De la légèreté

The French philosopher and sociologist Gilles Lipovetsky in his recent essay "De la légèreté" [Of lightness] (2016) -which gives a homonymous title to the musical work- describes the idea of lightness as the dominant trend in the spirit of today's society, as the sign of our time. This is imposed as a relief from the heaviness of the private burdens of life in favor of a lighter and happier existence, giving priority to a hedonistic approach that materializes in the devaluation of ideals such as effort or the complex, which are replaced by the frivolous, fickle, simple, disposable, ephemeral..., which is manifested in large part of the aspects of the western world (morals, personal relationships, consumption, body, fashion...) consolidating a civilization of the light. Paradoxically, this frivolous lightness again becomes a heavy burden when hypermodern society makes its exhausting search a new imperative longing and a new obsessive need, constantly falling into an ironic vicious circle fueled by a continuous tension between light and heavy, which is about finding a necessary solution: the intensity and balance with which each of these extremes is lived.

The musical work takes these concepts of lightness/heaviness to be conceived soundly through a permanent reflection between these antagonistic ideas, which are transmuted into their timbral, textural, density, gestural parameters, etc. digressing in their discourse between volatile and the blunt, between the purity of the harmonic and the sound tear.

Commissioned by the II Festival of Current Music, I ARA QUÈ? 2017 of the Ateneu Cultural Ciutat de Manises (València, Spain).