The concert is documented on the second CD, presented in its original dramaturgy along with an encore. Among the most compelling topics explored throughout the entire piano seminar, the one centered on morphology-based form was the most extensively developed: it concerns the very concrete possibility of building a dramaturgy through precise yet empty structures—forms without preexisting subjects—thus seeking a balance between the blank page of tabula rasa and composition, shaping clear and simple forms that could come alive anew in every performance through subjects created in the moment. These structures are like rooms that, each time, are inhabited by entirely improvised elements.

For many concerts, one such form was inspired by The Ascent of Mount Carmel (Subida del Monte Carmelo) by Juan de la Cruz—a poetic work and method of spiritual elevation based on his poem En una noche oscura, describing a mystical journey metaphorically (and graphically) represented by a mountain. Mount Carmel, in Palestine, is part of a mountain chain in Upper Galilee that descends toward the Mediterranean. On this mountain, in the 12th century, the lay community of Carmelite Fathers was born: a group of lay hermits dedicated to contemplation and meditation, later forced into migration and ultimately reformed at the end of the 16th century by Juan de la Cruz and Teresa of Ávila.

Imprisoned in Toledo, from which he escaped by descending a rope made from torn pieces of blanket—the most classic of escapes—Juan conceived the description of this spiritual ordeal, a true initiatory crossing, akin to a fierce desire to draw near to the Divine through a cathartic rebellion: an experience that, in fact, contributed both to the birth of the poet and mystic, and to his own symbolic rebirth represented by escape itself: “A thousand years in that little prison would not be worth one of the graces the Lord granted me there.”

Juan’s writing is symbolically set in the darkness of night, as though it were a long journey in profound blindness and silence.
This itinerary is structured into four Gradus:
I – Nigredo, Oblivion, Silence
II – The Ascent of Mount Carmel (Subida del Monte Carmelo)
III – Voluntas, Canticle
IV – Intellectus, Lamma Sabachtani

Accordingly, this is the morphology I used for the long opening improvisation Obscura.
The poet Rainer Maria Rilke, at the beginning of the 20th century, wrote: “The abyss between us and God is filled with the darkness of God, and when one feels it, one must descend and howl into that abyss. This is more necessary than crossing it.”
These words perfectly explain the essence of music inspired by the work of Juan de la Cruz, for these processes concern experiential knowledge of the Divine—a knowledge that is neither illumination nor cognition.

What is experienced in it is not acquisition but dispossession.
Not radiance, but obscuration.
Not advancement into clarity and abundance, but a sinking into the darkness of the noche oscura.

The mysticism of Juan de la Cruz is total negation and surrender; the experience is that of a presence indistinguishable from absence.
The mantra of Mount Carmel reads:

To reach the enjoyment of all things,
desire to enjoy nothing.
To reach the knowledge of all things,
desire to know nothing.
To reach the possession of all things,
desire to possess nothing.
To reach the being of all things,
desire to be nothing.

Nakedness and privation—a discipline of the soul articulated through the three virtues of the human being (intellect, memory, and will), which Saint Augustine considered a reflection of the Divine Trinity. If music itself is a divine entity and representation, mirroring the human figure, we may easily identify in sound the voice of music (initiation); in rhythm the body of music (sexual center); in melody the heart of music (emotional, spiritual center); and in harmony the cerebral center (psychological, intellectual). Anyone who works with music can easily recognize, like a prism, this kind of revelation—unfolding through similar pathways, disciplined by rules (and mountains) that are equivalent in many respects.

The morphology of the improvisation Obscura, conceived as a suite, begins with a timbral and abstract introduction (Gradus I: blackness, oblivion, silence), followed by a rhythmic mantra (Gradus II: Subida del Monte Carmelo) and then a melodic one (Gradus III: the Voluntas Canticle), culminating in the anguish and despair of abandonment (Gradus IV: Lamma Sabachtani—“why have you forsaken me?”). In Christ, these words also affirm his humanity and identification with human suffering—the climax of the Passion, a manifesto of love and vulnerability.

For the artistic community especially, Juan de la Cruz’s insistence on the second virtue—memory—deserves reflection. In some sense it corresponds to the concept of residual essences, which in music we might compare to languages and styles that improvisation urges us to transcend in favor of a truth more unique, pure, and essential.

Whereas academic ars memoriae tends toward cataloging, appropriation, and mastery of all contents through schemes, the technique of Saint John aimed at the opposite: expropriation, emptying. This explains his theologically “imperfect” poetic writing—deliberately ingenuous and Franciscan—with echoes of songs and popular verse, coplas and glosas of Castile, and likely influences from Iranian Sufism and Ramon Llull, who wrote at the time: “The Saracens have religious men called Sufis who use words of love and passion to instill faith and devotion.”

The improvisations following the Obscura suite are all inspired by the work of de la Cruz and by this conscious dialogue between searching and relinquishing—so central to musical action in general, and especially in the process of free improvisation.

A voce returns to a practice that has always fascinated me: disciplining the pianist’s mind and body into a condition of limitation and dispossession, renouncing any form of polyphony or multifunction between the hands, in favor of a vocality that concentrates on details of song—timbre, ornamentation, single notes. Even when describing harmonic movement in the manner of Bach’s partitas for monodic instruments (such as the A-minor Partita for flute).

Animato is one of the most beautiful evocations used in musical agogics—playing on the idea of “movement,” yet also implying “full of life, endowed with soul,” conditioning the performer physically and emotionally.

Castigliana is a challenge: improvising a folk song influenced by a specific (physical and cultural) geography—here, the land that gave birth to Juan de la Cruz in Fontiveros in 1542, in the historical heart of Spain: the land of castles and the crown, of the gypsy nomadic flow; a territory encompassing Madrid, La Mancha, Seville and Salamanca, Córdoba and Toledo, Segovia and Ávila, with their engaging musical traditions, full of emotion and passionate melodies. My mind goes immediately to the Cantigas de Santa Maria—powerfully narrative and rich with influences from across the Mediterranean.

Then comes Vondervotteimittis, which I had already performed earlier in the day and which I kept in a double version, placing it as an interlude between Castigliana and Glosas in order to briefly counterbalance—at least on the record—the fervent climate infused with Iberian influences. I have already spoken of Vondervotteimittis, being the only composed piece alongside Monte Analogo.

Almost consequentially from Castigliana comes the improvisation Glosas, evoking the recitative form of a text—a poetic nucleus whose stanzas return and comment, adding perspectives and interpretations. In the Hispanic tradition, it is a genre that requires improvisational ability and mastery of specific metric schemes.

The concert closes with Llama de amor viva, a direct homage to Juan de la Cruz’s lyric Canciones del alma: Oh llama de amor viva (“O living flame of love”), carrying the sensation of singing love itself—inhabited and surrounded by this flame.

Finally, Cantico Espiritual is the encore: an improvised chant pursuing the idea of the Canciones del alma, representing a moment of inner peace and almost Franciscan union (el alma y el esposo) achieved through surrender. I follow a simple melody with determination, and the harmony always resolves while nonetheless moving through continual modulations.

“Of all the things you hear, see, taste, and touch, keep no record, nor let memory seize upon them. Let them fall immediately into oblivion. Pursue this, if necessary, with the same diligence others apply to remembering, so that no trace or shadow of them remains in memory—as if they were not in the world at all—leaving memory free and unburdened, bound to no consideration either high or low, letting it freely dissolve into oblivion, in direct contact with the soul. The operations of memory, in this state, are entirely divine, for in touching the absolute part of man, they themselves become divine, bearing no will other than that of the divine.”

In this thought of Juan de la Cruz lies a powerful—and effective—teaching, due to its subtle analogy with the psychology of the performer in improvisation (memory and possession, expectation and error, ego and judgment). It also resonates strongly with the involuntary memory through which Proust evoked impressions liberated from time and passionate apprehension—in the fleeting moment of their ecstatic birth—that inaccessible essence of reality which we seek and seek again through improvisation and composition, so necessary whenever we create music.