Output details

Souvenir de Teoponte

Souvenir de Teoponte was first performed in December 2012 at Festsaal, Diplomatische Akademie, Vienna, by James Rapport (double bass) and Eduard Lanner (piano). The work makes an in-depth exploration of contemporary technical resources on the double bass, and provides a much-needed contribution to the solo repertoire for this instrument. The work is designed to engage the player and display virtuosity and musicianship. It is not an experimental piece, but a concert work that speaks to performers and audiences with a direct appeal.

The work revisits an approach first proposed in my opera Teoponte (1988), adopted then for reasons to do with the opera's plot and background: to construct an extended piece on the basis of a sequence of four chords. This sequence helps to generate the pitch material by a combination of systematic processes such as chord multiplication, and intuitive ones such as weaving around the available pitches. The four chords also determine Teoponte’s overall structure in four sections, each characterised by harmonic and aesthetic qualities stemming from its primary chord.

Evocation of the harmonic organisation of the opera mirrors a similar motivational background. A trigger for Souvenir de Teoponte was the recent publication of a major monograph on the Teoponte guerrilla campaign of 1970: G. Rodríguez Ostria’s Sin Tiempo para las Palabras: Teoponte, la otra guerrilla guevarista en Bolivia. This source, which would have strongly informed the opera had it been available in 1988, now finds a response in Souvenir de Teoponte.

Further information can be found in the accompanying PowerPoint slides.