Output details

"Mala punica, for eight solo voices"

"Mala punica" explores, as do other of the researcher / composer’s works, the potential of elementary musical materials, in this case the conceptually simple – although philosophically rich - compositional technique of canon. The work comprises eight canonic pieces for between four and eight solo voices, setting, in Latin, extracts from the Bible’s Song of Songs.

Allied to the use of canon in the work was a research process that investigated the possibilities of a modal harmony filtered through the conceptual rigour of the canonic principle. Here complexity resulted from simplicity, in that surface harmonic and contrapuntal complexity was generated from an “elementary” process that started from and followed the fundamental principles of mode and canon. The aesthetic aim was to make audible an unbroken line of inheritance joining the surface of the music to its roots. In this way the composition echoes the researcher / composer’s indebtedness, within the field of canon and musical aesthetics, to the practices of, for example, Ockeghem, Webern, Aldo Clementi and Rytis Mazulis.

Each piece within "Mala punica" takes a different approach to the principles outlined above: "Quae est ista" creates spirals of lines using the same final (or tonic) but different modes; "Ficus protulit" and "Descendi" use the same mode but different finals, creating a dissonance- (or ‘false-relation’-) rich texture that strives rather to be felt as a multiplicity of different consonances. "Hortus conclusus" superimposes three different textures with related but differing canonic and modal procedures.

"Mala punica" was written for the researcher / composer’s vocal ensemble EXAUDI and has been performed by the ensemble complete and in part on many occasions, and recorded for forthcoming commercial release.