Sotelo: Muros de dolor ... V, für Violine und Live-Elektronik

All the compositions of the series titled Muros de dolor (Walls of pain) have one idea in common: each of them wishes to be a Lamento, a song of groan, trying to express the pain and deep sorrow of the soul.

Their strong and expressive character is achieved via a precisely calculated succession of “micro-intervals” and an expanded palette of “micro-qualities” of the tone. The common root of this series of compositions is always one of the styles or “palos” of the Andalusian “cante hondo”, linked to the expression of pain. On this occasion it is the so-called Soleá (solitude), which is one of flamenco’s richest styles and very difficult to interpret.

Furthermore, the Soleá in this composition is a tribute to the great poet José Ángel Valente, who wrote the following in his indispensable essay Abyssal Experience: “the cantaor sings or ‘sings to himself’, to his own interiority, drags us into it; sings to the innermost of himself, in a voice that precipitates and retracts into the narrowest gorges of the soul”. The musical line that sounds between bars 14 to 41 is a Soleá, but not a traditional one, not a transcription or citation: it is a new one, a musical line that recreates and reinvents the dramatic quality of the traditional song – with an infinite palette of micro-qualities in the sound (after having performed a very detailed spectral analysis of a traditional model): a line of what is nowadays called Sotelo’s “Spectral-Flamenco”. The successive stages of the composition are showing different profiles of the Soleá’s “inner voice”, illuminating their expressive qualities from different perspectives.

The work was first performed in Ourense – José Ángel Valente’s birthplace – by the violinist Raquel Rivera, whose family has always had a close and intense relationship to the poet. The concert took place in the context of a conference in his honour on 24 September 2009.

Mauricio Sotelo