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Cantica Gelidæ  

Full Orchestra (pgs. 13-34)

VOICE & LIVE--ELECTRONICS

NOV. 2015

Premiered by Sergio Andrés Martínez at Morse Recital hall as part of the New Haven New Music concert series.

About the piece:

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Whether through colossal architecture, timeless myths and legends, or remarkable deeds, humans have gone to great lengths to etch their footprint into history and ensure they are remembered.

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Cantica Gelidæ (“Frozen Chants”) is an audiovisual composition that explores the futility of this desire, particularly when faced against cosmic timescales. The work functions as an allegory: the singer’s voice—and the composer’s—is stretched, multiplied, fragmented, granulated, and ultimately frozen through Max/MSP, inevitably failing as the piece, like all things, must come to an end.​

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The text brings together excerpts from Lucretius’s metaphysical epic De rerum natura (On the Nature of Things), particularly passages concerning the nature of the voice: its physical properties, expressive capacities, and limitations. As such, the piece serves as a technologically immersive and temporally expansive meditation echoing our hyper-digital desire to preserve identity amidst our rapidly changing modern times.

Text:

from De rerum natura  (On the Nature of Things) by the Roman poet, Lucretius.

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Replentur loca vocibus abdita retro. (603)

Latin:

Praeterea partis in cunctas dividitur vox,

ex aliis aliae quoniam gignuntur, ubi una (605)

dissuluit semel in multas exorta, quasi ignis

saepe solet scintilla suos se spargere in ignis.

Ignis copiosus.

Ignem qui se vertere in auras aeris.

Ignem qui aestifer ut radiorum

Meare de terra ad sidera mundi.

et faciat caelique serena concutiat sonitu,

tum fulmina mittat

caeli subter labentia signa quae.

mmm (Replentur loca)
vocibus abdita retro. (603)
Sed comes insequitur facile et discedit in auras et gelidos artus in leti frigore linquit. (401)

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And so, the voice reaches the most hidden place.

English translation:

Moreover, a voice is into all directions divided up,

since off from one another new voices are engendered,

when one voice hath once leapt forth, out-starting into many--as

oft a spark of fire is wont to sprinkle Itself into its several fires.

A plenteous fire.

Fire that turns into the winds of air.

Fire that splits like rays

To go their way from earth onto the stars of the ethereal world.

And shake the serene spaces of the sky with sound,

And hurl his lightnings

Beneath the gliding stars.

mmm (Reaches place)
voice, the most hidden

However, it goes with mind into the winds

away, and leaves the icy members in the cold of death.

Instrumentation: 

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     Voice (Basso Profondo)

     Live - electronics (via MaxMSP)

Julián Fueyo: [Excerpt] Cantica Gelidæ / Frozen Chants • Sergio Martinez
INSTRUMENTATION
TEXT
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