This work started a few months ago, when I was still finishing my guitar and string quartet piece called Colours (closing in). After having a considerable number of fragments, sentences and stanzas by Fernando Pessoa and his heteronyms - Álvaro de Campos, Bernardo Soares and Alexander Search, I started to select the ones I could use for this piece.
Tell me again the music of that Tale, is an auto-reflection, in Portuguese and English, where I created, linking all the different fragments, sentences and stanzas, a sort of response about my impressions about everything and about nothing. It is a reflection about where I came from and where I am now. A response to the eternal romantic thought about music needs to say something, when music can be just music, a raw piece of art that lives for itself. If these reflections have nothing to say, it is because I do not want to say anything.
The first section, is a fragment by Bernardo Soares, found in O Livro do Desassossego (The Book of Disquiet)
“Nestas impressões sem nexo, nem desejo de nexo, narro indiferentemente a minha autobiografia sem factos, a minha história sem vida. São as minhas confissões, e, se nelas nada digo, é que nada tenho a dizer.”
The second section, is a fragment by Fernando Pessoa and it is written in English:
“The day is sad as I am sad,
But that no moment can abate
That pang that is all I have had
To make with me and see and feel
While life goes by like a mere wheel.”
The third section, is a stanza by Fernando Pessoa found in O Marinheiro (The
Sailor):
“Se tudo fosse, de qualquer modo, absolutamente coisa nenhuma?”
The fourth section, is a fragment by Pessoa’s English pseudonyms called Alexander Search called Here and There
“Here is the same as there, my friend,
All places in this world are like.
If doomed thy life in grief to spend,
What change can then thy fate amend,
What from thy soul the pain can strike?”
The fifth section, is a sentence found in O Marinheiro (The Sailor):
“Todo este país é muito triste… aquele onde eu vivi outrora era menos triste (…) Não sei se era feliz. Já não tornarei a ser aquilo que talvez nunca fosse.”
The sixth section, is a sentence found in O Livro do Desassossego (The Book of Disquiet):
“Um hábito de música ou de sonho, qualquer coisa que faça quase sentir, qualquer coisa que faça não pensar.”
The seventh section, is a fragment found in Pessoa’s poem called Meantime:
“Far away, far away,
Far away from here…
There is no worry after joy
Or a way from fear
Far away from here.”
The eight section, is a fragment of Pessoa’s poem called Tell me again the music of that Tale which gives the name to this song cycle:
“Tell me again the music of that Tale
Thy nurse wit sonf so oft by my soul’s bed,
Whose words and persons from my memory fade,
But in the melody remembered
(…)
What matter the song, so by it the soul weeps
Lost kinship with its antenatal sleeps?
The ninth and last section uses a fragment from one of Pessoa’s pseudonyms called Álvaro de Campos, found in Ode Marítima (The Maritime Ode)
“Nada depois, e só eu e a minha tristeza,
E a grande cidade agora cheia de sol,
E a hora real e nua como um
Cais já sem navios (…)”