Works

Instrumentation (detailed)

Percussion	Flexatone, 4 suspended cymbals, snare drum, 5 Tom-Tom (high, meDium-high, meDium, meDium-low, low), bass drum, Crotales, Glockenspiel, Vibraphone
Unspecified	mark tree, 2 Triangles, 2 spring coils (high, low), 3 Gongo, 2 Tam-Tam (ca. 80 and 120 cm) 5 woodblocks (high, meDium-high, meDium, meDium-low, low), 2 Roto-Toms, Marimba 3 timpani (23 , 26 , 29 )

Performer(s)

This play joins the rich tradition of non-specialised literature that abuses the concept of "entropy". But it does so with the hope of a fairer reading - as, indeed, all the others have attempted.

We don't feel it as a physical quantity, unlike gravity (which weighs down our bones), friction (which makes our bones hurt) or energy and force (which move what's left of our bones). Even so - or precisely because of this - entropy as a metaphor seems to inspire more than all these other concepts. Everyone knows that entropy is chaos and disorder. Worse: everyone knows that disorder only increases, that chaos only spreads. Everyone knows that this is the second law of thermodynamics (even though few people know about thermodynamics). The fuller picture isn't like that, of course. If it were, how could we explain biology, which takes disorganised matter precisely in order to reconstitute it into complex organisations?

A better account of entropy would then be: how many different ways can we reconstruct the same complex whole from its constituent parts? How does a probable equilibrium emerge from chaos (whether the word is understood in its most colloquial, philosophical or technical sense)? In fact, this has been the driving question behind much of my recent work, especially in pieces that make use of some element of algebra. How do you design systems that absorb a certain type of energy - or what energy is expressed in a certain type of system? The sounds in this piece, organised along the dichotic axes of various Greimas squares, are in permanent tension - something that the subject doesn't like, as is clear from the expected reaction provoked by reading the previous sentence. This tension releases more and more energy, which frees itself from the structures that contained it and allows it to work. The play's dramaturgy then stages a constant reconfiguration of musical texture and gesture - of the environment in which they exist - in order to rescue life from the chaos of freedom.

Luís Salgueiro

Work	Type	Date	Organization/Event	Venue	Town	Country	Performers	Notes	Inv Row
Things are lazy but want to be free	Premiere	2023/Dec/30	Festival Itenerante de Percussão		Castelo Branco	Portugal	higher education students participating in the Festival Tomás Santos [UÉ] Rúben Oliveira [UM] Sofia Costa [ESMAE] Beatriz Magalhães [UA] Ismael Sequeira Gouveia [ESART] Joana Duarte [ESML] Bernardo Ramos [ANSO] Nuno Aroso (conductor) [UA]	Notes