Vykintas Baltakas
Cantio
Short instrumentation: 1 0 1 0 - 1 1 1 1 - perc(2), acc, pno, alto sax(Eb), vln, vla, vc, cb
Duration: 60'
Libretto: Sharon Lynn Joyce
Übersetzer: Erika Ria Otto
Solos:
soprano
tenor
Bassbariton
Roles:
narrator
Instrumentation details:
piccolo (+picc)
clarinet in in Es (+bass cl)
alto saxophone in Eb (+sop.sax(Bb))
horn in F
trumpet in C
trombone
tuba
1st percussion
2nd percussion
accordion
piano
violin
viola
violoncello
double bass
Baltakas - Cantio for narrator, soprano, tenor, bassbaritone, ensemble and electronics
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Work introduction
The idea of the work is that the linguistic rhetoric should determine all the piece’s expressive aspects – its dramaturgy, music and staging. Music arises from the language and the scenic sound while, for its part, the action onstage reacts to the music.
A certain form of Cantio was performed in Greece; the gods were to be convinced to remain in the city if they were thought to be ready to abandon it. It survives only in fragments.
But our perceptual options of reconstructing such a distant epoch, identifying with it, are also merely fragmentary at most.
The attempt is to complete those fragments and, using imagination – and without becoming historical – to revivify them, allow them to speak – to make them heard, perhaps, if only for a short moment.
Vykintas Baltakas