Monsignor Quixote is based on the homonymous work by English writer Graham Greene. His text tells, in its own way, the immortal chevalier's moving adventures. The book recreates the illustrious character's adventures through a backwards and Manchegan Spain, showcasing history's silent voices. Father Quijote, a former communist mayor, native from Toboso; Enrique Zancas; and a Rocinante with rubber soles instead of
horseshoes strike up an unique relationship, a cloudy reminder of the irreconcilable positions between Marxism and a festive or tambourine Catholicism. But this peculiar relationship evolves into a surprising friendship, based on Faith and Love, and creating the miracle of Mutual Understanding.
To speak about Antón García Abril is to speak about one of the most important and influential contemporary musicians in the last decades. Monsignor Quixote is but the tip of the iceberg, a colossal exercise on musical imagination, drawing the lines upon which this atypical story wanders. Monsignor Quixote's score is more descriptive than rational; more situation bound than intention bound. That's why we don't find in it a proper musical genealogy defining the characters, apart from Rocinante's leitmotiv, a playful melody charged with nostalgia, riding on the back of an old Seat car. Wind and strings trot through the space, recalling the all-time most famous nag's steps. The score organises itself around two great melodies. The first one describes the feelings inspired by the Toboso-Streets of Toboso-, a place of eternal love, poetry and sleepless nights, whose streets are inhabited by nostalgia and the feeling of a soulful land. Clarinets and oboes strike up a delicate
dialogue, tranquil and unhurried, which sweetly seduces the strings, the story's grand protagonist, to modulate a melody whose texture vaguely reminds Maestro Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez. Antón will use this leitmotiv again -Thoughts of a distant friend-End Titles- to express with unbelievable intensity the friendship between the two main characters. Nobleman and squire re-live Don Quixote's and Sancho's adventures
through the arpeggios and scales springing up from the depths of the orchestra. The second one, ''The Jewel of the Crown'', is the piece's main leitmotiv- Main Titles-, an exquisite melody cleverly resolved by the author using classical guitar, the most Spanish of instruments, and exceptional witness of a land of legend. It's a descriptive piece, putting into context History beyond the present time… Its melody places us riding on a hack´s
back through the lands of La Mancha.
Track listing
Tracklist
01. Monsignor Quixote (3:10)
02. Rocinante (2:25)
03. Streets of Toboso (4:04)
04. Twilight in La Mancha (4:44)
05. Compañeros (3:40)
06. Windmills or Giants? (3:29)
07. Let me Feel Temptation ((5:01)
08. Dulcinea (4:59)
09. Adventures in the Mind (3:39)
10. "In a Certain Village..." (3:51)
11. Thoughts of a Distant Friend (3:55) |
