The idea to compose Canto de Semillas (Song of Seeds) emerged from a shared interest between Maestro Miguel Harth-Bedoya and me: nature. I decided to write orchestral music inspired by modern poetry that talks about the relation between humans and nature. Poetry that, in speaking about the condition of nature, reveals something about our human condition. I found such poetry in Octavio Paz’s Arbol Adentro (A Tree Within). I chose three verses from two different poems in the book and wrote one orchestral movement inspired by each verse.
The verse that I chose for the first movement appears in a poem called “Before the beginning”:
"Under your eyelids the seed
of the sun ripens."
When I read this verse I remembered an idea a friend shared with me many years ago. We were teenagers and pondering the difficult life choices ahead of us. My friend compared life choices to the germination of a seed. It is not easy for a seed to grow: it has to break itself and fight its way through the soil until it finds the sun. We, too, have to break secure boundaries to make the life choices that allow us to grow.
The musical material of the first movement is based on a three-note motif that is transposed and transformed throughout the piece. While composing I thought of it as the “seed motif.” The motif, which consists of the musical intervals of a minor second and a perfect fourth, is first presented in a chordal manner in measure one, but is soon distorted and absorbed by the sonority of the tam-tam and the appearance of a low G. In the strings, a polyphonic texture that includes the seed motif grows out of that low G, increasing in density and ambitus as it progresses, evocative of a seed’s germination. After this first polyphony, the music slows down, the contrapuntal density decreases, and the seed motif is played by the woodwinds at a more relaxed tempo, as if the germination has taken place and a leaf is about to feel its first ray of light.
The verse for the second movement comes from the poem “Night, day, night”:
"Fire asleep in the night,
 water that wakes laughing."
This movement alternates two contrasting sections (ABABA form). The A sections are inspired by “water that wakes laughing.” The rhythm is more flexible and the flutes play a medium to high-pitched melody that becomes more fluid and melismatic in each of its appearances during the first two A sections. The B sections consist of phrases made by a succession of low-pitched chords presented in a steady and rhythmically precise manner. Here the music is more solemn than the A sections and evokes the “fire asleep in the night.” The last A section comes back to the “water” melody of the flutes, but harmonized using the same chord structures as the B sections. The general register of this section is low, also reminiscent of the B sections, as if water and fire could briefly coexist at the end. The orchestration is completed by electronic sounds made by recordings of rain and fire, transformed to create evocative textures that could mix with the instruments.
The third movement is based on the following verse, also from the poem “Night, day, night”:
"Stream of light: a bird singing in the terrace.
In the valleys and mountains of your body it dawns."
This verse led me to research songs of birds from the Mexican fauna. I transcribed songs of quetzal, northern mockingbird, white-throated thrush, hummingbirds, among others, and created melodies inspired by them. I also transcribed the rhythms of certain woodpeckers to create some rhythmic materials. I enjoyed this process of working with bird sounds, and it represents a new element in my composing.
Dawn is evoked in the movement by a chorale-like material that appears in the beginning and goes through various transformations until it appears one last time, in all the brasses, as a peroration before the coda begins.

Canto de Semillas (2018) for orchestra and electroacoustic sounds in 2nd and 3rd movements

The idea to compose Canto de Semillas (Song of Seeds) emerged from a shared interest between Maestro Miguel Harth-Bedoya and me: nature. I decided to write orchestral music inspired by modern poetry that talks about the relation between humans and nature. Poetry that, in speaking about the condition of nature, reveals something about our human condition. I found such poetry in Octavio Paz’s Arbol Adentro (A Tree Within). I chose three verses from two different poems in the book and wrote one orchestral movement inspired by each verse.
The verse that I chose for the first movement appears in a poem called “Before the beginning”:
"Under your eyelids the seed
of the sun ripens."
When I read this verse I remembered an idea a friend shared with me many years ago. We were teenagers and pondering the difficult life choices ahead of us. My friend compared life choices to the germination of a seed. It is not easy for a seed to grow: it has to break itself and fight its way through the soil until it finds the sun. We, too, have to break secure boundaries to make the life choices that allow us to grow.
The musical material of the first movement is based on
a three-note motif that is transposed and transformed throughout the piece. While composing I thought of it as the “seed motif.” The motif, which consists of the musical intervals of a minor second and a perfect fourth, is first presented in a chordal manner in measure one, but is soon distorted and absorbed by the sonority of the tam-tam and the appearance of a low G. In the strings, a polyphonic texture that includes the seed motif grows out of that low G, increasing in density and ambitus as it progresses, evocative of a seed’s germination. After this first polyphony, the music slows down, the contrapuntal density decreases, and the seed motif is played by the woodwinds at a more relaxed tempo, as if the germination has taken place and a leaf is about to feel its first ray of light.
The verse for the second movement comes from the poem “Night, day, night”:
"Fire asleep in the night,
 water that wakes laughing."
This movement alternates two contrasting sections (ABABA form). The A sections are inspired by “water
that wakes laughing.” The rhythm is more flexible and the flutes play a medium to high-pitched melody that becomes more fluid and melismatic in each of its appearances during the first two A sections. The B sections consist of phrases made by a succession of low-pitched chords presented
in a steady and rhythmically precise manner. Here the music is more solemn than the A sections and evokes the “fire asleep in the night.” The last A section comes back
to the “water” melody of the flutes, but harmonized using the same chord structures as the B sections. The general register of this section is low, also reminiscent of the B sections, as if water and fire could briefly coexist at the end. The orchestration is completed by electronic sounds made by recordings of rain and fire, transformed to create evocative textures that could mix with the instruments.
The third movement is based on the following verse, also from the poem “Night, day, night”:
"Stream of light: a bird singing in the terrace.
In the valleys and mountains of your body it dawns."
This verse led me to research songs of birds from the Mexican fauna. I transcribed songs of quetzal, northern mockingbird, white-throated thrush, hummingbirds, among others, and created melodies inspired by them. I also transcribed the rhythms of certain woodpeckers to create some rhythmic materials. I enjoyed this process of working with bird sounds, and it represents a new element in my composing.
Dawn is evoked in the movement by a chorale-like material that appears in the beginning and goes through various transformations until it appears one last time, in all the brasses, as a peroration before the coda begins.

Canto de Semillas - III. Chorro de luz: un pájaro cantando en la terraza

Canto de Semillas - II. Fuego dormido en la noche, agua que ríe despierta

Canto de Semillas - I. Bajo tus párpados madura la semilla del sol

Composer of contemporary orchestral music

Canto de Semillas (2018) for orchestra and electroacoustic sounds in 2nd and 3rd movements

Antonio Juan-Marcos