DETRITUS

For Traverso, Cornetto and Viola

da Gamba

By
BLAS GONZLEZ

DETRITUS- PROGRAMME NOTES

Detritus has followed a predictable path, given the
instrumentation. The three pieces are impregnated with references to
Baroque and Renaissance Music. Parody does not intend to be
irreverent, but rather an experiment on giving new possibilities to
musical gestures belonging to one context by reutilizing them as a
support of a totally different harmonic-melodic language. In Detritus,
as in with many things I have written, I reconcile myself with the idea
that we are burdened inevitably with a long musical past, a very long
one
Most of the references are not direct quotations. The beginning
of Bric- brac is resemblant of the Laxaton Cantata by Gerardo
Masana, which is in itself a parody of Bachs Cantatas. Many of the
other passages of the piece will remind the listener of music he or she
has heard before, specially the one spot which is a little bit too similar
to a too famous moment of an opera by PurcellBut the only direct
quotation is from a nineteenth-century composer: it is from
Schumanns piece Erinnerung, op. 68 no. 28, and it appears in the
cornetto, almost at the end of the piece.
Performers could take advantage of their expertise by making
specific choices about articulation, sound quality and phrasing
wherever reference is made to early music performance practices. On
the other hand, any effort made to incorporate contemporary language
idioms to their instruments is appreciated. In this sense, I have tried to
balance out less familiar gestures with areas that can hopefully be
labelled as comfort zones. Bric--brac will be effective if a
compromise between fragmentary playing and a sense of continuity
are achieved. Petrucci is perhaps, out of the three pieces, the one in
which parody may have been conceived with a hint of mischief (The
title makes reference to the fact that many music publishers of
Petruccis times issued four-stave polyphonic music with plenty of
inaccurate notehead placing, as a result of using movable types).
Clepsydra is the one piece that departs the most from parody. The
ending should be played as quietly as possible, if the instruments allow
it.
Throughout the three pieces, some high pitches may have to be
negotiated, especially in the viola da gamba. Detritus does not intend
to be profound or elucidated; it tries to be simply jovial while varnished
with strokes of irony.