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The music of Creación de las Aves, composed in 2012 and inspired by the Remedios Varo painting depicted on the cover of this score, reflects two elements that are striking in this surreal work of art: the extreme concentration shown by the Owl Woman in the painting as she paints birds into living creatures (with the assistance of alchemy and a cardio-violin), and the ecstasy of the newly liberated birds as they take flight through a star-studded window. The origin of life is thus transformed into a warm-blooded miracle, a song taking flight.

In my composition, a series of low, slowly articulated, sustained tones in the piano erupts into vivid, lightning-quick arpeggios and trills in the extreme upper register. These florid passages, framed by the deeper sonorities, are interrupted by a lurching scalar passage referencing the Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach, by J. S. Bach. This work is woven into the piece as an homage to the unusual combination of mathematical precision within a surrealist context, depicted in so many paintings by Varos. 

The initial arpeggios return as fragments, leading to the end of the piece. I’m grateful to the Mexican-American pianist Ana Cervantes for commissioning and championing this work, as part of her visionary Monarca project.

—Anne LeBaron