Javier Alejandro Garavaglia

Arte Poética (II. Stanza) for quadraphonic tape (1995)

Genre: Acousmatic Music

Duration: 11:00

Arte Poética (II. Stanza) is based on the second stanza of the poem Arte Poética by the Argentinean poet Jorge Luis Borges. The purpose of the work is to describe musically what is said in these 4 verses, here free translated from the original Spanish:

To feel that the vigil is another dream,

That dreams that it doesn't dream and that the death

Which our flesh is afraid of, is the death

Of every night, which is called dream.

In the original, Borges makes a constant use of the alliteration of the letters "s" and "ñ" in the words "sueño" (dream), "soñar" (to dream) "sentir" (to feel), "sueña" (dreams). For this electroacoustic piece, these letters were taken away from the spoken text (digitally recorded with the composer's voice) and were treated in many ways such as transpositions, filters, frequency modulations, convolution, etc. The whole spoken text was also used in the same way, combined with the letters (convolution of both), or frequency modulated with normal sine tones. The work is the second of a series of 3, all based in the poem.

The work was completely produced and composed at the ICEM of the Folkwang-Hochschule ESSEN (Germany) using Csound and SoundHack 0.7 by Tom Erbe. It was mixed with Sound Designer II and ProTools 2.0.

The piece got a mention award from the „Tribuna Nacional de Música Electroacústica „ in Argentina.