Towards dreamed paths. An analysis of Audéeis by Mauricio Sotelo – First part

La música se lee en el agua¹
Les rêves de l’eau qui songe ²

Wednesday, October 27, 2004
“At the National Auditorium of Music in Madrid, the Artemis Quartett, together with cantaor Arcángel, performed for the first time Audéeis, a work commissioned by the Caja Madrid Foundation for the XIII Liceo de Cámara 2004-2005, in co-production with BBC Radio 3 London.”³

As if it were an entry in a traveler’s diary, or a footprint along the artistic path of the author we are dealing with, Mauricio Sotelo (1961), the information just transcribed places us before the sea we are about to contemplate.
The approach to Sotelo’s aesthetics and artistic thought, along with the metaphors that help weave this analysis, will rely primarily on one of the pillars proposed by Jan LaRue (1918-2004) in his Guidelines for Style Analysis,⁴ specifically in the second edition of 1991, where textual influence is addressed. The texts used by the Madrid-born composer in his work—sung, technical, or rhetorical—will thus serve as guides to trace points of departure and return, to “unmoor/moor” the examined work-object.
To delineate the vast body of water before us, this analysis will focus mainly on the use of vocality⁵, since, as the composer himself states, Audéeis is the cantaor version of his second string quartet Artemis, dedicated to the eponymous quartet and completed in the same year.⁶
Nevertheless, before setting sail towards the chosen work, I find it necessary to introduce or at least hint at the vast sonic ocean of our author. To this end, I have referred to his written production: Luigi Nono o “el dominio de los infiniti possibili”⁷, Memoria, signo y canto de la escritura interior,⁸ or Memoriæ⁹; the distilled information from interviews conducted by Camilo Irizo, Carlos Rojo Díaz, and Ruth Prieto; as well as academic texts focused on the composer, among which I highlight the studies of Germán Gan Quesada, Pedro Ordoñez Eslava, and Iluminada Pérez Frutos. Lastly, being aware of the difficulties implied by the path I am about to navigate, I cling to the words of Jan LaRue: “Stylistic analysis seeks to discover more of the individuality of a work or a composer than the conventional.”¹⁰
Let us therefore attempt, throughout this voyage, to find the individualities presented to us by Audéeis.

Thursday, May 24, 1979
“WRITING is like the secretion of resins; it is not an act, but a slow natural formation. Moss, humidity, clay, silt—phenomena from the depths, and not from dreams or dreaming, but from the dark sludge where the figures of dreams ferment. Writing is not doing, but establishing, being.”¹¹

I. THE DEPTHS OF THE SONIC OCEAN

Mauricio Sotelo’s music, though born of great imagination and at times possessing a strong dreamlike component¹², could be considered the result of the slow fermentation of these dreams. Slightly modifying the words of José Ángel Valente (1929-2000), a poet greatly admired by Sotelo, his COMPOSITION is like “the secretion of resins.” This slow fermentation is nurtured by a fertile seabed in which we find a series of constants, artistic references present throughout his musical production: Luigi Nono (1924-1990), Enrique Morente (1942-2010), and José Ángel Valente.¹³ As in other of his works, these three figures were fundamental in the composition of Audéeis. Let us briefly recall how he came to know them before delving into his sonic ocean.

After an initial period in Madrid, Sotelo moved to Vienna to continue his musical studies. It was in the Austrian capital, towards the end of this phase, that he met the Venetian composer.¹⁴ Following this first encounter, Luigi Nono had a decisive influence on Sotelo’s creative approach, an influence that still persists today.¹⁵ In his essay dedicated to Nono’s infinite possibilities, the Madrid composer highlights the importance of the ongoing conversations he had with his mentor during the last years of Nono’s life:

During our long conversations at the Wissenschaftskolleg apartment in Berlin, Nono emphasized matters that fundamentally revolved around the chant of the Jewish tradition. Naturally, he was interested in aspects such as sound quality and the way it was modulated through refined oscillations, vibratos, quasi-glissandi, etc., but above all, he reflected on what we might call the “vocal-space” of the chant, as well as the concept of Listening.¹⁶

The ‘vocality’ and Listening that captivated Nono’s attention have become fundamental elements of Sotelo’s musical thought, as has the ‘necessity of risk,’ which, in the composer’s own words, means “the need to avoid secure formal structures. This is what amazes us about Nono’s music, and it is one of the legacies of his thinking.”¹⁷ As a result of this heritage and as a form of gratitude, many of Sotelo’s compositions reference Nono, some of which are dedicated to his memory, such as Cripta – Música para Luigi Nono¹⁸ or Sonetos del amor oscuro – Cripta sonora para Luigi Nono.¹⁹
As Sotelo himself states, it was also his mentor who “strongly advised him to study Andalusian cante jondo as a sign of a unique architecture of memory,”²⁰ advice that led to a decisive shift in his musical production upon his return to Spain after his years in Vienna:

[…] Upon my return to Spain in June 1992, I sought Enrique Morente’s participation in my Responsorios de Tinieblas, and that is where a path began that has led to my most recent compositions and has truly made me a flamenco musician.²¹

The ‘path’ to which he refers, as Pedro Ordóñez Eslava observes, was the exploration and study of the musical possibilities of the flamenco voice through spectral analysis.²² Sotelo does not merely incorporate a popular tradition into his music but reworks it respectfully through thorough study, allowing it to ferment slowly to become part of his own sonic ocean. Specifically, and as we will see later, the spectral study of Enrique Morente’s cante has been and continues to be fundamental in Sotelo’s work.²³
In addition to his exposure to flamenco through Morente, it was during these same years following his return from Vienna that Sotelo came into contact with the poet José Ángel Valente, whose poetry, as José Ramón Ripoll states, “is the link and pretext for some of his works.”²⁴ Although Sotelo had discovered Valente’s poetic voice while still in Vienna, he recounts how that first encounter with the poet took place once he was back in Spain:

The first contact occurred in 1993 and was over the phone: after a few long initial minutes with barely two words exchanged, Valente, enthusiastic, stated that finally, a musician perceived in his poetry a sonic vibration. We then spoke about the fundamentally musical nature of his poetry, about Listening, Memory, and Giordano Bruno.²⁵

As with Nono, in those years, Listening and Memory were already fundamental and persistent themes in Sotelo’s thinking and the artistic connections he was fostering. And, as Morente would say, “it is much more difficult to learn to listen than to learn to sing,”²⁶ or in this case, “than to learn to compose.”
As we will see later, Audéeis merges poems by José Ángel Valente—alongside popular flamenco texts—transcriptions of Enrique Morente’s voice—reworked on a spectral and timbral level—as well as more or less explicit references to the thought and music of Luigi Nono. To fully grasp the composition of Audéeis, it is also necessary to consider the works that preceded it because, like ‘sonic sisters,’ they were nurtured in the same waters during the early years of the new millennium. The most significant piece in this ensemble, as previously mentioned, is Artemis,²⁷ the second string quartet in which the ensemble acts as an “imagined flamenco voice,” a voice that materializes in the figure of the cantaor in Audéeis.²⁸ Additionally, the solo violin piece written in 2003, Estremecido por el viento,²⁹ and the first string quartet from 2001, Degli eroici furori,³⁰ already presented some of the materials that were revisited in the waters of Audéeis (2004). Finally, Chalan,³¹ an orchestral piece completed in 2003 and conceived by Sotelo as the ‘diary of a traveler,’ had already delved into Indian music and “reflected the mark of the long journey of work undertaken [by Sotelo] with the Indian tabla master Trilok Gurtu.”³² As we will observe later, some fragments of this work appear reworked—fermented—in Artemis, subsequently continuing into our subject of study, Audéeis.

Tuesday, August 31, 2004
“The formal space or even the poetic journey would be that of the trajectory from the ‘breath’ or the formless—that which is not yet created—with marine resonances: the rustling of the air or the ‘breath’ of the waves (as Alberti [sic.] said, Mar: cielo inmenso caído de los cielos), towards a tremendous voice or moan-like song, cry, or Quejío, which then turns into a rapid, stony rhythm (un rêve de pierre) and from there again to the resonance of what was once a vibrant voice, to the impulse, the breath, the silence, the openness (ins freie…), the openness to the possible. A second version of this work is the one that includes the voice of a cantaor, and its title is Audéeis.”³³

II. CONTEMPLATION OF WATER

This new ‘diary fragment’³⁴ before us refers to the string quartet Artemis, but as Sotelo himself indicates, it could be extrapolated to its later version, with some distinctions: in Audéeis, the rhythmic section and “the resonance of what was once a vibrant voice” now include, as happens in other sections of this version with cantaor, an actual human voice. It is significant how the ‘formal space’ here equates to a “poetic journey,” reinforcing the idea of the work as a traveler’s diary, or in this case, perhaps the diary of multiple poets. Poets in the plural, because if we thoroughly analyze the words Sotelo uses to present his work, we can appreciate how they have been carefully chosen to constitute a poetic journey through which the piece flows, a poetic path containing references to various poets, most of them close to the Madrid composer. This is, therefore, a statement of intent; let us unpack it to contextualize Sotelo’s words and clarify the presentation of his piece.

After the introductory section referring to the “formless,” to “that which has not yet been created,” the maritime verses attributed to Rafael Alberti actually seem to belong to another Andalusian poet, his contemporary Juan Ramón Jiménez, who in his Diario de un poeta recién casado³⁵ wrote: “¡Oh mar, cielo rebelde | caído de los cielos!”³⁶ Notably, while these verses appear in Artemis’ presentation, they are absent from the musical score until their later inclusion in Audéeis. Furthermore, they are accompanied by the French notation “La Mer,” which was also absent from the first version, an annotation that may connect to Paul Valéry’s verses: “La mer, la mer, toujours recommencée”³⁷—cited by Sotelo on another occasion—since it appears precisely at a moment in which marine material is repeated, ‘restarting’ up to seven times.³⁸
Later, when Sotelo refers to the grito or Quejío,³⁹ he does so by alluding to the verses of Renaissance poet Fernando de Herrera: “Voz de dolor y canto de gemido, | espíritu de miedo envuelto en ira.” The link between these verses and the Madrid composer has already been observed by Francisco J. Escobar.⁴⁰ The next step in our poetic journey undoubtedly leads us to Les Fleurs du Mal by Charles Baudelaire, specifically his poem La Beauté, which begins with the line: “Je suis belle, ô mortels! comme un rêve de pierre.”⁴¹ Finally, Sotelo directs us toward the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke through the German annotation ins freie….⁴² In this case, it is a citation from Massimo Cacciari—a Venetian philosopher and friend of Luigi Nono⁴³—who states: “Drinking from Mnemosyne’s fountain, we ‘explode’, ins Freie, into the Free, into the Open.”⁴⁴ Sotelo adapts this to ‘close’ with an allusion to the verses of his esteemed José Ángel Valente: “[…] Abierto | está mi ser a lo posible.”⁴⁵Alberti (Juan Ramón Jiménez), Valéry, de Herrera, Baudelaire, Rilke linked to Cacciari (in turn to Nono), as well as Valente: we find ourselves before the poetic journey through which the water flows, in which Sotelo claims to read music—the ‘formal space’ in which the poetics that enabled the fermentation and creation of Audéeis converge.

Granada, June 2011
“At this point, I will delve into the close personal and artistic relationship maintained by the Madrid composer with lyrical creation, and more specifically, with the poet José Ángel Valente. This reference constitutes an essential pillar in the construction of Sotelo’s theoretical and aesthetic framework, rooted in a domain shared by both creators—a domain in which silence, oral tradition, flamenco, and memory are always horizons toward which to direct one’s gaze.”⁴⁶

[continue…]

1. 1. MAURICIO SOTELO, ‘Soy compositor, pero ante todo soy flamenco’, EUROPAPRESS [online], 2011. “Flamenco is an oral tradition. It is not that it does not know writing, but rather that it knows a different kind of writing—the mind. Music is read in water. My line of research has consisted in gathering these codes and transcribing them into a score. Everything comes from experience; the score would be like the journey of a traveler. Everything is perfectly measured. A bulería or a soleá is measured in twelve beats. We place the hendecasyllables in their place. We have worked a lot on these aspects with the text. We all move in clave flamenca, to maintain freshness. Here, we are all flamencos.” [Author’s translation]. ↩︎
2. 2. GASTON BACHELARD, L’eau et les rêves (1942), Paris, José Corti, 1968. Cited [as a paraphrase] in JULIO CORTÁZAR, Rayuela (1963), Madrid, Ediciones Cátedra, 2000, p. 334 [chapter 31]. ↩︎
3. 3. MAURICIO SOTELO, Audéeis, UE 32 962, Vienna, Universal Edition, 2004. “National Auditorium of Music in Madrid, Artemis Quartett, together with cantaor Arcángel, premiered Audéeis, commissioned by the Caja Madrid Foundation for the XIII Liceo de Cámara 2004-2005, in co-production with BBC Radio 3 London.” [Author’s translation]. ↩︎
4. 4. JAN LARUE, Guidelines for Style Analysis (1970), Michigan, Harmonie Park Press, Expanded Edition, 2011. ↩︎
5. 5. “The quality of singing, as a way of treating the human voice, in composition and musical practice,” in Treccani [online] https://www.treccani.it/vocabolario/vocalita/ [last accessed: January 15, 2025]. ↩︎
6. 6. MAURICIO SOTELO, ‘Memoriæ’, Cuadernos de la Huerta de San Vicente, no. 1, 2001, p. 58. ↩︎
7. 7. MAURICIO SOTELO, ‘Luigi Nono o el dominio de los infiniti possibili’, Quodlibet: revista de especialización musical, no. 7, 1997, pp. 22-31. ↩︎
8. 8. MAURICIO SOTELO, ‘Memoria, signo y canto: de la escritura interior’, Y las palabras ya vienen cantando. Texto y música en el intercambio hispano-alemán, no. 69, Biblioteca Ibero-Americana, 1999, pp. 135-159. ↩︎
9. 9.SOTELO, ‘Memoriæ’, op. cit. ↩︎
10. 10. LARUE, ‘Guidelines for style analysis’, op. cit., p. 16 ↩︎
11. 11. JOSÉ ÁNGEL VALENTE, Antología poética, Madrid, Alianza editorial, 2014. Frammento tratto dalla raccolta di poesie ‘Mandorla’ di 1982. «ESCRIBIR es como la segregación de las resinas; no es acto, sino lenta formación natural. Musgo, humedad, arcillas, limo, fenómenos del fondo, y no del sueño o de los sueños, sino de los barros oscuros donde las figuras de los sueños fermentan. Escribir no es hacer, sino
    aposentarse, estar» ↩︎
12. 12. RUTH PRIETO, Interview with Mauricio Sotelo: “He mirado en todo momento de frente”, El Compositor habla [online], 2015. Sotelo adds: «I would say, then, that the nature of my music is essentially dreamlike: ‘root of the air’» [TdA]. ↩︎
13. 13. Among many others, although Nono, Morente, and Valente are the most significant for the study of Audéeis. The lasting influence of Federico García Lorca’s poetry should also be highlighted, or, in works produced after Audéeis, the figure of painter Sean Scully. Two examples: Wall of Light Black and Wall of Light Sky, both composed in 2006 [published by Universal Edition]. ↩︎
14. 14. PEDRO ORDÓÑEZ ESLAVA, La creación musical de Mauricio Sotelo y José María Sánchez-Verdú: Convergencia interdisciplinar a comienzos del siglo XXI, Department of History and Music Sciences, University of Granada, Doctoral Thesis, 2011, p. 108. ↩︎
15. 15. Ibid., p. 108. ↩︎
16. 16. SOTELO, Luigi Nono o el…, op. cit., p. 24. «In the long conversations that took place between us in the apartment at the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin, Nono particularly emphasized those that revolved around singing in the Hebrew tradition. He was, of course, interested in aspects such as sound quality and how it was modulated through refined oscillations, vibrati, quasi-glissandi, etc., but above all, he reflected on something we might call the ‘vocal space’ of singing, as well as on the concept of Listening» [TdA]. ↩︎
17. 17. ENRIQUE MOYA & MAURICIO SOTELO, Mauricio Sotelo, la necesidad del riesgo, Scherzo magazine, no. 53, April 1991, pp. 111-113. Cit. in ORDÓÑEZ ESLAVA, La creación musical de Mauricio…, op. cit., p. 109. «The need not to rely on secure formal structures. That is what is so marvelous about Nono’s music, and it is one of the legacies of his thought» [TdA]. ↩︎
18. 18. MAURICIO SOTELO, Cripta. Música para Luigi Nono, UE 34 573, Vienna, Universal Edition, 2004-2008. In the musical production of the Madrid-based composer, we find other ‘crypts’ as tributes: to the Spanish composer Manuel de Falla (2010-2012), as well as to Colonia Güell (2010), the latter linked to the Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí, who sparked Luigi Nono’s artistic interest in his later years (see SOTELO, Luigi Nono…, op. cit., pp. 29-30). ↩︎
19. 19. MAURICIO SOTELO, Sonetos del amor oscuro — Cripta sonora para Luigi Nono, UE 33 442, Vienna, Universal Edition, 2004. The title refers to the poetry of Granada-born poet Federico García Lorca, whose poetics are fundamental in the Madrid composer’s musical output. ↩︎
20. 20. MAURICIO SOTELO, Sonetos del amor oscuro Cripta sonora para Luigi Nono, General Program, LIV International Festival of Music and Dance of Granada, Granada, 2005, p. 8. Cit. in ORDÓÑEZ ESLAVA, La creación musical de Mauricio…, op. cit., p. 109. «He strongly recommended the study of cante jondo from Andalusia as an example of a singular architecture of memory» [TdA]. ↩︎
21. 21. CAMILO IRIZO, Interview with Mauricio Sotelo, Espacio Sonoro, no. 15, 2008, p. 7 [from the PDF]. «[…] When I returned to Spain in June 1992, I requested Enrique Morente’s participation in my Responsorios de Tinieblas, and that marked the beginning of a journey that continues to my most recent compositions and has truly made me a flamenco musician» [TdA]. ↩︎
22. 22. ORDÓÑEZ ESLAVA, La creación musical de Mauricio…, op. cit., pp. 122-123, p. 194, and p. 222. ↩︎
23. 23. See the section of this analysis focused on melody ↩︎
24. 24. JOSÉ RAMÓN RIPOLL, Mauricio Sotelo, el flamenco y Valente, Centro Virtual Cervantes [online], 2009, https://cvc.cervantes.es/el_rinconete/anteriores/diciembre_09/16122009_02.htm [last accessed: January 15, 2025]. «It is both a link and a pretext for several of his works» [TdA]. ↩︎
25. 25. MAURICIO SOTELO, Se oye tan solo una infinita escucha, Mauricio Sotelo, Si después de morir… In memoriam José Ángel Valente, text from the recording, Madrid, Círculo de Lectores, 2003, pp. 9-11, p. 10. Cit. in ORDÓÑEZ ESLAVA, La creación musical de Mauricio…, op. cit., p. 110. «The first contact took place in 1993 and was by telephone: after an extremely long few minutes with barely two words exchanged, Valente, excited, said that finally a musician perceived a sonic vibration in his poetry. We then spoke about the fundamentally musical nature of his poetry, about Listening, Memory, and Giordano Bruno» [TdA]. ↩︎
26. 26. IRIZO, Interview with Mauricio…, op. cit., p. 1 [from the PDF]. «It is much more difficult to learn to listen than to learn to sing» [TdA]. Sotelo alludes to «that ‘very ancient truth’ that Enrique Morente humbly reminded us of upon receiving the National Music Prize in 1994» [TdA]. ↩︎
27. 27. MAURICIO SOTELO, Artemis, UE 32 960, Vienna, Universal Edition, 2004. ↩︎
28. 28. SOTELO, ‘Memoriæ’, op. cit. «imaginada voz flamenca» ↩︎
29. 29. MAURICIO SOTELO, Estremecido por el viento, UE 32 614, Vienna, Universal Edition, 2003. ↩︎
30. 30. MAURICIO SOTELO, Degli Eroici Furori, UE 31 995, Vienna, Universal Edition, 2001-2002. ↩︎
31. 31. MAURICIO SOTELO, Chalan, UE 32 912, Vienna, Universal Edition, 2003. ↩︎
32. 32. ANDREAS GÜNTHER, Chalan (Work introduction), Mauricio Sotelo. Universal Edition [online]. «refleja la huella del largo camino de trabajo recorrido [por Sotelo] junto al maestro de tabla hindú Trilok Gurtu» [TdA]. ↩︎
33. 33. SOTELO, ‘Memoriæ’, op. cit. «El espacio-formal o, incluso, recorrido poético, sería el del trayecto desde el ‘hálito’ o lo informe –lo no creado todavía– con resonancias marinas: rumor del aire o del ‘respirar’ de las olas (como dijera Alberti [sic.], Mar: cielo inmenso caído de los cielos), hacia una tremenda voz o canto de gemido, grito o Quejío, que más tarde se convertirá en rápido ritmo pétreo (un rêve de pierre) y de ahí de nuevo en resonancia de lo que fue una vibrante voz, en impulso, en soplo, en silencio, en lo abierto (ins freie…), en lo abierto a lo posible. Una segunda versión de esta obra es la que incluye la voz de un
    cantaor y su título es Audéeis» [TdA]. ↩︎
34. 34. The various real quotations appearing throughout this analysis are presented as ‘fragments of an always fictional diary.’ ↩︎
35. 35 JUAN RAMÓN JIMÉNEZ, Diario de un poeta recién casado (1916), Madrid, Alianza Editorial, 2007. ↩︎
36. 36. NB: The citation that Sotelo adds in Audéeis modifies one of the original words: “‘La Mer’ cielo inmenso [sic.] caído de los cielos.” ↩︎
37. 37. PAUL VALÉRY, Le Cimetière marin, Paris, Émile-Paul Frères, 1920. ↩︎
38. 38. Cf. SOTELO, ‘Audéeis’, op. cit., p. 5, b. 37. ↩︎
39. 39. Andalusian phonetic distortion of quejido. The term could be translated into English as ‘moan’ or ‘lament.’ ↩︎
40. 40. FRANCISCO J. ESCOBAR, ‘Valente in Sotelo’s Musical Key: Unpublished Fragments for the Opera Bruno o el Teatro de la Memoria (with echoes of Morente)’, Cultura, Lenguaje y Representación, vol. 24, Universidad de Sevilla, 2020, pp. 25–52, p. 37. ↩︎
41. 41. CHARLES BAUDELAIRE, Les Fleurs du mal, Paris, Poulet-Malassis et de Broise, 1857. ↩︎
42. 42. MAURICIO SOTELO, ‘Interview Mauricio Sotelo – Sean Scully’. Mauricio Sotelo, KAIROS Production, 2008, pp. 7-10, p. 7. In response to one of Scully’s questions, Sotelo added: “It is true that music is reborn with every interpretation. Music invites us to navigate within a work. The more powerful a composition is, the more intense the listening experience when revisited. The quality of music, the coherence of composition, projects it strongly into the future …ins freie, as Rilke would say” [TdA]. ↩︎
43. 43. MARINELLA RAMAZZOTTI, ‘Description’, Luigi Nono, Edizione delle opere vol. 1 (Risonanze erranti – Liederzyklus a Massimo Cacciari), Shiiin, 2018, Talea comunicazione [online]. ↩︎
44. 44. MASSIMO CACCIARI, ‘Narciso, o de la pintura’, El dios que baila (2000), Translated by Virginia Gallo, Barcelona, Paidós, 2000, pp. 71-87. Cit. in RAMAZZOTTI, ‘Description’, op. cit ↩︎
45. 45. VALENTE, ‘Antología…’, op. cit. ↩︎
46. 46. ORDÓÑEZ ESLAVA, ‘The Musical Creation of Mauricio…’, op. cit., pp. 106-107. (*) Place and date correspond to those of the doctoral thesis from which the citation is taken. ↩︎

About The Author

David Antúnez

Composer, he studied at the Conservatories of Seville, Oslo, and Milan. Since 2020, he has been developing his artistic research focused on reassessing the role of the performer in musical creation. He is currently pursuing a master’s degree in applied musicology at the University of La Rioja and an artistic doctorate at the Conservatory of Milan.

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