Vocalise

Vocalise is the sixth movement of Song of Thirteen Moons, a large-scale elegiac cycle that has occupied Lopez's creative imagination since the loss of his beloved wife Irene, companion of nearly sixty years. The work is — in the deepest sense — a requiem of the heart: music through which grief is transformed into beauty, and loss into something resembling hope.

The soprano and tenor soloists do not merely perform in Vocalise — they enact a drama of emotional truth. The soprano line is characterized by what Lopez calls "The Long Line" — extended phrases that reach beyond the natural breath, suspended in orchestral resonance, as if reaching beyond the limits of what language can say. The tenor enters as counterpart and response. In the closing pages of the work, the two voices join in a duet that the composer describes as "the eternal joining of two souls — love lost and found again."

The orchestral writing reflects Lopez's Parisian formation: continuously flowing, overlapping phrases — textures that the composer's peers have associated with the lineage of French spectral music, though Lopez arrived at these sonic landscapes through entirely his own aesthetic principles. The work is at once an elegy, a meditation, and an affirmation.

Vocalise is a work of remarkable accessibility alongside structural sophistication — qualities that make it an ideal choice for audiences encountering contemporary orchestral music for the first time, as well as those steeped in the literature.