Output details

de oro y sombra / of gold and shadows (for fourteen players)

De Oro y Sombra continues my compositional exploration of forms that arise as the unfolding of a ‘single gesture’, and which, though musically expressive, lack a conventional tonal prolongational structure and consequently operate in the ‘here and now’. This approach to musical time is rooted in visionary images of stasis common to many mystical traditions and also embodied in many Expressionist works of the Second Viennese School.

Freud's theories on the dynamics of the unconscious and in particular his ideas about the form (as opposed to the content) of dreams have proven a framework rich in possibilities for working with a musical syntax that operates in the 'here and now'. In this piece I have compositionally explored the use of 'juxtaposition', 'condensation', and the 'elimination of formal connectives' (all analytical categories used by both Schoenberg and Freud in their writings). I think ‘connective’, as (and if) used by traditional analysts, as a device associated with language, whereas ‘juxtaposition’ suggests physical gesture (and condensation mental act!). However I consider them only meaningful if 'remnants of a classical syntax' still operate as a background determinant. In particular, I have experimented with what I have learnt from observing that in Schoenberg's Five Orchestral Pieces material often seemingly having undergone compression, becomes stripped of its traditional relations (at least to some extent) and functions like Freudian ‘nodal points’ in dreams.