Altar de piedra (Altar of Stone)

Gabriela Ortiz

General Info

Year: 2002
Duration: c. 26:00
Difficulty: (see Ratings for explanation)
Publisher: Manuscript
Cost: Score and Parts - $0.00   |   Score Only - $0.00

Movements

I. Un ángel maraquero (A maraca-playing angel)
II. Ritmo genésico (Generative rhythm)
III. Torrente (Torrent)

Instrumentation

Player I - IV: timpani, xylophone, vibraphone, bongos, congas, triangle, tuned cowbells, Pervuvian boxes, etc.

Orchestra

Program Notes

commission: Los Angeles Philharmonic; premiere; 23 January 2003, Los Angeles Philharmonica, Esa-Pekka Solonen, conductor, and the ensemble Kroumata

Notes Altar de piedra

Altar de piedra Un ángel maraquero Ritmo genésico Torrente

Altar of stone A maraca-playing angel Generative rhythm Torrent

With the orchestral piece Altar de piedra (Stone altar) Gabriela Ortiz closes her cycle of musical altars begun with Altar de neón (Neon altar, 1995) and Altar de muertos (Altar of the dead, 1996). The workís title and concept come from the Cuban writer Alejo Carpentierís novel Los pasos perdidos (The lost steps). The novelís protagonist is a Latin American who has lived in Paris for a long time and who is charged with traveling to the Amazon to do research on some musical instruments. The man travels to South America with his French lover and at a certain point on his trip encounters some monumental cliffs, eroded by the wind, similar to altars carved in stone. This is the image that gives Gabriela Ortizís work its title. The workís core concept, though, is found in the sheer contradictions encountered by the protagonist, who on the one hand faces the exhilaration of returning to South America and confronting everything that is exotic and exuberant in the continent and, on the other, cannot escape the burden of European civilization with which he has been closely associated in Paris. In another plane, this contradiction is reflected in the career of Gabriela Ortiz, born and bred in a milieu closely tied to popular music, and later settled in London to pursue her higher education in music. Thus, the composer can readily identify with Carpentierís protagonistís contradictory perception. Its starting point notwithstanding, Gabriela Ortizís piece is by no means descriptive or programme music.

Regarding its form, Altar de piedra is a kind of concertante for percussion and orchestra in three movements, the titles of which are taken from Carpentierís text. Besides the percussion instruments specifically designated for each movement, there is in all three movements an important part for the tympani, especially in the first and third movements, which are highly rhythmic. In the first movement, Gabriela Ortiz has featured three Peruvian cajones, used through highly idiomatic means of sound production and a strong emphasis on the musical gesture. In the second movement, the main role is assigned to a pair of marimbas and a vibraphone, while in the third the featured instruments are three sets of multi-percussion. The first movement is based on a rhythmic motif stated at the outset by the Peruvian cajones, a motif that is developed in a discourse in which the instruments work alternatively together or separately.

The main motif is then recapitulated at the end of the movement. The second movement is characterized by the motifs stated in unison, at the very beginning, by the vibraphone and one of the solo marimbas. These motifs are then developed through polyrhythm achieved by different accents and note groupings. This movement also contains an extended cadenza for the solo percussionists and ends in a kind of chorale. The third movement starts out in a subtle, atmospheric manner that gradually changes into a powerfully rhythmic statement that is maintained throughout. The third movement contains several solos for each of the three percussion players, which the other two movements did not. The composer has chosen three short fragments form Carpentierís novel as epigraphs for each of the three movements.

Un ángel maraquero (A maraca-playing angel). An angel and a maraca were not new things in themselves. But a maraca-playing angel, sculpted in a burnt-out churchís tympanum was something I had not seen elsewhere. I was already asking myself if the role of these lands in human history was to make possible, for the first time, certain cultural symbioses, when I was distracted from my reflections by something that sounded, simultaneously, as very close and very far.

Ritmo genésico. (Generative rhythm). It was not the agitated draining of the shallow streams, nor the torrentsí splashing, nor the fresh placidity of small waves that I had so many times heard at night on other shores; it was the sustained push, the generative rhythm of a descent begun hundreds and hundreds of leagues upstream, in the confluence of other rivers born even further, with all their weight of sources and waterfalls.

Torrente (Torrent). Each fault, each fold, each wrinkle in the stone is the riverbed of a torrent.

Gabriela Ortiz wrote Altar de piedra between November 2001 and September 2002, on a commission from the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra and its music director, Esa-Pekka Salonen. With these performers, the work is premiered in Los Angeles on January 23rd, 2003, in a program which also includes El Salón México by Aaron Copland and Silvestre Revueltasís music for the film Redes, performed simultaneously with a screening of the film.

Juan Arturo Brennan

Recent Performances

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Works for Percussion by this Composer

Altar de Neón - Percussion Quartet; Orchestra
Altar de piedra (Altar of Stone) - Percussion Quartet
Atlas-Pumas - Marimba; Violin
Concierto Centela - Multiple Percussion; Marimba; Orchestra
Concierto Voltaje - Timpani; Orchestra
El Trompo - Vibraphone; With Tape
Liquid Borders - Percussion Quartet
Magna sin - Steel Drum; With Tape
Ríos - Percussion Quintet; Flute/Piccolo; Alto Saxophone; Cello
Ríos 1 - Percussion Quintet