Simfonia Anàbasi

Simfonia Anàbasi was written in 1993 and is dedicated to the composer Tomás Marco due to his friendship with Rodríguez Picó. Two musical forms (symphonic poem and symphony) converge in this piece.
According to its composer, the genesis of this work is as follows: “In 1991, the National Orchestra of Spain commissioned a symphony from me. At that time, I found it necessary to create orchestral compositions of greater dimensions than the previous ones, related to symphonic poem, such as El lleó afamat (work inspired by a painting by Rousseau), or concertante music, such as the two concerts for clarinet and orchestra. Due to this approach, the new pieces were to be called symphonies, and several compositions of this nature had to be drafted. Simfonia Americana (fruit of that commission) debuted at the National Music Auditorium in Madrid in 1992; its subtitle referred to extra-musical elements alluded to in part of the work. These elements were related to Latin American characteristics, mainly related to literature (baroque style) and traditional music (Ayarachi Indians of Peru). The following year, I started composing what would be my second symphony.”

Simfonia Anàbasi also alludes to extra-musical elements, in this case to the poem Anabase written in 1924 by the French poet and diplomat from Antilles Saint-John Perse (also known as Alexis Saint-Léger Léger), who received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1960. According to Jesus Rodríguez Picó, “This poem, along with others by the same author, focuses on inventing a ‘geography’ or, rather, a cosmogony with epic elements where allusions are more important than descriptions. This poem’s translator into Catalan, Alfred Sargatal, recommended it to me, and it enabled continuing a line of work that began at the end of the seventies with works like La ciutat i les estrelles and, subsequently, Diomira. These works gave great importance to the relationship between matter and poetry set out in some of the books by the French philosopher Gaston Bachelard (1884–1962). These views set forth in texts such as L’eau et les rêves addressed the suggestive topic of the imagination of matter: “...I believe that a philosophic doctrine of the imagination must, above all, study the relationship between material and formal causality...poetic images also have their matter.” In line with these views, Simfonia Anàbasi attempts to transfer the poetic world of Saint-John Perse to music. The music reflects this imaginative world via the constant transformation of matter, primarily through instrumental colour and rhythm. In each of the movements, the initial text taken from the poem attempts to situate the fundamental characteristic of how musical matter is seen. Thus, the first movement, which is essentially static, is introduced by the text Fondation de la ville. Pierre et bronze, while the second, rather moved and with repeated rhythms, is introduced by Des celebrations de fêtes en plein air.”

David Puertas