MANUEL HIDALGO NAVAS

orchestra [3.3.3.3–4.3.3.1–timp., 2 perc., hp.–strings]

duration: ~12′

reduced version premiered by SWR Symphonieorchester Titus Engel (cond.) at HfM Freiburg — 01.07.2021
large orchestra version premiered by Radio Deutsche Philharmonie Saarbrücken-Kaiserslautern Manuel Nawri (cond.) — 10.06.2022

ABOUT

The journey of the traveler in Gongora’s Soledades, in spite of finding different situations and circumstances, is mainly solitary. The sensations invoked by the reading of the Gongoristic poetry have accompanied me in the trajectory of this piece, whose relationship with Gongora’s work does not issue from the will to establish a formal or “motivic” pretext, but to create a poetic association and —I would even say— ideological.

The ideas of solitude, self-identity search, transformation or disappearance have been in the conception both of the discourse and of the music material, without the intention that the ensemble of these notions configures a sequence or a narration.

From the implacable pulsation to the roughness, from the transparence to the melodies of filtered white noises, the work —therefore— develops itself by transformation and opposition of music figures and textures, intending to create a sort of changing and instable mosaic; and leading us to ideas and sensations such as velocity, contradiction, oscillation or precipitation. The orchestra’s profile and the temporality of the piece are finally sculpted by the morphology of every gesture, giving rise to a music which advances equally without backward movement, to a kind of energy triggered, precipitated and —however— contradicted by the principle of reiteration, and even the pure repetition.

The solitude remains as the search of the most sharp and precise inner listening, the listening that enables the creation of an unbreakable relationship to the work, a faithful temporality to the inner perception of the music, of an almost intangible nature.

As Luigi Nono would say in The error as necessity:

“It is very difficult to listen to others, in the silence. Other thoughts, other noises, other sonorities, other ideas. Through listening, one often seeks to find oneself in the others. Finding one’s own mechanisms, system, rationality, in the other.

This is a form of utterly conservative violence.

Instead of listening to silence, instead of listening to others, one expects to hear oneself once again.” *

*) Own translation, from L. Nono, (2007). Écrits. Éditions Contrechamps. Text translated from Italian by Laurent Feneyrou.