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DANIEL OSORIO: CICCUS The circusseries begins in 2007, while the composer was studying at the Saar University of Music, and in retrospect reflects his artistic career and his political feelings and thoughts. Studying composition as a self-chosen “exile” triggered a lengthy development process in Daniel Osorio, in which he questioned his European musical education and sought connections to his first musical experiences. In these, neither the piano nor any other European instrument played a significant role, rather he grew up with the sounds of the Andean instruments charango, kena and sikus (pan flute), which had a resistant and clandestine meaning in the Chile of the Pinochet dictatorship. Associated with the toppled socialist government of Salvador Allende, the indigenous instruments were despised and de facto banned. The memories of the tonal language of the Andean instruments and the horrors of the dictatorship have not let go of Daniel Osorio and return in the composition process circus back in full force. They are fragments of a political history of sound that comes to life in the works, based on the one hand on his own music playing and on the other hand on the composer's acoustic and music-ethnological research into the Sikus flute. The result is five pieces for solo instruments and electronics, which deal with the different musical and cultural facets of the Sikus. The creative design of the material with the tools of a European compositional tradition is also reflected in the slight alienation of the instrument's name: »Zikkus«. All of the works are finally combined in a cycle of works in order to unite the fragmentary memories, thoughts and feelings that have been scattered over time and to give them a permanent place in the composer's memory through the artistic creative process.
Zikkus-V is one of the first pieces of the circusseries and is based on the one hand on a spectral analysis of selected notes of the Sikus flute and on the other hand on the ritual elements of the music playing of the Sikuris. This acoustic and music-ethnological research enabled a first approach to the Andean music traditions from the perspective of a European-influenced composition practice. Starting point from Zikkus F is the narration Meeting (Assembly) by Argentine writer Julio Cortázar. This impressively describes the breathing of the main character Ché Guevara, which is made more difficult by his asthma. The sound of this breathing becomes in Zikkus F made audible and is an essential part of the piece. The philosophical and spiritual meaning of the breath in the Far Eastern tradition can also be found in the cultures of the Andean plateau, when playing the Sikus flute. Various breathing techniques underline the ritual character of making music: For example, by holding the breath and then letting out the air very slowly, which prolongs the sounds of the sikus, in combination with very fast breathing movements from the stomach, the flute players can achieve a state of expanded consciousness gain. The breath as an archetype of community is Zikkus F represented by the European flute. Their traditional sound is »stretched« and »compressed« by electronic processes, creating new acoustic textures that are completely different from the original sounds and yet have evolved from them.
The piece's attempt to break with the symbolism of the piano and its limited tonal possibilities is achieved here by dissecting its tonal spectrum. On the one hand through the electronics and on the other hand by hitting his body of sound with a wide variety of everyday objects. In this way, new sound spectra are generated, which allow the acoustic elements and sound-aesthetic values of Andean music to shine through.
The Spanish colonizers, who since the 15th century tried to impose the paradigms of European music on the pre-Columbian peoples, failed to completely subjugate cultural expressions in the Andes. The Aymara, for example, offered a hidden resistance with their cultural and musical tradition that escaped the attention of the colonial clergy. So even today, in the music of the Aymara, sounds and timbres can still be heard that Western tradition describes – not without a certain arrogance and presumption – as tonal “roughness” and apparent inconsistencies. For example, the sound aesthetics of the Aymara consciously look for the beating between two or more notes, be it in unison, in octaves, fourths or perfect fifths - an acoustic phenomenon that instrument makers have always achieved by tuning the instruments of each musical group with slight shifts . And this is also what makes the beauty and distinctiveness of the Aymara's art of instrument building special: They develop ingenious ideas and approaches to solutions in order to make traditional polytonality possible with a minimum of material and tonal resources. Polytonality, beats and tonal shifts are Zikkus-S processed with minimal sound resources, reinterpreted by electronics and regaining their aesthetic value lost through colonization. Zikkus-K deals with the musical practice of the Suri Siku, a special type of Sikuris music group. The usual Sikuris players perform their music in complementary pairs and divide the melody into two groups (ira / male and arka / female) - similar to the hoquetus, a polyphonic European-medieval compositional technique. The Suri Siku, on the other hand, use a complete diatonic scale, while preserving the collective and binary character in play: the response of a group (arka) follows the same note of the previous group (ira), creating a kind of "echo" during play. This symmetry is also an important part of the social and spiritual ordering system of Aymara society, in which different pairs of opposites, such as up-down, man-woman, valley-plateau etc. play a structuring role. These opposites, dualisms and symmetries are explored in the writing process of Zikkus-K taken up and emerge in the rhythmic structures, in the meter distribution and in the various series of tones. Through its numerous repetitions, the piece also reflects an almost mantric simplicity of ritual music playing that is inherent in the musical gesture. Daniel Osorio / Alena van Wahnem program: Daniel Osorio (* 1971) [01] Zikkus F for flute and live electronics (2007) 12:27 [02] Zikkus-S for baritone saxophone and live electronics (2013) 11:46 [03] Zikkus-V for cello and live electronics (2007) 11:12 [04] Zikkus P for piano and live electronics (2010) 09:17 [05] Zikkus-K for clarinet and live electronics (2021) 13:17 Total playing time: 58:12 Die Cronopien – Collective for Intercultural New Music first recordings |