The composition to be performed this Friday in the Mozart Hall of Zaragoza’s Auditorium explores different stages of Francisco de Goya’s career through music, from the social criticism of The Engravings to the darkness of The Disasters of War. A total of 110 musicians from the Santa Cecilia Classical Orchestra and Aragonese soprano Sabina Puértolas will perform the work under the direction of Grzegorz Nowak, director of the London Philharmonic.
15,000 SILENCES TO TELL GOYA’S STORY
The symphony is divided into four movements, runs for 47 minutes and features a particularly striking element: 15,000 silences, as many as, according to its composer when he presented the work several weeks ago, Goya heard over the course of 35 years. The painter’s deafness served as one of the guiding threads for the musical construction of his life and work.
It all began when Valent, who has received two Grammy Awards for his work with Montserrat Caballé, visited the Prado Museum. Beyond admiring the paintings, he found a starting point for his composition: focusing on Goya’s human profile.
The work itself begins with a very distinctive sound: tinnitus, the persistent ringing that some people with hearing loss may experience. Through it, Valent seeks to immerse the audience in the silent world in which Goya developed a fundamental part of his artistic output, including The Caprices, the Black Paintings and The Disasters of War.
A SYMPHONY DESIGNED FOR ALL AUDIENCES
During the presentation of the symphony in Zaragoza several months ago, Grzegorz Nowak highlighted the accessible nature of the composition. The conductor said he had been “perplexed” as he delved deeper into Goya’s life and work, and noted that the symphony was designed to be enjoyed by people who are not experts in classical music as well.
After its world premiere in Zaragoza, Goya Symphony will travel to Madrid’s National Auditorium on October 5. Just one day later, on October 6, the work will be available to the public through YouTube, Spotify and other digital platforms.
From this Friday onward, Goya will therefore have his own soundtrack. It is a composition created more than two centuries after some of his greatest works, drawing paradoxically on the silence that shaped much of the artist’s life and now turning it into music.
