Inteuoan Catca |
Flute
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I began writing Inteuoan Catca[1] in the summer of 2015. The first movement Quetzalcoatl, the Feathered Serpent was intended for a contest I entered that year. After I began my master’s in composition I was encouraged by my professor and couple of friends to expand this piece into a suite for flute. As a result, Inteuoan Catca was created.
Inteuoan catca is a phrase from the Nahuatl language, spoke by the Aztec people before the Spanish invasion, meaning “their former gods,” which I ran across during my research on a University of Oregon’s Wired Humanities Project. Each movement in this piece is named after a god from the Aztec pantheon. Movement one is titled Quetzalcoatl, the Feathered Serpent. Quetzalcoatl is probably the most famous of the deities in this set and is often depicted as a feathered serpent winding his way through the jungles of South America. This piece starts out with a series of slow repeated notes that gradually get faster and slows again. This is followed by quick sections that is built on a pentatonic scale. These runs are used to insinuate Quetzalcoatl’s bird like nature. Several series of runs the performer uses a technique called Flatterzung (German for Flutter Tongue), which gives the melody rattle like quality, which is used to depict this hissing of a snake. This is then followed by a return to the fast scale-like passage. Itzpapalotl, the Obsidian Butterfly is a goddess of death associated with infant mortality. She is often depicted as a butterfly with claws made of obsidian. She is the leader of a band of malevolent women who died during child birth. This piece is built using the Minor-Major Seventh Chord. This chord is often used in Jazz. The chord has an uneasy quality which makes it great for this piece. The piece is juxtaposed between fast passages in triple meter and slower more meandering sections in duple meter. Tlaloc, is the God of Storms, uses a lot of extended techniques for the flute to create the caricature of this deity. The piece opens with the wind blowing, which is depicted by the performer blowing through the instrument without producing a standard tone which is followed by key clicks used to depict the beginning of rain fall. Atalacoya, Lady of Barren Lands is the goddess of drought. This slow piece is marked Largo in modo scarno, which translates to “Slow and solemn in a gaunt like manner.” The piece incorporates the use of multiphonics, a technique where the flute sounds more than one pitch at a time. These are used to create a eerie repressive feeling. The Final piece in this set Xiuhtecuhtli, Lord of Fire is a fast-paced chromatic piece that uses trills and runs to depict the turning and crackling of fire. I would like to thank Emily Eubanks for all of her help on this piece. Without her insight, and encouragement this piece would have never come to be. Inteuoan Catca is dedicated to her. [1] (central Mexico, sixteenth century) [Source: James Lockhart, We People Here: Nahuatl Accounts of the Conquest of Mexico, Repertorium Columbianum v. 1 (Los Angeles: UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 1993), 214.] http://whp.uoregon.edu/dictionaries/nahuatl/index.lasso PerformancesQuetzalcoatl, The Feathered Serpent was premiered in 2015 by Emily Eubanks at Oklahoma City University during a Project 21 Concert.
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