Fantasías
Guitar (2021 -2024)
A series of ten fragments for guitar with glass slides, based on the Fantasías of Alonso Mudarra. Can be performed on their own or as a set, with or alongside the corresponding works by Mudarra.
Written for
Ole Martin Huser-Olsen
Commissioned with funds from TONO and Komponistenes Vederlagsfond.
First fragment premiered in Oslo 17.02.22
Alonso Mudarra's (1510 - 1580) work sits at the heart of one of the most historically significant repertoires for the guitar. His fantasías, written for the vihuela (an ancestor of the guitar) are both harmonically and structurally complex. The interweaving melodies can be as unpredictable as they are compelling, and are suffused with effortlessly virtuosic ornamentation throughout.
My Fantasías are intended as companions to Mudarra's works. They are shadow-pieces, based on the melodies and harmonies of their counterparts but with a new approach to register, timbre, and structure. I have also taken a different approach to ornamentation. This is as important in my fragments as it is in Mudarra's pieces. However, instead of trillos and mordents, the performer has a selection of glass slides, with which they glide around on the strings - breaking down the teleology of the in places already tenuous harmonic framework.
My journey though Mudarra's fantasías has resulted in a variety of different worlds of sound, some more tangential to the material than others. I have embraced this, with the notion that these works are reflections on the past refracted through the prism of an increasingly complex present.
Ole Martin Huser-Olsen performing Fantasia 1 in Oslo in February 2022