Aguila - Life Is A Dream

Miguel del Aguila

LIFE IS A DREAM (La vida es sueño) for String Orchestra

Life is a Dream was commissioned by the Chautauqua Institution through the generosity of Kay H. Logan. It was written for the Audubon Quartet (Thomas Shaw, Doris Lederer, Ellen Jewett and Akemi Takayama), who gave the premiere on August 5, 2002 at the Chautauqua Institution’s Elizabeth S. Lenna Hall.

The composer writes:

As I started writing this music, words from Calderón de la Barca’s play Life is a Dream began ringing obsessively in my mind for no apparent reason. After I re-read this play (that I hadn’t read in thirty years) I realized why. A crisis has led Calderón’s main character to the realization that he can no longer tell reality from dreams. Being in a somewhat similar situation myself at that time, I probably chose this subject matter subconsciously, out of the psychological need to deal with it.

I then set out to do with music what Calderón achieved through words: to blur and confuse the boundaries between the real and the imagined. Thus, I wrote a piece in which the “real” music is often used as background, merely accompanying “imagined,” “dreamed,” “remembered,” and “suggested” music. The traditional concert space on stage is not always the physical space where th e “real music” is played, and the performers at times play more “real” music with their silence and spoken voices than they do with their instruments.

This work is thus introspective and philosophical in natu re. Its form is derived from the text and the subject matter. Calderón’s 17th Century Spain has also influenced the music: the first section is written in the Spanish Phrygian mode and is followed by a lively Jota dance.

I thank the Audubon Quartet and Ms. Kay Logan for their important part in the creation of this work and also Mr. Marty Merkley, who conceived and carried through this commission project, and without whom this work would never have been written.

Critics all over the world recognize the compositional voice and talent that is Miguel del Aguila. While he has great respect for the classical tradition, Aguila believes he must create the freshest, most spontaneous music he can. What results is a captivating interplay of classical balance and romantic excess. Aguila's penchant for devising programs for his own works (which are usually not disclosed) further enhances his highly dramatic style in which musical ideas, always simple and recogn izable, are pushed to extremes by propulsive rhythms and adventurous instrumentation.

Born in Montevideo, Uruguay, American composer Miguel del Aguila moved to the U.S. in 1978. After graduating from The San Francisco Conservatory of Music, he traveled to Vienna for further music studies. During his ten years there, Aguila was active as a composer, pianist, and music teacher. In 1992, he returned to the U.S. to live in Southern California. Numerous premieres of his works followed, and in 1994 Los Angeles Times critics chose him "resident music man of the year" and later "one of the West Coast's most promising and enterprising young composers". He was honored with a Kennedy Center Friedheim Award in 1995 and several California Arts Council Fellowships and Residencies from 1996 to 2000. Most recently his works have received the support of Meet the Composer, the American Symphony Orchestra League, The Aaron Copland Fund for Music, and the Argosy Foundation for Contemporary Music. Aguila's catalog of over 90 works includes opera, orchestral, choral, solo, and chamber works as well as incidental music for theater and film. Premieres of his works have been broadcast worldwide on radio and TV, and his works have been recorded by important artists on 17 different CDs, available on various labels. Since 1986, many of his works have been published by Peermusic Classical (distributed by Theodore Presser Co).

His busy schedule as pianist/composer includes solo performances with several orchestras and solo concerts at New York's Carnegie Recital Hall and Merkin Hall, and at Vienna's Konzerthaus and Bösendorfer Hall. Aguila was appointed conductor and music director of California-based Ojai Camerata from 1996 to 2000, and is founder/director of the West Coast composers’ group Voices. From 2000 to 2004 Aguila commuted between New York and California, spending summers as resident composer at the Chautauqua Institution Summer Festival. In 2005-06 Aguila was composer-in-residence with the New Mexico Symphony Orchestra in Albuquerque, through a Music Alive Extended Residency Grant.

The Text for Life is a Dream

Sueña el rico en su riqueza, que más cuidados le ofrece; sueña el pobre, que padece su miseria y su pobreza; sueña el que a medrar empieza, sueña el que afana y pretende, sueña el que agravia y ofende, y en el mundo, en conclusión, todos sueñan lo que son, aunque ninguno lo entiende.

¿Qué es la vida? Un frenesí. ¿Qué es la vida? Una ilusión, una sombra, una ficción, y el mayor bien es pequeño, que toda la vida es sueño y los sueños sueños son.

— Pedro Calderón de la Barca (1600 - 1681) from La vida es sueño (1635)

The rich man dreams of his riches, which only brings him care. The poor man dreams that he suffers misery and want.

He dreams who thrives and prospers. He dreams who toils and strives. He dreams who injures, offends and insults. And to conclude, through the whole world, all men dream the lives they lead, though no man knows it.

What is life? A frenzy. What is life? An illusion, a shadow, a fiction, and the greatest good is little; for all life is a dream, and dreams themselves are only dreams.

— trans. Miguel del Aguila

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el mundo, en el conclusión,

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sueñan lo que son, aunque ninguno lo entiende.

conclude, through the whole world,

men dream

lives they lead, though no man knows it.

en el mundo, en el conclusión, todos sueñan lo que son, aunque ninguno lo entiende.

And to conclude, through the whole world,

men dream the lives they lead, though no man knows it.

y en el mundo, en el conclusión, todos sueñan lo que son, aunque ninguno lo entiende.

And to conclude, through the whole world,

men dream the lives they lead, though no man knows it.

en el mundo, en el conclusión, todos sueñan lo que son, aunque ninguno lo entiende.

lunga and dreams themselves... ...are only

y los sueños... ...sueños son.

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