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Revised in 2002.
Movements:
Grave
Agitato
Sostenuto
Adagio con gravita
PREMIERE May 29, 1996
8th Festival Days of Music of the Cracow Composers,
Aula Florianka, Krakow, Poland
String Quartet:
Marcin Król, violin
Justyna Zinkiewicz, violin
Michał Woźniak
Marzena Polańska, cello
Vocal Ensemble:
Olga Szwajgier
Anna Niedźwiedź
Iwona Wojtycza
Izabella Gruszka
Krystyna Gierłowska-Sych
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Il Fonte Adamantino was inspired by vocal improvisations I heard in 1996 at Olga Szwajgier's experimental vocal school Voice Laboratory in Krakow, Poland. It is a somehow postmodern landscape, enclosed in the frames of a classical 4-movement form.
This strict formal construction is counterbalanced by two extensive vocal improvisations in the first and the last movements of the piece. The improvised section in the first movement resembles a quasi-meditation and co-exists harmoniously with the instrumental part. A similar improvisation in the last movement of the piece has a completely different character: the first entrance of the vocal ensemble appears as a sudden explosion of a pure emotion, after which it gradually turns into a lamentation.
A timbral quality of all the improvised sections is almost pre-esthetical: singers are asked to forget about their music education (as much as humanly possible) and focus exclusively on the expressive aspect of performance. Each of the improvising singers becomes for a while an artist of one sound, a creator of this one unique musical event.
Non-improvised parts (such as duets in the first and third movements) create a direct dialogue with the instrumental part.
One of the most significant elements of the architecture of Il Fonte Adamantino is space - both in a physical and metaphorical sense. A string quartet performs on stage, while a vocal ensemble should be located either on a gallery above the stage or at least on the opposite side of a concert hall. Both ensembles share and shape the metaphorical space of the piece as a harmonious co-existence of contradictions.
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