For chamber orchestra
Ex lex is divided into five movements, in which the first and the second as well as the fourth and the fifth are linked. It was composed during 2011 and part of 2012 and it is commissioned by the Ensemble Contrechamps of Ginebra, which specializes in music from the XX and XXI century.
The title, in latin, from the law, about the law.
This work deals with the questions of law or acts that condition in a tangible or underlying way the whole of human activity (through the modest and ephemeral particular case of a musical composition.)
There are many points in which we could lean in order to support a position or to establish the affiliations concerning the artistic positioning in relation to the law. One of them has particularly motivated this work and it is, in fact, a bifurcation of the literal sense of the title of the work that regards what escapes the law or what is outside the law.
I always conceive musical matter in terms of actions, of willpower; these desires expressed by the ones and the others (the musicians) constitute a weave, a net of vital energies (a counterpoint, it could be said) that is in constant movement.
My usual way of composing naturally leads me to a path of writing in which impulse and phrasing constitute a central point. However, there is a second, more secret, concern that tries to restore the balance between this primary impulse and the elaboration of a precise and minute construction in the harmonic work, in the chord and scale choice, in the orchestration and, finally, in the estructuralization of playwriting in the form of music.
That first impulse is comfortable for me, one could say that it is given. Whereas I have to acquire the second circle, the one of thought and elaboration, in each composition (because it is for me a unique being, an untravelled path.) In this way I establish, for the construction of each of my works, an ensemble of observations that build a kind law corpus.
This work implicate, in my case, a dilated time of doubt and reflection, during which I feel like a builder rather than a composer.
While navigating between these two springs, the work slowly appears, between laws of matter and those laws that I have deduced or that I have imposed on myself.
From this alternance that “Ex” (I would almost say “Extra Lex”) emerges, which is in the title of the work.
Therefore, it could be said that the nucleus of this work -its personal stamp or style- revolve around laws and their transgression. That unattainable world that is located between a forged frame, matter and the way our. What is unexpected, that spark that begins the movement of the imaginary and that spreads it into the deepest of the structure of the work.
The performing musicians are, in their own way, actors in this secret theatre.
Luis Naón
Ensemble Contrechamps
Michaël Wandeberg, direction.
Ex Lex I et II
Ex Lex III
Ex Lex IV et V
