Interior

Héctor Garcés Puelma – [email protected]
  Universidade Federal da Bahia

Can music be inhabited?

I begin with this question because it is, in some way, the thought that accompanied much of the writing of this piece of music. Music, like architecture, is a phenomenon that came us through our perception, understood in a broad sense and not limited to the exclusive use of this or that of our five senses. When we inhabit a building, for instance, our perception is constantly being interfered with by their constituent elements, especially by the configuration of its space. Depending on the characteristics of that space – dimensions, materials, luminosity, temperature, colors, aromas, decorations, etc. –, we can feel comfortable or uncomfortable, safe or exposed, invited to stay or eager to leave by just entering it. In short, an equation of several factors, whose result will be our architectural experience in relation to that building.

Could something like this happen when we listen to music? How currently happen in concerts of new works that, although we arrive with the best disposition to listen to some “X” piece, we distract and begin to think about something else. Or, on the contrary, many times without having expectations before a new hearing, the work reach to keep us interested from beginning to end. Very often also, it happens that we begin listening intently and at some point, without realizing it, we stop listening, as if we enter and leave out the music. Of course, other factors, such as the level of performance, the quality of the concert hall, the location we have in it, etc. may also influence this. But undoubtedly that being inside or outside the music, is a property that as auditors we bring to each concert, every audition, whether live or recorded.

Interior appeals to that spatial dimension of music, which may or may not become inhabited by us as auditors. Based on a specific geometric space – a pyramid of the regular tetrahedron type, that is, four equal faces (Fig. 1) – the different sections were organized as a visit to that pyramid. First in its interior – hence the title of the piece – and then from the outside of it.

1. Pyramid of the regular tetrahedron type

In the first section, we will recognize the predominance of perfect fifth interval, which was chosen because, like our pyramid in geometrics, it represents symmetry in music (remember the fifths circle). When decomposing the pyramid into triangles, the twelve notes of the chromatic scale were strategically assigned on each side, so that, when reassembled as pyramid, they become to organize as intervals of perfect fifth (Fig. 2).

2. Perfect fifth Intervals organized into the pyramid

Thus, the chords and sonorities with which the first half of the piece is constructed, were aroused. These section, is a passage from one to another side – that is, from one chord to another – of our pyramid. Improbably the auditor will recognize – unless he reads this text first – to be inside a pyramid; but probably, at some point, he will feel like walking inside some space: going and coming, stopping, resuming, entering and exiting from these interior.

The work was premiered in Salvador in the framework of the Música de Agora na Bahia project in March 2015 by the DME ensemble of Portugal, under the direction of Jean Sebastien Béreau.