fluido

Programme note

fluido unfolds through a set of varied inverse variations in which its material repeatedly recounts itself. Rather than moving forwards in a straight line, the music travels thematically backwards: gestures are inverted, displaced and recalled on different scales, drawing closer to the work’s opening until, at approximately 3′30″, it reaches the point from which the larger return can begin.

At that moment a macro-repeat takes hold and the music starts moving ‘forwards’ again. Earlier material is traversed anew, but not simply duplicated: some passages unfold at slower tempi, pauses are compressed or removed, and familiar events occupy altered durations and relationships. The return behaves less like repetition than a second passage through the same field.

The composer imagined the relationship between these micro-recollections and macro-repeats as analogous to a sound wave: forms recur at different magnitudes, oscillating between local reminiscence and large-scale return. Structure is produced through this continual expansion and contraction of memory, until repetition itself becomes the work’s forward motion.