Levad', amigo, que dormides as manhãas frias;
todalas aves do mundo d'amor dizian:
leda m' and' eu.
-- Nuno Fernandez Torneol  (13th c.)

(Arise, my love, you who sleep through the cool mornings;
All the birds of the world sang of love:
Joyfully I go.)

In using literary models as starting points for the composition of an 'abstract' piece of music, I sought in particular to mirror the parallelistic verse structure characteristic of the Portuguese-Galician lyric. Thus each movement is founded upon variants of the familiar pattern of verse and refrain alternation.

The first movement -- Cantiga da alva -- presents long unaccompanied melodic statements alternating with motet-like polyphonic refrains in a canticle to the dawn. The second movement derives from the most important of the old Portuguese poetic forms, the Cantiga de amigo, one which traditionally offers a young woman's lament over the absence of her lover. many of these cantigas are cast as dialogues between the young woman and her mother, and this aspect is reflected in my presentation of two related but contrasting themes. The poetic source for the finale -- Bailada -- depicts three girls dancing in the shade of a hazel tree. I have cast it as an exuberant dance-song built on a simple triadic motif.