Mauricio Sotelo
Chalan
Short instrumentation: 2 1 2 1 - 1 1 2 1 - perc(2), pno, str(1 1 1 2 1)
Duration: 18'
Solos:
percussion
Instrumentation details:
1st flute (+picc
alto fl)
2nd flute (+picc
bass fl)
oboe
1st clarinet in Bb
2nd clarinet in Bb (+bass cl(Bb))
bassoon
horn in F
trumpet in C
1st trombone
2nd trombone
contrabass tuba
1st percussion
2nd percussion
piano
1st violin
2nd violin
viola
1st violoncello
2nd violoncello
contrabass
Sotelo - Chalan for percussion and orchestra
Printed/Digital
Translation, reprints and more
Mauricio Sotelo
Sotelo: Chalan for percussion and orchestraOrchestration: for percussion and orchestra
Type: Studienpartitur
Print-On-Demand
Sample pages
Audio preview
Work introduction
For Mauricio Sotelo, composing is “to have one ear for the other,” while the finally notated result is less significant than the path taken to reach it. He describes Chalan as “Diary of a Wanderer,” which recalls the journey of his artistic collaboration with the Indian percussionist Trilok Gurtu, bearing within it the “resonance of endless discussions about Indian and Spanish music.” The main references to Indian music are the title and the central role of the tabla, a drum which has been finding its way into isolated areas of European music since the 1960s.
In Indian culture, Chalan (“calan”) is the name of a cyclical form, a kind of theme with variations which originally served to characterise certain persons in the khatak, a style of dancing.
According to the composer, the work passes through a soundscape; he allocates synesthetic images and concepts from Indian tradition to the seven stops along the sonic journey, such as “Fresh Earth,” “Daybreak” and “Life-Energy” in Part 1. A spiral-shaped notion of time determines the compositional concept, allowing individual sonic elements to circle about an imaginary, mirrored axis and appear in successive new dimensions.
The score is worked out in a differentiated way, using so-called “bols” (onomatopoeic drumming syllables) as well as traditional notation, the bols regulating the various rhythmical qualities of the counting-times in Indian tabla playing.
Andreas Günther
Translation © Grant Chorley
(The text may be used or reprinted only with the author’s express permission)