Product Description
Juan María Solare
Temperamentos
four pieces
for clarinet (or viola) and piano
1 - Melancólico
(1:15)
2 - Colérico (1:25)
3 - Flemático (2:00)
4
- Sanguíneo (2:50)
Composed
between December 18 and 23, 2010 in Bremen (and details in
Worpswede), Germany. Total duration: ca. 7'30 ".
When I was
studying Chamber Music (around 1985), the four pieces for clarinet
and piano by Howard Ferguson passed through my hands, some very nice
works of moderate difficulty down to low. Since then I have the idea
of writing a response to this cycle of pieces, an answer that took
about 25 years. As a trigger worked a suggestion from the pianist
Juliana Ganuza (in December 2010). This cycle of pieces is dedicated
to the Albanian clarinetist Ibrahim Gunbardhi. There is also a
version for viola and piano (written on January 3, 2011).
Naming a
work of "abstract" music is always a problem - although a
problem from which, in general, I have been successful. In this case
I solved it by reviewing various quaternary cycles. The cardinal
points could not be, nor could they be the four seasons (I already
have works with these names). But when I got to the four temperaments
I discovered with joy that they adapted almost completely naturally
to the character of each of the pieces. This discovery also made me
happy for another reason, because Stockhausen said that in each work
he tried to explore the emotional and energetic structure of the
human being at least once. It is true that he was referring more to
the model of the chakras, but the general principle is the same: to
address musically to different layers of a person. And let's not
forget that such four temperaments are almost never pure types, we
speak then of combined temperaments. I imagine that the four
tendencies are always latent in every human being and one or the
other emerges according to external circumstances of all kinds or
even personal decisions.
I refer to
more reliable sources than I am for an explanation of these four
temperaments, any encyclopedia is. I just want to mention that this
pre-psychological model has existed since the time of Hippocrates and
was for two millennia the most common theory in Europe about the
functioning of the human body. From the psychological point of view
of character description, it would not be entirely correct to affirm
that this theory was "surpassed", perhaps rather that it
was supplemented and corrected for being insufficient, but not for
being considered fundamentally wrong.
After trying
alternatives, I decided that the order of the four pieces would be
the same as the one in which they were conceived and written, which
also presents a particularity: they are getting longer and longer
(like a spiral in perpetual expansion, if you want to continue with
allusions to Stockhausen). Musically, in addition, I think I perceive
in these four pieces an evolution from simple to complex.
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