To the Moon

The underlying idea of the piece is that of a profound reflection on the text being itself - first and foremost - sound: the different syllabic agglomerates are thus distinguished according to the various successions of consonants and vowels they are made of and subsequently connoted through the attribution - serial and arbitrary - of pitches. The syllabic structures included in the text are reducible to twelve morphological modules, therefore allowing to imply the chromatic whole but in a clearly unbalanced manner, where some specific pitches will inevitably be much more present than others, thus resulting in an unbalanced and functional harmonic field, with the presence - for example - of three individual pitches appearing only once: C - E - A♭, purposely placed at equidistant intervals. 

In this context, the flute proposes a reversed look on the traditional idea of ‘bel canto’ associated with the typical lyricism of the flute itself (cantabile/flautando), investigating on the contrary the implications of rumouristics in the voice through the exploration of the concluding consonants expressed in the text, reproposed as noise suggestions, almost percussive, within the mouthpiece of the instrument.

The distinctly evocative character of Chobanian's text offered an extremely fertile ground to the search for the most surgical and characterised sound suggestions, in the perspective of a methodical deconstruction of significance as sole text, reconstructed just as methodically through sound - both instrumental and vocal.

Komitas Museum Institute (Yerevan, Armenia), 14/06/24, finalists' Gala-concert "2nd International Mansurian Competition" (1st prize)