Cage-Richter

The cycle CAGE-RICHTER was inspired by the lecture “ Freedom, individuality, style, and the interrelationship of different strands in an artist’s work” given by James Clarke at the Royal College of Music London. The lecture confronted me with the idea of looking at my work from a different perspective, taking distance from my comfort zone and exploring other musical aspects, or musical ideas that I have never considered before. The results were 6 miniatures based on the 6 paintings that comprise CAGE by Gerhard Richter. The cycle CAGE-RICHTER for flute, Acoustic Objects, Piano and Violin intends to explore certain musical features that I had never included before in my work. First, the cycle is composed of 6 miniatures that can be performed in any order; the overall result of the cycle depends of the decision made by the members of the ensemble. The pieces were composed as independent parts, although some aspects are featured in more than one miniature, each piece is an island isolated from the others, and therefore there is no sense of chronology. Second, the pieces are interpretations of certain aspects of the paintings (of course not literally) and hence that the titles of the pieces refer to the paintings (Cage I to VI). Musically, my aim was to incorporate sounds that I had developed in previous cycles (specially in the cycle Mechanical Resonance) but generating textures and musical gestures that can be associated with some characteristics of the paintings. The paintings can be found at this address:http://www.gerhard-richter.com/art/search/?artworkID1=paintings&title=cage&nCAGE-RICHTER is dedicated to James ClarkeCA Mendez S. London-Montreal 2012