ALBERTO POSADAS –
LITURGIA FRACTAL – 2009
A set of five quartets that are
so connected that four of them cannot be played separately, so says the
composer. Technically it is for me pure mathematics or physics and not music.
Music is a set of sounds, some tempos, a harmony of some kind and it creates
emotions. The fractal pattern, model or whatever used by the composer to
produce or compose his music is his choice, his technique and I am not
listening to it to know how he manages to produce sounds that are not exactly
standard string sounds. That is not important for me as a listener.
What is the effect of this music
on me and first of all on my psyche? You cannot just listen and enjoy this
music because it is composed to be listened to but also not to be plainly
enjoyed in quiet restful nonchalance. It is producing in me a constant alert sensation
that requires my full attention and every note produces in me a feeling of
unbalance that is always prevented from falling by some musical acrobatics. And
it is this feeling of nearly always fearing a fall and finding myself suspended
by one thread or maybe one rope over a chasm that makes me enjoy it. It is
constantly controlled vertigo and free fall contained at the last instant
before the fall. It is cliff hanging over an abyss with just one spider thread
to keep me from falling. Each interval is a stone that rolls under my feet.
Each note is a hole in the board that is slowly dissolving under my feet.
This music is thus very effective
on my psyche to make me aware that I am nothing and I might end up flat into a
hellish furnace any time now, any time soon, any time that had already happened
in the past. I am like floating in-between now and then, then under and now
just level with me and no future whatsoever. This impression of a movement that
is carrying me in a constant present emotion with no foreseeable future is my
main emotion. And that is fractal indeed. These molecular notes are Brownian
like hell and they are moving in all directions leaving me disoriented, lost,
bombarded from all sides and in all directions.
The main emotion coming from this
music is then that the world is nothing that can exist for ever because it is
by definition transient, evanescent and changing without any real logic, except
the logic of a crowd that can flare up crazy, every single individual running
in any direction and banging, bouncing and swinging or swaying in any other
direction till they bounce again against another individual. That’s Brownian
for sure but that is also illogical, erratic, capricious, whimsical and yet a
whimsicality that you cannot control. That impression to be surrounded by
menacing sounds and notes that have no malicious intention and yet are
endangering you is inebriating. Don’t
ever think you may recline in an armchair and enjoy the melodious music of your
heartfelt love and hatred.
And yet that constant endangering
and disquieting music creates a world of its own, a universe that is like a
wild jungle in which you are lost and you can go around and discover the
creeping life under each leaf. That makes you curious and adventurous. That
forces you to look around and cope with any kind of wild being that may lurk
under the moss. As for me I am fascinated by these twirling, whirling and
writhing movements of this maelstrom of a musical experience. I just wonder if
at times I am not drunk with it, drunk and dizzy, on the verge of letting
everything go and letting myself be engulfed and transported into another
nether world of no density, of no stability.
I just wonder when I am
confronted to this music if the feeling and emotion I experience is the result
of the strangeness, the lack of acquaintanceship, of regular commerce with this
music, hence its being strange, unknown, untamed; or maybe it is the objective
of this music to make me feel estranged, lost, de-motivated and de-structured.
This music sounds like the world in which we live but only when we stop at a
crossroads and try to capture every single detail of the traffic, of the people
and vehicles going by and even imagine who they are, what they are doing, what
their motivations are. Does this modern music aim at turning us into
contemplators who try to find some meaning in what appears as totally messy,
fuzzy, unmotivated, non-significant.
Are we ready to jump into that
world lying beyond our old customary vision and explanation? Are we going to
evolve into systematically looking at everything around us with a critical eye
and not a pre-conceived and pre-constructed explanation of the whole world the
way it is in our books and not the way it is in reality? This music points the
finger at the moon of a world that is not following our rules in our books but
following its own rules in its own mysterious psyche, as if the world had its
own psyche. And yes we may think this world has a psyche of its own, an existence
of its own, and that we are a bunch of ants in front of a volcano in full
eruption. And like the bad students of the Buddhist master we are looking at
the pointer, at the finger pointing at anything at all because we don’t see
what it is pointing at. We only see the finger and not the moon.
This music is like a Buddhist
meditation, like a Zen levitation. It cannot mean anything to us if we do not
let go of our preconceived convictions that everything is logical, can be
explained with two bits of logic. This music is the preaching of a Buddha in
the middle of a desert, or as for that the parables of a Jesus in the middle of
a crowd of deaf, blind and dumb people. Some will say I am ranting and raving.
But be sure I am only ranting and raving for those who already know everything
or at least believe they do.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU
# posted by Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU @ 8:51 AM