Marginalia

Awarded 'Highly commended' at the Old Hispanic Office composition project of Bristol University 

Premièred on march 5th 2017 by the Kokoro ensemble

The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) / ERC grant agreement n° 313133.

Considering the impossibility of restoring a well-preserved and magnificent repertoire such as the Old Hispanic Office made me aware of an almost forgotten historical drama  that took place in an era almost incomparable to our time. Music that was alive and performed on a daily basis became a footnote in musical history due to political decisions.  Marginalized to be practiced only in a few places until it was forgotten. The manuscript from which I took a very small Alleluia (Leon 8, Folio 207v) as a basis for my piece, appeared to  be full of Alleluia’s written in the margins of the folio’s. In my compositional approach I wanted to create a situation in which I could learn from the characteristics of this musical  style, respecting these characteristics without making a pastiche out of it. I was looking for a meeting point between the monophonic character of chant and more contemporary  techniques. For this I first created a melodic line from the neumes of the Alleluia, which are consistently followed throughout the piece. By use of heterophony the melody appears  in different layers and rhythms as if it’s echoed in a large acoustic (time)space. From this, something one might call harmony appears. Extended techniques in most instruments  are added as percussive elements. They embellish the melody as contemporary ornamentations. But most of all I wanted to create a piece in which the feeling of something precious  being lost is expressed as a reminder to us to maintain what nowadays sometimes only seems to be marginal in our society.