• Daniel Catán
  • En un Doblez del Tiempo (A Fold in Time) (1982)

  • Associated Music Publishers Inc (World)


ed. by Eduardo Diazmuñoz

  • 3(pic).3(ca).3(bcl).3(cbn)/432+btbn.1/timp.1[=2]perc/cel.hp/str
  • 12 min

Programme Note

Composer note:
I remember setting aside the summer of 1982 to work on a new orchestral piece. And when the summer in fact arrived, I started to work on it. It is always hard to start a new piece and this was no exception. Slowly and painfully the work began to take shape.

One day, however, in one of those mysterious moments where the composer becomes a mere instrument, a vehicle through which music comes into being, I wrote a whole page that came to me very quickly. But, as so often happens in life, it came with a double message. On the one hand there was something about the passage that attracted me enormously. On the other, it was clear that it did not belong in the piece I was writing. It was like coming across a wonderful find and at the same time being aware that it was not what I was looking for. Furthermore, the passage did not only present itself very forcefully as part of another piece, but very insistently as its ending.

Confused by these contradicting emotions, I resolved to let the matter rest for a few days. However, it was not long before I realized that the passage had come to stay, it just needed the music that led to it, to that ending.

So I began to write that music, and it came to me with surprising ease and fluidity. Its sound was that of a powerful stream running dangerously across an unusual and unexpected landscape, until it finally comes to rest in a transparent pool of crystal clearness. That is how A Fold in Time came to being. And in regards to the piece I had planned to write that summer, apparently crawled back into the inkwell, where it has remained ever since.

--Daniel Catán

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