Scores

En la impenetrable maraña de lo no nombrado
In the impenetrable tangle of the unnamed
for 24 voices, 2009

Two or three things collaborated in the existence of this absented music. A Zen garden motivated
its possibility. It was concrete and clear. Its layout of rocks and sand suggested materials and
form.
While composing, materials and form went through a process of transformation arriving to a state
of disturbing immateriality. It opened the space to a calm empty mind sailing in the winds of
uncertainty. Some objects came together and started to relate to each other not too different from
the way rocks are related to sand. I had forgotten the Zen garden just to later realize that I was all
the time "looking" at it.
While composing, the idea of Latin America randomly and persistently came to my mind. As
usual, some places emerged, some people, some music, and the past. Surrounded by silence and
snow I was frequently brought back into the present.
The poetry of Roberto Juarroz was a bright shadow walking with my steps. The title of this work
is a line from his Poesía vertical.

En la más ardua oscuridad
In the Most Arduous Obscurity
for bass clarinet, cello and piano, 2009

The title suggests a space from which -due to a lack of light- there is no point of reference or safe
pathway to move about. More importantly, the title suggests a state of mind; an inner space in
which someone suddenly realizes that has lost perspective on those things that were familiar.
Paradoxically, I chose, as the first musical material of the work, one that suggests brightness,
light. The rest was dark, at the beginning of the compositional process. I moved around with that
material in hand similar to the way we walk with a candle in an unknown place at the center of
the night. That light was useful to find some objects and situations of interest. The light came
back several times until I finally felt more comfortable walking in the dark.
The only familiar thing is the unfamiliar; the only known place is the unknown.
 

Heterofonías
Heterophonies
for five counterbass clarinets, 2009

Heterofonías, for five contrabass clarinets, is a Deleuzean “Canto” written at the time of finishing
the solo contrabass clarinet piece Entrañas/Descentros for Theo Nabicht.
Heterofonías, or the virtue of de-synchronization, trajectories of an imagined voice affected by
the forces of multiplicity that wanders around an imaginary space of resonances where a simple
line becomes a muddled texture, a new sonic entity. The work is dedicated to Theo Nabicht and the musicians of the Fünf Plus Eins Festival.

Para el Encuentro en los Abismos
For the Encounter in the Abyss
for 24 musicians, 2003

Commissioned and premiered by Ensemble Intercontemporain at Centre Pompidou December
19th 2003. Duration 18 minutes
The sound materials of this composition are united by two basic assumptions: everything is
becoming and in the process of creating its own existence, and on the other hand, everything is
breathing in that narrow space between the known and the unknown. I believe that in music today
that is the space of noises and complex sounds.
The fluidity and transitory nature of things is manifested in the sounds and noises as well as in the
composition as a whole in such a way that there is a permanent transformation of the soundscape
making possible the connection between the “celestial” and the “phantasmagoric”, between the
most calm atmosphere and the explosion of confronted energies, similar to the way clouds turn
imperceptible from the sensual veil of a nymph to the furious face of a dragon in flames.
The title of the work was borrowed from a poem by the Argentinean poet Juan L Ortiz, the poet of
the ethereal, of the almost imperceptible, the poet that explored like no one else the transitory and
provisory, yet eternal aspect of things.

Resplandecencias de la nada
Resplendencies of Nothingness
for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano, harp and percussion, 2002

I was wondering about an image coming from a poem. It was about the lightness of the air at 4:40
PM somewhere in the south of the South. The thoughts were coming without words, with shapes
and colors, fluctuations of densities of indescribable materials, and some moments of silence.
Silence with a remote background of sounds, similar to the sounds we hear in dreams. We tend to
think of nothingness when surrounded by silence but soon we discover a whole new world in it.

The closest to silence is the flesh of the winds, then our breaths, and whispers that soon turn into
new sound worlds...
At moments the agglomeration of remote noises gives the impression of colors, textures and
shapes that we have heard before but not as music, just as a fragile veil of life while walking close
to an unknown river. At 4:40 PM, in the south of the South, the afternoon turns into an immense
tuning fork. Everything is suspended, gravitating around it, reflecting light of an increasing
power, inviting us to be part of the event ... Resplendencies of nothingness that eventually
become silence again, as islands, here and there, silence with a yellow ochre resonance. Silence
never stops sounding. What we call silence is the remembrance of the sounds in a dream.
I was wondering about an image coming from a poem. This music is a residual product of that
experience.

¿Qué se llama cuanto heriza nos?
What Do You Call Everything That Bristles Us?
for flute + alto flute, clarinet + bass clarinet, oboe, horn, piano, percussion, violin, viola, cello,
and double bass, 2001 Dur. 16' 15"

I found the title before I wrote the piece. In a way, the unspeakable meanings emanating from
many of César Vallejo’s poems were the trigger that started the compositional process of this
music. The music is not trying to represent the text, there is no easy path that could illustrate the
secret of a dense, refined, and mysterious poetic revelation. Instead, this music is the search for a
similar experience by way of going without any concession into the universe of its own sound
world. Technically speaking, there are several elements in the music that are the object of my
current investigations. All of them are connected with the idea of exploring complex sounds and
noises. The work is dedicated to the memory of my father who passed away ten years ago, in 1991.

Geometrías fugitivas (Fleeting Geometries)
for bass clarinet, cello and piano (1998)

I was born facing one of the largest rivers in South America, the Parana River that coming from
Brazil goes all the way to the south, becoming, eventually, in Buenos Aires, The La Plata River. I
recently realized that several of my pieces could be metaphorically related to the idea of rivers.
Their complexity in terms of shape, landscape, accidents, fluid mass, color, texture, density, and
speed, could open new ways of looking at musical materials, processes and form.
This composition, with its permanent flux of sounds and resonance, could be an example of that
image. A unified macro-organic flow in which the surface -the resonance of the piano- is treated
as an element of integration and modulation of the global macro-sound of the three instruments.
Bass clarinet and cello liquidate and dissolve the little more fixed intervallic structure of the piano
with their micro intervallic possibilities. The evolution of register could be, one of the ways to
follow the shape and different areas of the piece as well as timbre and harmonic content. Each

one of these areas creating its own atmosphere that emerges and dissolves in the next one, just as
events are connected in everyday life.

“De qué modo en lo anónimo”
In what way in the anonymous
Radio Opera based on a text by Juan José Saer.
Music and libretto Marcelo Toledo (2002) Duration: 30 minutes

Commission 2002 from National Radio Spain and CDMC. The work was created at the CMC at
Columbia University. Premiered in the XVIII International Festival of Contemporary Music
Alicante, Spain, October 1st 2002. Broadcast by National Classical Radio Spain
“De qué modo en lo anónimo” is a sonic interpretation of the text “La Mayor” (1972) by the
Argentinean writer Juan José Saer. This paradigmatic work consists of a paragraph 50 page long,
that describes in almost cinematic detail the internal world of its only character, during a long
winter night. The narration uses as an introduction an intertext that refers to the world of Marcel
Proust and the character Marcel who is able to recover the past by tasting a madeleine soaked in a
cup of tea.
The work has four parts. They should be performed without intermissions or stops.
1- Otros, ellos, antes, podían. (They, the others, could.)
2- Y yo ahora (And me now)
3-Humos (Smokes)
4- Ningún Rumor (No Rumors)
“De qué modo en lo anónimo” could be presented in both ways: broadcasted and/or in a concert
as electro acoustic music.
Technical requirements for a concert setting:
2 or 4 loud speakers, mix board, amplifier, CD player
Lighting control is needed to create a dark-winter atmosphere.