Iniciales / Initials

(Eight pieces for Flute & Piano)


Commentary
Recording
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Commentary

Initials (Eight Pieces for Flute & Piano) was written in March 1980 in Rome, where I was enjoying a scholarship to perfect my composition studies at the Spanish Academy of Fine Arts. Like some other works from the same period, it is greatly linked to that stage of training, both in regard to the beautiful Italian city and to some of my colleagues in the Institution, students of the most disparate activities (architecture, cinema, restoration...), with whom I lived for a few months.
Initials is nothing more than a small collection of eight short pieces, in which the pretext is as old as the music itself: trying to put into music, or, rather, give my own musical vision of some of the most characteristic features of the people or places whose names, hidden after their initials, head each of the pieces.
Naturally, it would not make sense to reveal here which those names are, since most of the extra-musical meaning of each piece is purely sentimental and, therefore, for the exclusive use of its author; however, I will make two exceptions that may be eloquent: piece No. 5, entitled S.P.I.M., refers to the Piazza di San Pietro in Montorio, in the heart of Roman Gianiccolo, where the Spanish Academy of Fine Arts is located. In it appears the ringing that, impassively, the church bells rang every half hour, and that is fully identifiable in the audition. On the other hand, the work is dedicated to Jesús Muñoz-Baroja, an architecture student and amateur flutist, with whom I spent many hours making music during those months, and whose personality aims to be reflected in piece No. 6: J.M.B.

Initials was premiered by flutist Linda Wetherill and pianist Sandra Rivers on February 6, 1983 at the County Community College of Delaware (USA).

Later it was published and recorded within the second volume of the collection "New Spanish Music for Flute", in a joint edition by Mundimúsica-Garijo and the Circle of Fine Arts of Madrid, performed by Mª Antonia Rodríguez and Menchu Mendizábal. In 1993 it was included in the CD "Musica per amici", of the German label Aurophon, in an interpretation of the Consonance Duo München, composed of the flutist Dorothea Susanne Meindl and the pianist Dorothea Hofmann.

Recording

Grabación: María Antonia Rodríguez (flute) abd Menchu Mendizábal (piano)

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(Score without watermarks available at www.asesores-musicales.com )