Der Tod und das Buch (The death and the book)

This modest Lied for medium voice and piano is dedicated to my two current voice teachers, the soprano Alícia Martínez Bonfill and the mezzo-soprano Anna Alàs i Jové. I dedicate it to them with all my respect and gratitude for everything I have been taught. The text comes from an exercise I wrote in a German class with Professor Renate Kächel, who taught me many years ago to love the German language, a language that has always been present in my family’s house, as my parents spent part of their youth as Gastarbeiter (migrant worker) in different German cities.

The text is a reflection on the finitude of life and the value of trying to leave something that will survive us. At the time of life in which I wrote it, I thought, as an impulsive and stupid young man, that some text of mine would survive the end that awaits us all. For five years now I have three wonderful beings, for whom I have changed many diapers, who, for sure, will leave a better testimony of my existence.