Audio recording available on YouTube.

This piece was commissioned by Esteban Rodrigo Rúa and Ana Cristina Molina. It consists on a timbre exploration of different metallic sounds of the percussion and the horn parts. Without pretending to express anything but music, it could evoke prehistoric scenes, along with emotions and states of the spirit characteristic of an ancestral age of nomad human communities dedicated to hunting and food collection. The instrumental timbres could also be associated to such “atmospheres”: the horn is reminiscent of hunting scenes, while its natural sweetness of sound could be confused with a primitive metallic human voice, full of strength, vigour and sensibility. The percussion instruments, specially the tam-tam, could refer to the first moment when man created instrumental music with improvised idiophones. Although this is not a programmatic piece, due to its energic and dynamic character, it resonates with that primitive condition common to all mankind.

The first movement has a calm mood. Its main interest is the quality of sound. It focuses on the mildness of the horn when it plays slow and peaceful passages. The vibraphone accompanies those sounds of a gentle and noble nature, with double-bass bow effects and harmonies the resonance of which enshrouds the melodic thread with an aura of tranquillity. Conversely, the second movement exhibits an almost unrestrained energy, manifest in the first strike of tam-tam and horn in a fortissimo dynamic, with a much faster and lively tempo. Here, the piano passages don’t reflect the same peacefulness as the first movement, but they convey a restrained energy that’s about to burst. The tam-tam has an essential role to create that atmosphere of brutality and primitivism. This movement also explores the contrapuntal possibilities that can be created in a dialogue between the horn and the vibraphone.

Copyright © 2017 Daniel Cuéllar-Trujillo. All rights reserved.
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