Thus, we witness a polymorphic deployment, reluctant to any reductive delimitation of the whole, circumstance that invites us to a specific observation of each of the proposals represented. For example, with Tenebrae (2012), by Jesús Torres, we get deep into a well-differentiated area among all the ones these days music goes through: the intertextual recourse understood not as unlikely “anxiety of influence” but as religation with aesthe universes, appropriated by the composer in the construction of his own creative microcosm.
The fifth Responsory for the Holy Friday of the “Officium Hebdomadae Sanctae”, by Tomás Luis de Victoria, is the starting point for the Aragonese composer, in the same way it had been one of the masses of the aureate polyphonist for his Five Verses on the “Missa Pro Victoria”.
The saxophone quartet is the template that Torres links to this reinterpretation of the historical legacy, in this case medieval, as evidenced by the two notebooks of Subtilior (2012), along the same lines as Pagine (1998) by Salvatore Sciarrino.
We should not hope, however, a mere instrumentation: Victoria’s responsory appears, yes, with increasing urgency and visibility, both in its polyphonic outline and its textual basis, rhythmically whispered by the performers in the fifth stage of the presentation. But it does so by emerging as a recognizable figure from an alienated background, relegated to the margins in many moments of the piece and ‘transfigured’ in its instrumental context, from which not even the recovery of the original harmonic aura manages to completely rescue it.
Germán Gan Quesada
Musicologist and music critic. Associate Professor (Department of Art and Musicology, University Autonoma of Barcelona).
SIGMA RECORDS (founded in 2012) is the record label of the SIGMA Project quartet, real ‘Ardittis’ of the saxophone (named as such by Scherzo magazine).
Comprising 32 takes on iconic Robert Schumann compositions, the emergent pianist's Pentatone debut is a must-hear for classical fans. Bandcamp New & Notable Feb 11, 2024