Gelatus Adventus

Alex Pochat – [email protected]
  Universidade Federal da Bahia

What to say about a piece of music that has started from the direct influence of a street popsiclevendor’s cry—and which is completed by inserting the popsicle vendor himself in the work, makinghim a double agent: both an inspirer (creator) and an interpreter? That’s the way the narrative of thestory between a composer and a popsicle vendor goes.

At first, the popsicle vendor’s cry is taken as a melodic-spoken musical material to be usedin a clarinet trio, named ex-pi-co-lé. The challenge at that time was how to work the musical theme(the cry itself ) in a very closed field of timbre and range, provided by the three clarinets choice.

After the performance of the piece, the audio recording is shown to the vendor himself, sohe could give his impressions of it—must be noted that he didn’t know about the fact that the musiche was hearing was composed based on his own selling cry. From a composer’s viewpoint, the aimwas, by giving the vendor a chance to interpret a piece of music which was new to him, to get achance to have new materials for another brand new piece of music.

The thing is, for many reasons, “Plan A” went down the drain—and the main reason wasthat the composer already knew the vendor (or at least his cry) but the vendor had no idea who thecomposer (or his music) was and, therefore; the mute impact of his “unknown very own voice”.

Why not, then, invite the main incognito subject of the first composition to become the main, andnow totally clear, subject in the ex-pi-co-lé’s music response, the Gelatus Adventus? Becoming aninterpreter of his own creation and part of another one: the composer’s creation, that deals with thiswhole idea of words and interpretations turning into new compositions, within an hermeneuticnarrative musical space.

And that’s when a street popsicle vendor and his motto become both creator and creature ofa composer