Sangue Inverso – Inverso Sangue (2015–2022
This piece is written for an ensemble of seven musicians. Sangue Inverso (Blood Converse) is structured in seven movements, and, quite symmetrically, so is Inverso Sangue (Converse Blood). Sangue Inverso – Inverso Sangue integrates the seven movements of Sangue Inverso and the seven movements of Inverso Sangue.
Each movement of either Sangue Inverso or Inverso Sangue can be performed individually, as it is in this recording. Sangue Inverso – Inverso Sangue implies that movement I of Sangue Inverso is to be performed with movement I of Inverso Sangue, and so forth. When the pieces are superimposed, although different tempi are adopted in each piece, there are specific moments in which they coordinate and synchronize.
This structure, which configures a simultaneously simple and fairly complex construction, is all about the links between the singular and the collective or, more precisely, about the permanence and the role of the single, however integrated it may be in the collective. In any harmonious human construction, overlaps and interdependence enhance the significance of each singular entity, of each distinct identity, of each idios – in no way do they lessen their import.
The titles of each movement are as revealing as the structure of the piece itself. Each one bears the name of a symbolic element that, in a synesthetic mode, conjures a wealth of references – colours and sensations, values and vibrations, ideas and ideals. This phonogram comprises one movement of the Sangue Inverso, which allude to quartz.
Other movements are published in a monograph phonogram by the German publisher NeOS (2020).
Underneath those structural and semantic features, Sangue Inverso – Inverso Sangue further refers to the central concept of time. Though ultimately connoting eternity, time in this piece is seized in a number of ways, i. a. absolute durations and those dependent on the performer, modulations of tempo and within tempi, rhythmic contractions and expansions, all of which inflect the perceptions of interwoven flows as caused by – or reflected in – pitch, tempo, timbre, or textures.
Sangue Inverso: Quartzo uses many of these techniques in the sense what I could consider it as being part of the structure, and not so much as structural, as I could describe it the article published in Polish Aspekty Muzyki (2020). Sangue Inverso: Quartzo is mainly a reflexion on the notions of historical time and the perception of time influenced by a phenomenological perspective.
As an element, quartz is used in many customary applications for its constant frequency emission properties. It acts in this work as a metaphor for a crystal of time as the impression of a different era in its constancy through ages. This image is supported in Sangue Inverso: Quartzo by the scintillating substance of Beethoven’s subtle aura.
My study of Beethoven’s Große Fuge (op. 133) gave rise to a crystalline structure in Sangue Inverso: Quartzo, based on the same thematic material with superimpositions and developmental typologies of the elements present in his double fugue.
This acted as a way of dealing with the weight and legacy of western classical music tradition, assuming a particular heritage of rupture, since the very notion of tradition as I understand it impels me to disrupt it.
The complexity of the musical ‘cells’ and the relations between the ‘cells’ interthreaded to elaborate the piece are the foundation upon which a symbolic, semantic, and indeed significant construction emerges: from novel patterns new paths arise, from new arrays novel adventures...
Sangue Inverso: Quartzo (B) is a version of the previous piece for flute, alto saxophone, violin and piano.
Jaime Reis
