Memoria de la isla verde
[clar,wind orch] 2024/2025 duration: 16′ solo: clar – picc.2.2.cor ang.5(E-flat-clar.3B-clar.db-clar).2.dble bsn.S-sax.2A-sax.2T-sax.Bar-sax – 4.4.4.2euph.2 – timp.perc(4) – db
Description
This piece is a journey and a ritual for solo clarinet and wind orchestra. The “green island” is an essential figure in the world of Sufism. It is located in a mythical space, and on the summit of its great mountain of Qaf – the “white mountain” – dwells King Simorgh, the bird king to whom thousands of birds make a long and arduous pilgrimage. Simorgh means “thirty birds” in Farsi, and as in the famous Persian book The Conference of the Birds by Farid al Din Attar (1145–1221), the thirty birds that reach this place on the green island and stand before Simorgh discover that the journey has all along been an inner journey: each one carries their own Simorgh within them. In Shiism, the green island constitutes an inner journey without movement, without leaving one’s own self.
The landscapes traversed by the solo clarinet (as in “The Solitary Bird” by San Juan de la Cruz) are different poetic territories, with summits, deserts and even a ritual reminiscent of the Sufi ceremonies (sama) of the brotherhoods of the Maghreb. At the end of this ecstatic pursuit of God and the king of birds, the solitary bird finds itself in front of a mirror of itself and its heart.
The wind orchestra (also with percussions and double basses) is the ideal terrain to unfold this entire ritual in motion with spiritual and at the same time sensitive depth. The air, the breath, the multiplying lines, etc. serve as material for the plastic and sonorous design and imagination of this composition. The “green island” (aljazira al-khadrd') is also the meaning of my hometown Algeciras, one of the first cities where Islam took root at the beginning of its expansion into southern Spain in the year 711.
The work is dedicated to the clarinetist Manuel Martínez, and will be premiered by the Barcelona Symphonic Band conducted by José R. Pascual-Vilaplana at the Auditori de Barcelona on April 27, 2025.
MM 2360171
hire material
Description
Description
This piece is a journey and a ritual for solo clarinet and wind orchestra. The “green island” is an essential figure in the world of Sufism. It is located in a mythical space, and on the summit of its great mountain of Qaf – the “white mountain” – dwells King Simorgh, the bird king to whom thousands of birds make a long and arduous pilgrimage. Simorgh means “thirty birds” in Farsi, and as in the famous Persian book The Conference of the Birds by Farid al Din Attar (1145–1221), the thirty birds that reach this place on the green island and stand before Simorgh discover that the journey has all along been an inner journey: each one carries their own Simorgh within them. In Shiism, the green island constitutes an inner journey without movement, without leaving one’s own self.
The landscapes traversed by the solo clarinet (as in “The Solitary Bird” by San Juan de la Cruz) are different poetic territories, with summits, deserts and even a ritual reminiscent of the Sufi ceremonies (sama) of the brotherhoods of the Maghreb. At the end of this ecstatic pursuit of God and the king of birds, the solitary bird finds itself in front of a mirror of itself and its heart.
The wind orchestra (also with percussions and double basses) is the ideal terrain to unfold this entire ritual in motion with spiritual and at the same time sensitive depth. The air, the breath, the multiplying lines, etc. serve as material for the plastic and sonorous design and imagination of this composition. The “green island” (aljazira al-khadrd') is also the meaning of my hometown Algeciras, one of the first cities where Islam took root at the beginning of its expansion into southern Spain in the year 711.
The work is dedicated to the clarinetist Manuel Martínez, and will be premiered by the Barcelona Symphonic Band conducted by José R. Pascual-Vilaplana at the Auditori de Barcelona on April 27, 2025.