The song came to Laura Schwendinger like an October ghost, wending its way through time and memory. At the time, she was spending part of her sabbatical at the McDowell Colony in rural New Hampshire.
“It was a strange period, very quiet,” recalls Schwendinger, a professor of composition in the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music. “There was an early snowstorm. I just felt the story speaking to me in the chilly air.”
On Friday, Nov. 16, the UW Concert Choir will present the world premiere of "Llorona," Schwendinger’s choral setting of an old Mexican folk ballad, at 8 p.m. in Mills Hall. The song recounts the bleak tale of a woman who drowns her children, then herself, in a chaos of grief over a fickle lover. Llorona, the “weeping woman,” is then doomed to wander the earth, bemoaning her loss.
In Mexico, where Schwendinger was born, the song is sung often around campfires and in homes, its haunting melody familiar even to children, who are cautioned to be good or else “Llorona” will come looking for them.
Friday’s performance will be a departure from the more complex sonatas and concerti, many written for orchestras and ensembles, for which the UW composer is well known. For this simple setting of a traditional folk ballad, the choir, directed by professor Beverly Taylor, will be accompanied only by faculty guitarist Javier Calderon.
The setting fits the composer’s reflective mood. Schwendinger has received numerous awards and honors for her work, as well as commissions from around the globe, proving herself “in all the traditional ways.” At 50, though, she is ready to open a door to her past. "Llorona" joins several other works, not yet finished, in a series Schwendinger calls “Songs My Parents Taught Me.”
“I've never drawn on that part of my background,” she says. “Yet my mother speaks fluent Spanish, cooks Mexican food; it is part of my heritage. My mother’s best friend has a gorgeous voice and when they stayed with us, she’d sing Llorona.”
Though her last text setting -- “Six Choral Settings”-- was performed by Trinity Choir at Carnegie Hall last May, Schwendinger says she does not often focus on choral compositions. But she had a strong desire to work with Taylor, who directs the Concert Choir. It was also a unique pleasure, she says, to write for Calderon.
“One of the wonderful things about being part of the music faculty here is that we have such amazing conductors and performers,” says Schwendinger. “Sometimes I just write things for people here because I love how they play.”
There was also the mystical way that "Llorona" seemed to be seeking her. In the room where Schwendinger stayed at the MacDowell Colony were scrawled the signatures of dozens of other famous composers who’d worked there.
“Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein and Ruth Crawford — who knows if they were somehow guiding my hand?” she muses. “It definitely felt a bit ghostly.”
Friday’s performance opens with the sound of 40 voices, hissing like the winter wind. Guitar notes follow like snowflakes.