Year: 2020 | Type: Single-movement work for 10 musicians (flute, oboe, oboe, horn, trombone, percussion, harp, string quintet) | Duration: ca. 6'
This piece is inspired by the reading of the book Behind the Silence: Music in the Nasca Culture, which describes the discovery, in 1994, of several antaras (Andean pan flutes) in a temple in the city of Cahuachi, the political and cultural center of the Nasca culture. The book includes tables with the exact tones that each tube is capable of producing and the piece makes use of them. However, there's no intention to produce something that resembles the music of the ancient Nasca inhabitants. None of it has survived with the exception of these tones, these "spirits" contained in the pipes of the antaras discovered in Cahuachi.
Notes:
This work was scheduled for performance in a concert organized by the Composition Department of the University of Birmingham in collaboration with the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group. However, COVID-19 restrictions in 2021 prevented the performance, and as the work requires a large ensemble (10 musicians), subsequent performance opportunities have not yet materialized. Therefore, I have included a digital recreation here.