Rulfo/voces III, für Viola und Elektronik

«Rulfo/voces III» is the fourth part of a cycle of five pieces for violin, viola, violoncello and electronics after the work of the Mexican writer Juan Rulfo (1917–1986). His work, consisting of a novel and 17 short stories, depicts rural Mexico at the time of the Mexican Revolution as a world marked by hopelessness and solitude. His poetic language, rough, unadorned and of deep musicality is language of myth and a language of remembrance.

This is the starting point for the development of the musical form. Monolog and fragment are in the foreground. The sound of Rulfo’s mature voice with his typical Mexican inflections is an important reference. The piece is shaped by monody and fragmentation. The rests gain in significance as moments of introspection in which the electroacoustic composed resonance of the viola sounds.

Macro-formal features are guided by spatial relations and processes, that specially in the Novel Pedro Páramo work as motives: in the first place the descent and the relation above/below as symbol for present and remembrance, reason and madness, life and death. Descend/ascend means to surpass a threshold, but also to move towards an endpoint. This point, at the same time vintage and vanishing point is in Rulfo’s literary work always death.

The piece was written for a concert of the NewTonEnsemble at Konzerthaus Vienna on April 25, 2004 and was first performed by Petra Ackermann, viola and Germán Toro Pérez, electronics. The piece is dedicated to her.