After the Argentinian composer Alberto Ginastera experienced a financial fiasco with his second opera “Bomarzo” at its premiere in Washington, D.C. in 1967 (Argentina’s military leader at the time, Juan Carlos Onganía, censored the opera due to the libretto, which thematised torture, abuse, obsession, homosexuality and impotence), he decided to leave his home country. He settled in Geneva in 1971, where he married his second wife Aurora Nátola, an Argentinian concert cellist for whom he wrote several important works, including the “Serenata” op. 42. For this work, he chose three poems from Pablo Neruda’s “Love Poems”, which he set to music for the Puerto Rican bass-baritone Justino Díaz, who sang the male lead in his 1971 opera “Beatrix Cenci”. In his later works, Ginastera combined his dramatic style, which predominates in his three operas, with a lyricism that is particularly evident in his two late cello concertos.
In 2002, the concert organiser “Ciclo de musica contemporánea del Teatro San Martín, Buenos Aires, Argentina” commissioned seven local composers to write a work based on the composition 4’33” (1952) by John Cage, which celebrated its 50th anniversary this year. Erik Oña’s contribution was the 12-minute sextet “De la incomprención de un silencio” (A misunderstanding of a silence).
Erik Oña writes about its creation:
The piece was to be premièred in Buenos Aires. It was supposed to have something to do with 4’33” by John Cage. The different ways of interpreting the silence of this piece appealed to me at first. I soon remembered another silent event that had haunted me in the past and which I could hardly remember until then. In the 1980s, a seventeen-year-old girl was murdered in an Argentinian province, apparently by the son of a government official. For a long time, it looked as if the man’s lawyers were using his father’s powerful connections to help him evade justice. This was during the first democratic government that followed the military junta. Tired of the abuses and distrustful of power, people took to the streets to denounce injustice. The thousands of demonstrators did not carry signs, chant or shout slogans, they simply marched in complete silence. Silence, which in Spanish is often associated with consent, became a sign of strong resistance, it emphasised the presence of all these bodies that were resisting and made it impossible to ignore them.
From Cage’s piece we can take ideas or attitudes, not materials or musical quotations; with the exception of duration, which in this case would be the strictest quotation. Duration is not, as in traditional music, the point of arrival for the development of musical ideas, but the point of departure. 4’33” illustrates a general principle in Cage’s music: the principle of duration. If there is to be a structure, Cage thought, then a rhythmic structure. A rhythmic structure (or structure of duration) is inherently hospitable: it can be inhabited by sounds, noises and silence. Silence and sound have duration in common. (Erik Oña – 2002)
The programme is complemented by the sextet “Vertiges suspendus” (Suspended vertigo) by Chilean composer Matías Rosales, which was commissioned by the Ensemble Court-Circuit in 2023 and premiered in Boulogne-Billancourt in 2024.
Musicologist Michèle Tosi writes about this performance:
The horizon darkens and the instrumental virtuosity reaches a climax with “Vertiges suspendus” for flute, clarinet, string trio and piano, a work commissioned by Court-Circuit for the young Chilean composer Matías Fernández Rosales. The muscular way in which he explores the spectral field of frequencies that the resonant bass of the piano (Jean-Marie Cottet) unleashes with an energetic intensity is impressive. This music of transitions sets itself in motion again and again, creating moments of fervour through the magnificent multiphonic sounds of the bass clarinet (Pierre Dutrieu). The timbres merge into a powerful meta-instrument that carries the sound to saturation. (Michèle Tosi – 2024)
Program
Matías Rosales (*1988)
“Vertiges suspendus” for 6 Instrumente (2023) – 17’
Erik Oña (1961–2019)
“De la incomprención de un silencio” für 6 Instrumente (2002) – 12’
Alberto Ginastera (1916–1983)
“Serenata” op. 42 (after poems by Pablo Neruda) for baritone, cello and ensemble (1973) – 30’