Santa Maria, Strela do dia (world premiere)
About this Piece
My first contact with music before the piano, the violin, and composition was singing in my school choir. One of the pieces we used to sing was “Santa Maria, Strela do Dia” (Saint Mary, Star of the Day): the 100th Cantiga in the Cantigas de Santa Maria Codex (c. 1250). The Canticles of Holy Mary are 420 poems with musical notation, written in the early medieval Galician-Portuguese language in the court of Alfonso X of Castile ‘El Sabio’ (1221–1284). Most of them are about miracles involving Holy Mary and borrow melodies from the Gregorian monody, popular lyricism, and the songs of the troubadours. This piece is built around that old but timeless melody and fueled by the love for choir music that I have carried since childhood. —Pedro Osuna