Arioso for alto recorder and live electronics [videorecording]

Performed by Lisa Chaufty (recorder) and Miguel Chuaqui (composer) as part of the Sundays@7 concert series, School of Music, The University of Utah. Program Notes from Miguel Chuaqui, the composer: Arioso is a style of singing between the recitative and aria that arose in the 16th century. The form is usually free, and it tends to include frequent tempo changes. The piece is inspired by a print from a picture of a captive unicorn from "The Hunt of the Unicorn," a tapestry from the early 16th century. The soloist represents the unicorn, and its captivity is represented by the harmonies that surround it, especially in the recurring slow sections of the piece. These alternate with more lyrical yearning types of gestures and with fast music in which the unicorn attempts to escape from the harmonies, sometimes more successfully than others. At the end the only possible release is a disembodied sort of dream-­‐like escape. The work uses live electronics created by a Max patch that receives the audio from the soloist and tracks the pitches played by the soloist. It transposes these pitches to create successions of harmonies and other transformations of the soloist's musical material. These transformations are intended to blur the distinction between harmony and timbre, further emphasizing the imprisonment in which the recorder finds itself.