Instrumentation

1.1.1.bcl.0 – 1.1(in C).1.0 - perc(2): xyl/glsp/2 crot (F&G)/splash.cym/siz.cym/chin.cym/medium susp.cym/small cyms/very high tpl.bl/wdbl/c.bell/guiro/shaker/caxixi/pandiero/2 tins (large and small)/kitchen pot (low sound – F)/Cajon (flamenco)/Wood box (mounted on a resonant, small wooden table)/glass bottle and hammer/tabla/bongos/3 taiko drums (very small, small, large)/TD/BD - pno - 2 vln.vla.vlc.db

Availability

Score and parts for hire

Programme Notes

The Polish sociologist, philosopher and essayist Zygmunt Bauman coined the concept of ‘liquid modernity’ to describe the fluid and volatile state of today’s society, a world without strong values in which uncertainty weakens the human bonds that were hitherto believed to be firm. In his Liquid Symmetries (2013) Francisco Coll has developed a sound language based upon a principle of permanent uncertainty. Through a succession of truncated beginnings and endings – a constant process of composition, decomposition and recomposition – the work takes on a ‘liquid’ structure, in which everything changes. Brief imitative figures and isorhythmic passages shape the score into a virtuosic continuum. The resultant music does not evoke the ‘individuals’ speaking through instruments – not voices conversing with one another in counterpoint: it is instead an indistinct mass, akin to faceless machinery, which liquefies the contours of things and, ultimately annuls the differences between them.

Antonio Gómez

Liquid Symmetries

University of Toronto (Toronto, ON, Canada)

Wallace Halladay/University of Toronto Contemporary Music Ensemble