Australian Music Centre | Breaking sound barriers

Work Overview

Poesía en moción or 'Poetry in Motion' was especially composed for Dúo Sereno: José Luis Urquieta and Leonardo Cuevas (La Serena, IV Región de Coquimbo, Chile) for inclusion in the new Sereno Duo record production that will be published by the Chile Clásico record label. The work borrows its title from Mark Tanner's book Mindfulness in Music: Notes on Finding Life's Rhythm (2018), that in a chapter entitled 'The Language of Music' states: "If the spoken word has the power to move us, music is poetry in motion." In essence, the work becomes a vehicle for the artistic interpretation of this very idea, and attempts to inject the musical dialogue between the two principal voices of the work with musical equivalents of poetic language and its characteristic devices of metaphor, simile, imagery, allusion, and apostrophe. 'Poesía en moción' also serves as an exploration of heterophony - a musical texture whereby "two or more voices simultaneously perform variations of the same melody," but in contrast to conventional utilizations of this compositional device of a relatively 'aleatoric' vertical alignment of intervals, the work employs a set of algorithms, or automatons to construct the melodic and rhythmic counterpoint, generating an even more elaborate indeterminate structure, embedded in a complex polyrhythmic superstructure of tempo canons that expand and contract in symmetrical fashion: Section A: 45:36 (12/2, Scale #1), 36:28 (8/2), 28:21 (5/2, Scale #2), 36:28 (8/2); Section B: 28:21 (5/2), 21:15 (13/8, Scale #3), 15:10 (7/8), 21:15 (13/8, Scale #4); Section C: 15:10 (7/8), 10:6 (2/4, Scale #5), 6:3 (1/4), 10:6 (2/4, Scale #6); and Section D: 28:21 (5/2), 21:15 (13/8), 15:10 (7/8, Scale #7), 21:15 (13/8). The pitch material in the work features the modes generated by the Double Harmonic Major Scale (C, Db, E, F, G, Ab, and B), which are systematically incorporated in the work in an ordering that ranks the modes from most dark to most bright: #1: Locrian bb3, bb7 Scale, or Mode 7 (C, Db, Ebb, F, Gb, Ab, and Bbb); #2: Utra Phrygian Scale, or Mode 3 (C, Db, Eb, Fb, G, Ab, and Bbb); #3: Oriental Scale, or Mode 5 (C, Db, E, F, Gb, A, and Bb); #4: Double Harmonic Major Scale, or Mode 1 (C, Db, E, F, G, Ab, and B); #5: Hungarian Minor Scale, or Mode 4 (C, D, Eb, F#, G, Ab, and B); #6: Ionian Augmented #2 Scale, or Mode 6 (C, D#, E, F, Gb, A, and B); and #7: Lydian #2, #6 Scale, or Mode 2 (C, D#, E, F#, G, A#, and B).

Work Details

Year: 2022

Instrumentation: Two Oboes

Duration: 9 min.

Difficulty: Advanced — Professional

Commission note: Composed for Dúo Sereno: José Luis Urquieta and Leonardo Cuevas (La Serena, IV Región de Coquimbo, Chile)

The composer notes the following styles, genres, influences, etc in relation to this work:

Mark Tanner’s book Mindfulness in Music: Notes on Finding Life's Rhythm (2018) Heterophony Double Harmonic Major Scale Stefan Hollos and J. Richard Hollos Combinatoriality Algorithmic Composition Single- and Multi-State Probabilistic Automatons Polyrhythms Tempo Canons