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THE EAR IS A LABYRINTH: JULIO ESTRADA SEARCHING FOR THE MINOTAUR
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 December 2020
Abstract
This article explores Julio Estrada's musical thinking in his early and recent works. Estrada's early works precede the development of his graphication method in the 1980s, and his recent works follow the completion of his opera Murmullos del Páramo in 2006. It is his music of these three decades between 1980 and 2006 that is most widely scrutinised – a music centred on the extensive conception and manifestation of sound as a continuum and aided in the creational process by coloured drawings on graph paper – but this article focuses on lesser-known pieces from the 1970s like Melódica and Solo para uno, as well as recent works such as his opera-in-progress, a major project conceived as a book to be read and imagined, rather than performed. It is hoped that close examination of these pieces will significantly broaden the understanding of Estrada's creative drive and lifelong research, revealing how these works entangle with his better-known developments of the sound continuum and graphication method and share common concerns with work from across his career.
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References
1 Velázquez, Rossana Lara (trans. Bevis, David), ‘Memory and Time: The Poetics of Julio Estrada's String Quartets’, Contemporary Music Review, 32/4 (2013), pp. 325–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
2 Conti, Luca, ‘Assez sage, assez sauvage: La musica per archi di Julio Estrada’, Nuova Rivista Musicale Italiana, 1 (2004), pp. 69–100Google Scholar.
3 Sandoval, Carlos, Los Yuunohui: un acercamiento al continuo en la obra de Julio Estrada (Cuernavaca: DGAPA/IIMAS/IIE, 1992)Google Scholar.
4 Pierre Boulez, David Noakes and Paul Jacobs, ‘Sonate, Que me Veux-tu?’ Perspectives of New Music, 1/2 (1963), pp. 32–44.
5 Quoted in Grace Eckley, ‘James Joyce’, Contemporary Literature, 16/4 (1975), pp. 504–15.
6 Argentine writers Jorge Luis Borges and Julio Cortazar provided new well-known takes on the Greek myth, the former in his short story La casa de Asterión and the latter in Los Reyes.
7 Boulez, Noakes and Jacobs, ‘Sonate, Que me Veux-tu?.
8 Julio Estrada, ‘Nombrar la escucha’, unpublished article, 2020.
9 Translations of cited passages from ‘Nombrar la escucha’ in this article are by its author.
10 Carlos Sandoval, ‘Entrevista a Julio Estrada’, Heterofonía, 108 (1993), p. 1. In an email to the author Estrada has added that ‘or also, around the same time, I used to hear the sound of the wind against the walls of the building in which we lived and that revealed to me dramatic qualities identical to those of humans’.
11 Combinatoriality of pitch groups was theorised in ‘Music and Finite Group Theory (3 Boolean Variables)’ by Julio Estrada and Jorge Gil. Melódica was the first application of that theory, in this case, to a pedagogical process.
12 McHard, James, Julio Estrada: Memories and Shadows in the Imaginary, a Biography (Livonia, MI: Iconic Press, 2017)Google Scholar.
13 Julio Estrada, Melódica (preface), Juliusedimus, 2019, www.elcompositorhabla.com/corps/elcompositorhabla/data/resources/file/documentos/CATALOGUE%203-2014%20JULIUSEDIMUS.pdf.
14 Along with Velia Nieto's doctoral dissertation ‘Recherche-création dans l'oeuvre de Julio Estrada’ (PhD diss., University of Paris, 1999), McHard, Julio Estrada, is the only existing book entirely dedicated to Estrada.
15 The Mexican writer, screenwriter and photographer Juan Rulfo (1917–1986) published his only novel, Pedro Páramo, in 1955. In the novel the main character, Juan Preciado, travels to the town of Comala, only to discover that all its inhabitants are dead. Estrada was captivated by Rulfo's descriptions of sound, and, in response to the novel, has composed an opera, Murmullos del Páramo (1992–2006), a book, El sonido en Rulfo: “el ruido ese” (1990), and numerous articles.
16 Julio Estrada, ‘Re: Oreja’, email, 2019.
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20 Pauline Oliveros, Meditation V, Sonic Meditations, 1971 (Baltimore: Smith Publications, 1974), p. 9.
21 Pauline Oliveros, Introduction I, Sonic Meditations, p. 2.
22 Julio Estrada, Solo para uno, introduction.
23 Julio Estrada. ‘Re: Oreja’, email, 2019.
24 Julio Estrada, ‘Re: TEXTO’, email, 2019. Also cited by McHard, Julio Estrada, p. 48.
25 The Spanish reads: ‘Déjame, citarista. No podrías darme más que música, y en mi resto de vida crece como el viento un reclamo de silencio’ (my translation).
26 Cronopios, along with Famas, are imaginary beings in Julio Cortázar's book Cronopios and Famas. The former are rebellious and dreamy characters, reluctant to follow the orderly and rigid lifestyle of the latter. In the writer's words, in an interview for TVE (1977), ‘Cronopios are like the asocial poets at the margins of society, while Famas are like the bank CEOs, the presidents, the formal people who defend a certain order, etc.’
27 This piece is dedicated to his son Julián, for whom Estrada created the piece to teach him music in a playful way.