Deploração (2020) - Lament for two guitars

New Music by Karlheinz Essl

Deploração was written in autumn 2020 for the concert project "Lamenti" by the newly founded guitar duo santorsa~pereyra. It was premiered on Mar 26th, 2021 at "Schwere Reiter" in Munich. The piece is not a duo in the conventional sense. The instruments neither engage in a musical dialogue nor accompany each other. Instead, the two guitars together form a meta-instrument. On it, two musicians play a solo piece together as a collective mourning work. One guitarist performs only bottleneck glissandi with the right hand (the left is used solely for muting). The other plucks only the low E string in a wide variety of sound colors and articulations. The idea of lament is transformed into musical gestures. "Always rolling the same stone up the same mountain" (Heiner Müller) - a truly Sisyphean task! The continual ascent and descent take place with relentless rigor. As if the screw of pain and sorrow is being turned tighter and tighter - until the lament and its sound finally die away. More info and score for download: https://www.essl.at/works/deploracao.html