“Elegía a los Inocentes Caídos”, which translates to “Elegy for the fallen innocent” is a work for Chorus and Orchestra in memorial of the massacre that took place on Palm Sunday, 1937 in Ponce, Puerto Rico.

     A peaceful civilian march turned into a police shooting in which 19 civilians and two policemen were killed, and more than 200 civilians were wounded. Most of the dead were reportedly shot in their backs. The march had been organized by the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party to commemorate the abolition of slavery in Puerto Rico, and to protest the U.S. government’s imprisonment of the party’s leader Pedro Albizu Campos.

     A free twelve-tone matrix is the musical language and style utilized that reflects the brutal violence of this historic occurrence. The biblical text, from Ecclesiastes, also conveys and addresses the helplessness, the anguish, the outrage, and the injustices that, unfortunately, still keep occurring during our times.

Elegia a los Inocentes Caidos

Puerto Rican composer William Ortiz was raised and educated in the United States, but his Latino identity plays a vital role in his music. Particularly, his experience as a Nuyorican in the 1970s have informed the aesthetics of his music, which transforms the sounds of the streets into art music. Unique in that respect is the use of instrumental and vocalized graffiti that are integrated in some of his works. A professor at the University of Puerto Rico at Bayamón, he has taught at the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music and is Music Director of the Ateneo Puertorriqueño. 
He makes the following statement on his music: "I conceive of music as the 'vibrant beauty' of urban life; as the expressions of the cries and shouts of the street - cries and shouts that reflect the thoughts of those who are oppressed, of those who feel. It is my intent to convert the language of the street into a legitimate instrument".

Elegia a los Inocentes Caidos

William Ortiz Alvarado