Interpolated Motet (2007 / 2018)
For 4-Part Vocal Ensamble (SATB)
Composer: Ariadna Sáenz
Performers:  Elizabeth Fisher (Soprano), Ariadna Sáenz (Alto), Samuel Chan (Tenor), Jonathan Nussman (Bass)
Text: Octavio Paz, "La Caída" ("Calamidades y Milagros", 1937 - 1947) 
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Premiere: June 16th. 2018
A Ship in the Woods Music and Art Festival
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Some words about the piece:
"Interpolated Motet" is an internal dialogue that interpolates between desires and structure and that unfolds in 3 sections:

Interpolation I [0'00'' - 6'19"]
Motet [6'20"-9'44"]
Interpolation II [9'45"-14'25"]

The title is a word game for referring historically both to the origin of motets as interpolations inside an established tradition (the organum) and to the latin version of the word motet, "motectum", as different voices against one another. Here, desires are those interpolations: antagonistic, multiple, unscripted, extemporaneous, contemporaneous... ; reminiscent of an improvisation. Structure is governed by a way of doing, an habit, a social agreement... ; reminiscent of tradition where new interpolations, new forms will probably emerge. 

I conceived "Interpolated Motet" as a vocal epiphany of disorientation, multiplicity, trapped memory, trauma and selfishness. But also a counterpoint that searchs for freedom and expression in the restriction of the form, order, reunion, consonant collision, clarity and hope. But moreover, a internal reconciliation between the new and the old. An introspection exercise for recognizing what is foreign and what is familiar, what is needed and what is not.

Ode to Threatened Species - Installation (2018)

This is my newest composition and, simultaneously, the soundtrack of my Solo Dance & Sound Installation piece, also titled "Episodic Self" (2019). 
For the first time, and with the intention of dealing with my own memory, I re-collected, re-used and re-organized some of my own previous musical compositions: "La Caída" (2007), "Interpolated Motet" (2007 - 2018), and "Echoes" (2014). By selecting specific fragments and durations, working on transitions and ways of carefully weaving these fragile materials -now isolated from their own musical context and, apparently, without a generative grammar connection with the other musical segments-, this composition acts like a carefully designed channel surfing between radio frequencies in where my body can potentially find different states of intimacy and relationships to connect with its own memory. But also, it can experience the encounter with spaces of confusion, disorientation, and transient faster sound memories that, although having a short duration, its lasting effect on my body remains and juxtaposes to the next e-motional context. On top of that, a strongly emotional thread weaves all these personal musical compositions, the favorite song of my mom, that shyly appears for, progressively - as my body can assimilate it- taking more present: "Alfonsina y el Mar", composed by Ariel Ramírez and text by Félix Luna, firstly published in Mercedes Sosa's album "Mujeres argentinas" from 1969, the version I selected here. This piece is an aural and poetic manifestation of a Self as a dramatic ensamble in where deliverances of memory are trapped, piecemeal and disordered (even when trying to remember a temporally extended sequence of biographical events).

The image of this track displays a visual piece I did as a metaphor of this compositional process, that involves fragmentation, fragility, multiplicity & movement, death & rebirth, and beauty. In this visual piece, I sutured together petals into a delicate small fabric in where they linger between life and death and are so vulnerable that they tear if touched. Fragility becomes the essence of the work as I sought to create an image that is immaterial. But also, the idea of trying to preserve these petals and suture them into a delicate fabric is also the will of preserving memory; to bring them together and unite them and recover the force of my own episodic memory.- Photo credit: Cristina Saulcedo.

EPISODIC SELF (2019)

"s) one l" is a Solo Soprano/Dancer piece that premiers in "Escuela Superior de Canto de Madrid" on February 2020.

Inspired by "l(a" poem by E. E. Cummings, this work explores the separation of prosody from the text while exploring it sonically rather than syntactically. The soprano performer-dancer plays around the states of "onliness"-"loneliness", freedom and constriction, text and its deconstruction as a source of imagery and sound re-construction for a re-poetization of words through their transformation into an imaginary musical protolanguage.

"s) one l" - For Solo Soprano/Dancer (2020)

Ariadna Sáenz

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