christmas.

In the fall of 2007 my friend and musical confidant Celesti’anna approached me
to compose a piece for her recital. I quickly seized on the idea of using “No la
devemos dormir”. I shifted it from common practice tonality A major to D
harmonic mixolydian. As its more dramatic sibling I added “Verbum caro,
factum est”, another poem from the same set. Under the title La Virgen a solas (a
line from “No la devemos dormir”) they were presented as a new gift to my Tita,
who always asked for my protection and who herself saved me in ways she never
truly understood.

In 2018 our Lily Flor passed away, in her beloved Antigua, Guatemala.
This, and all future versions, are dedicated to her: Floria Liliana, the patron saint
of our family.