Musical Category Solo
With electroacoustics ("tape")
Instrumentation (general) cello and tape recording
Premiere
Date 2023/May/21
Performer(s)
Laura Monteiro da Silva · cello
Nádia Carvalho · music computing
Organization/Event 4th Contemporary Music Meetings
Venue Aveirense Theatre
Town Aveiro
Country Portugal
Program Notes
LAURA – la fontaine de Vaucluse is a short piece for young instrumentalists following the Arte no Tempo project philosophy, created by Diana Ferreira. The work evokes memories from the Sorgue River, in the southeast of France, a paradisiacal place on the Vaucluse Mountain where Petrarca lived and wrote the famous poems to Laura (already evoked in the piece Il Tempo dell’Acqua, for Harry Sparnaay [bass clarinet] and Stefano Scodanibbio [double bass]).
As a metaphor, the piece draws from the tranquillity of those blue waters and the vicissitudes of their floating along that place. In addition to this intention, there is also the role of Laura, the anonymous teenager who was this brief music’s addressee. To please the young girl’s ears, the composer chose contrasting stylistic moments, arid and abstract, and some melodic or rhythmic stereotypes. Structured as a collage, elementary rhythmic motifs (sometimes smooth, sometimes pulsed) flood this tiny score in the search for variety and technical and auditive accessibility, all allied to the poetic aspect of a place. The composer also imagined these motifs as raw material for the electronic part, which would involve this diversity of intentions and underlying emotions.
In this brief story of a day told by mixed music, instrumental thought inextricably links to electronic thought. One cannot exist without the other. The title holds a memory of the various ‘Lauras’ from the composer’s family generations and a remembrance of the different ‘Lauras’ from his childhood village.
