COMPULSORY PIECE: «Arlequin»

This picturesque character from Italian commedia dell’arte serves as a pretext for Ernesto Aurignac to give form to the multitude of languages and musical traditions that articulate his unique conception of sound. Author of more than one hundred works for various ensembles, Aurignac’s creations are influenced by musical expressionism, French impressionism, and echoes of folk and modern music. The descriptive nature of the piece presents the stage as an allegory for life and its extremes. The triumphant and the wretched, a duality embodied by the clown, which Aurignac translates into music with a great sense of spectacle. From the very start, Arlequín connects us to the circus world through a colorful, modernist fanfare with vibrant energy, serving as an introduction:

Movement 0 This sonority gives way to the spectacle, to the entrance of Arlequín in Movement 1. In Movement 2, we find ourselves backstage in the dressing room, a place of misery, where the music breathes narrow and desolate passages. The protagonist escapes with an imaginary dance; a captivating solo saxophone passage closes this scene. In Movement 3, Arlequín awakens; he returns us to his emptiness and despair and constructs a ship to travel through space in search of a new world. His yearning for the eternal propels us toward the sonic ecstasy that ends the work. In Movement 4, the clown reaches Samadhi in another universal reality.

“I composed Arlequín inspired by the life, adventures, and misfortunes of a clown. By his lights and his shadows. By his brilliance and his misery. By what is seen of him when he performs and what is not seen. The vital duality he occupies within the stage and outside the spectacle. It is the futuristic, faithful, and artistic representation of what all human beings endure on our own stage: life”.

E. Aurignac

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