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Instrumental Music
Des d'una incògnita miniatura (string octet, percussion & electroacoustics, 2023)
COMING SOON
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L'alè dels estels (pipe organ & electroacoustics, 2021)
"L'alè dels estels" (“The Breathing of the Stars”) was expressly written for the exceptional organ of the parish of Santa Maria in Menorca with the purpose of exploring the timbral and harmonic possibilities of its extensive registers. The piece, where the organ merges with electronics, invites us to imagine the monumental instrument as an enormous cosmic lung, whose breath begets the universe–expanding from the center of the keyboard to encompass the most extreme registers at its climax and mutating from a more abstract gesturality towards a more figurative melodism, from the cosmic to the human.
Tangents from Certainty (flute, clarinet, piano & electroacoustics, 2021)
"Tangents from Certainty" was written for the NYC based electroacoustic trio Apply Triangle. The central idea of the piece is to polarize the pitch space towards certain points in the register where the material becomes "ordered"–like in the beginning of the piece, where a set of four notes is exposed in a regular rhythm and pattern–and then creating entropic tangents that depart from these points towards zones in the register where the material becomes more and more chaotic. The result is a like a slow pulsating movement where a bunch of threads become entangled with each other and then separate following different paths just to find each other again and again in a chaotic dance that oscillates between the sense of unity and individuality.
Tidying of the Tides (solo baritone, 2020)
The inspiration for this piece is the unfolding of unending, cyclical, time. Different cycles of materials and qualities come and go at different paces and from their superposition the form of the piece emerges while distinct events pass by. It is intended to represent the immensity of the passage of time, the blossoming of the universe, condensed in a more or less short time and compressed in the minimal space of the intimacy of a solo singer.
Poet's Braid (quarter-tone pianos, 2019)
This piece presents two melodic threads, a quarter tone apart. Each thread begins as a descending chromatic scale but an underlying process of breaking down its rhythm and reordering the notes takes over and the two threads begin to weave with each other creating lines, knots, chaotic behavior as well as patterns and glimpses of previous states of the long braid.
The rigorous treatment of the material is reflected in its mechanical and severe character but the interest of the piece lies in the ambivalent coexistence of this character with a very dramatic and emotional prosody.
Horizon of Memory (violin, piano & electroacoustics, 2018)
Horizon of Memory is a work that deals with pitch structures coexisting in different kinds of pitch space. Some of these structures are able to move and are affected by certain transformation processes while some of them are fixed and serve as beacons. Thus, the piece deals with the way we perceive pitch transformations and how we retain these structures in our memory in order to make sense of the progression of the music.
Sa núvia d'Algendar (Mixed choir, folk song arrangement, 2008)
"Sa núvia d'Algendar" is a traditional song from Menorca that belongs to a legend of the same name, collected by Francesc d'Albranca, arranged here for mixed choir with a modal harmonization that plays between aeolian G and locrian D and in the middle of the song it expands to the chromatism of a more free harmony built on perfect fifths.
The setting of the legend is the period of muslim occupation in Menorca and it tells the story of a young woman from Algendar that, in her wedding night, is kidnapped by a moor, who takes her in a ship that ends up being shipwrecked in the Barbary Coast. A fisherman saves her but she ends up living a life of captivity until she escapes and, by coincidence, boards a ship that is shipwrecked in Menorca and, realizing that she is back in Algendar, she loses her mind. At the beginning of the legend a witch appears at the wedding banquet singing a song that foretells the bride's fate, song which she herself sings having gone crazy.
Promenade aux frontières (Solo baritone & ensemble, 2007)
This piece for solo baritone and ensemble, written after the homonymous poem by Antoine Vitez, intends to amplify the expression of the text and the dark images it suggests. This darkness is produced by superposing and amalgamating, under a spectral coloration, different kinds of microtonality, rhythmic and counterpoint processes at different complexity levels, as well as a timbral richness that blurs the harmony creating the confusion and turbulence upon which the baritone navigates in his delirious soliloquy from the first burst of sound until the last effort to revive.
Enamorat i al·lota (Mixed choir, folk song arrangement, 2007)
“Enamorat i al·lota” is a traditional song from Menorca collected by Francesc d'Albranca, arranged here for mixed choir with a modal harmonization—an aeolian E that in some points is tensed being stretched on one side towards the phrygian and towards the dorian on the other side.
This song tells us the dialogue between a young man in love with a young woman who shuns him. At the beginning of their dialogue she states that she wants to become the moon so that she can be away from him and he answers that he will then become the cloud so he can be close to her. Through the different verses a long series of transformations follow each other where the two characters continue to chase and run from each other. This version of the text borrows the ending from a version from Mallorca which ends more tragically than the version sung in Menorca where the two characters decide to marry each other just to end the suffering.
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