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The Mexican poet Octavio Paz once said that Juan Rulfo is "the only Mexican novelist to
have provided us an image - rather than a mere description - of our physical
surroundings." Referencing spectral murmurs filtering through the streets of Comala,
whisperings of dreams, and groanings in the ghost town cemetery of Juan Rulfo’s
seminal and only novel Pedro Páramo, this composition for solo piano requires the
pianist to whisper, speak, shout, intone, and perform with a special seed rattle. The
combination of piano, vocalizations, and percussion serves to illuminate the secret
otherworldly utterances populating Rulfo’s deserted Mexican village. In fact, in 1954,
when the novel first appeared, although in a fragmentary form, Rulfo gave it the title, Los
Murmullos, translated as “The Murmurs.”

The Mexican-American pianist Ana Cervantes commissioned Los Murmullos in 2006 for
her “Rumores” project. She subsequently toured it extensively throughout Mexico, South
America, and the U.S. It represents the first installment of an ambitious twelve-part set,
The Well-Read Clavier, combining works of literature with piano performance.

---Anne LeBaron

The use in this musical composition of the title “Los Murmullos,” as well as of the
fragments of “Pedro Páramo,” work of Juan Rulfo, has been authorized by Señora Clara
Aparicio de Rulfo.