12
October
2018
8.30 p.m.
Nicosia, Shoe Factory
Pharos Arts Foundation
10th International Pharos Contemporary Music Festival
UA UA UA
Jorge Villavicencio Grossmann — Siray III - Cuadrados Concéntricos
Siray III - Cuadrados Concéntricos is the third piece in a series I call "tapestry pieces." I am attracted to the idea of crisscrossing threads in a tapestry and its analogous process in music, which is contrapuntal interaction between the various voices. Siray means “to weave” in Quechua. The tapestries that inspire the Siray compositions come from the ancient civilization of Paracas, located in Southern Peru. The Paracas culture (800 BCE – 100 BCE) is known for its textiles, some of which display surprisingly abstract designs. The idea of weaving does show itself in all Siray pieces particularly in the way the instruments interact and interweave with one another as they create contrasting musical textures. In Siray III, however, I take a different approach than the previous works of the series in that the musical structure itself is modeled after a particular Paracan mantle from about 200 BCE. The mantle in question displays a fascinating series of 240 concentric squares using twenty-two distinct colors. No combination of colors is ever repeated. The aspect of the mantle I am most interested in (and that guides the structure of my composition) is the use of permutations of the aforementioned twenty-two colors avoiding repetition. For this piece I devised a system of twenty-two-note scales, each spanning up to seven octaves. The scales act as the primary pitch material for the piece.
—Jorge Villavicencio Grossmann, 2018
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