About the Others

Chamber ensemble Fl, Cl, Ob, Vln, Vc, Pn, Perc. (2013)

Premiered by Mizzou New Music Ensemble, check this link.

This piece was born as a reflection on one small fragment of the poem Piedra de Sol (Sunstone) by Mexican writer Octavio Paz. The fragment is as follows:

“…soy otro cuando soy, los actos míos 
son más míos si son también de todos, 
para que pueda ser he de ser otro, 
salir de mí, buscarme entre los otros, 
los otros que no son si yo no existo, 
los otros que me dan plena existencia, 
no soy, no hay yo, siempre somos nosotros…”

“…when I am I am another, my acts
are more mine when they are the acts of others, 
in order to be, I must be another,
leave myself, search for myself in the others, 
the others that do not exist if I do not exist,
the others that give me total existence, 
I am not, there is no I, we are always us…”

Translation by Eliot Weinberg

This is a companion piece for About Oneself. The idea was to reflect on my “existence” as composer through the music of other composers. I took ideas from pieces that I liked or that I was performing as percussionist during the time I was composing the piece. The main pieces I used were: André Boucherliev’s “Ulyses” for flute and Percussion, Jacob Druckman’s “Reflections on the Nature of Water for Marimba,” Olivier Messiaen’s “Quartet for the End of Time” (VI. Dance of fury, for the seven trumpets) and the “Catalogue of Birds,” and André Jolivet’s “Concerto for Flute and Percussion.”
Ideas and excerpts were modified in different manners to create new materials for my piece, an avid listener might recognize the original sources. Manipulating these ideas, I created a new reality, one in which these creators meet virtually going past the boundaries of time, space, and style. But now I am present, I am part of the dialogue. This work is my own creation but it is theirs as well. I raise the questions, is this work original? Is this a stylistic exercise?