CD Vistes al mar – QUARTET VELA – Miquel De Jorge Artells

I’m happy to present my first participation in a chamber music album as a Composer. Quartet Vela is a talented young saxophone quartet that trusted me to be part of their musical journey between Catalunya and Chile. “Hårgalåten” was the piece that I wrote for them, a work inspired in a Swedish folk legend about the Devil and a village called Hårga.

The idea of the piece came after watching a well-known horror movie called “Midsommar”, a film that is set in the village of Hårga.

Here you can read the story about “Hårgalåten” :

“It is a late Saturday night and all the young people in Hårga have gathered to dance in a barn. Suddenly in the middle of the dance, the music gets interrupted and a new fiddler steps forward from the shadows. He had a large dark hat on his head and you could see a pair of ‘burning’ eyes. The fiddler lifted the violin to his chin and began to play a song that had never been heard before. All the young people immediately began to dance to the new tune. But once they entered the dance, they could not stop dancing. The dance continued throughout the night and when dawn arrived the fiddler left the barn. After him came all the dancers, following him in a line. They couldn’t stop dancing. The sound of the violin fueled the dancers will to move their feet. When the church bells rang for service, the dancers disappeared with the fiddler. A girl remained laying on the dance floor in the lodge. No one had listened to her when she warned them about the fiddler, and no one noticed the fiddlers hooves in the midst of the wildest dance they’ve ever been through. The legend continues, saying that the fiddler led the dancers to Hårgaberget (Hårga Mountain) where they danced until only their bones were left. Some even say that you can still see the marks from the ring dance at Hårgaberget, and if you are so brave to venture out on a night of the full moon, it is said that you can hear the music that the devil once played for those who died.”