Scored for a chamber ensemble of eight players.
🏆 Awarded with the 'Francisco Guerrero Marín' award in the 'XXX Young Composers Award SGAE-CNDM Foundation'.
ABOUT THE PIECE:
Firefly - after Tokyo Blues - was awarded with the 'Francisco Guerrero Marín' award in the 'XXX Young Composers Award SGAE-CNDM Foundation 2019. First performance was given by KOEN 2 Ensemble, conducted by José Ramón Encinar, at 400 Auditorium in the Queen Sofia National Museum Art Centre, Madrid (Spain) on November 18, 2019.
The title of the piece is taken from a short story by Murakami Haruki, also titled Firefly, which was published in the collection ‘Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman’ (1980 to 2005). The story is a nostalgic tale of loss and burgeoning sexuality, described from a first-person perspective. The music of Firefly tries to capture the psychology of the characters, as richly described by Murakami, alternating between an intimate mood of despair and sexuality, continuously guided by the ruinous memory of a song that links and shapes the whole piece - 'Norwegian wood (This bird has flown)' by the Beatles (1965). Murakami used this short story as the cornerstone of his successful bestseller, 'Norwegian wood' (1987).
Firefly is structured in a binary system, with the thematic material encapsulated in the first nine measures. The bass clarinet introduces the first idea immediately, which is developed from a polytonal system, and is rather seductive, even somewhat cynical. The second idea is an atomization of the popular song "Norwegian wood (This bird has flown)" by the Beatles, from their 1965 album "Rubber Soul". These materials are kept in a constant volatile state during the subsequent development, with a particular emphasis on the technique of "Klangfarbenmelodie" (sound-color melody), which involves breaking a melodic line between several instruments. Firefly is also a revisitation and reinterpretation of the composer's previous piece, Tokyo Blues, which was scored for soprano and piano with digital extensions in 2017.
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