Los Pájaros, el Aire, y las Estructuras Abstractas

Program Notes

Los Pájaros, el Aire, y las Estructuras Abstractas ("The Birds, the Air, and the Abstract Structures") is a piece that was composed through-out the first three months of 2021 during the global Coronavirus pandemic. As the title suggests, there are three main elements in this piece: - The Birds: Represented by the opening motive in the flute. The Birds motive and its transformations are used extensively. - The Air: Represented in multiple ways by timbre development. - Abstract Structures: The human organizational element. The overall form of the piece. This piece aims to portray the experience of birds when encountering abstract structures made by humans in their natural habitat. During this journey, the metaphorical birds try to come to terms with the disjunctive between the ever-present natural disorder and the artificial organization created by humankind. During this process of understanding, the birds drift off to immediate and diverse interpretations of this disjunctive although never settling for a single explanation. The birds eventually realize that, in a way, all their previous answers were right and move on with their bird life. In the music notation, this redundant debate is symbolized by the tension created by using four equal divisions of the whole step (quarter tones). While the tensions generated by them are interesting sounding, it is fairly easy to resolve them simply by going in the opposite direction by a quarter tone. I use this principle to manage and expand musical material. At the end of the piece, all tension created by the ~5 minutes of music is resolved by sliding pitches down a quarter tone, creating a convincing end for the piece (and for the birds' never-ending debate as well). Perhaps one question that the reader might still have after reading the program notes is: Why? Why would you even compose such a piece? ...Well... Because I have fun doing so.