CD #0040 Maria de Alvear : MAGNA MATER

MAGNA MATER for voices, ensemble and video installation (2013) is one of Maria de Alvears most important recent works. It constitutes a ritualistic invocation of all-nourishing Mother Nature. Sounds, words and images evoke her power and wisdom, the destructive power of earthquake, asteroid impact, drought and firestorm, and the life-giving elements of soil, sun, water, air, sky, clouds, rain.
In this decidedly visceral music, Maria de Alvear explores archetypal human characteristics that have been partly suppressed, brought into neglect or forgotten as a result of civilisation, rationalisation, industrialisation, digitisation. Her work is part of a global change in thinking that, after the strict constructivism of the post-war serialist avant-garde, first became apparent in the Fluxus, hippie and Flower Power movements of the 1960s and later manifested itself in New Age, overtone singing, minimalism, spectralism, Japanism, Feldmanism etc. The Spanish-German composer rediscovers the structures and qualities of ritual, cult and spirituality in and through music.
De Alvear's cosmogony of Mother Earth is based on musical archetypes: overtone fanfares, gestures of awakening, states of excitation, driving crescendos, simple children's melodies, minimalistic patterns, static fields and pulsating repetitions, sometimes fast and exuberant, sometimes forcefully stamping with a direct physical effect.
(Rainer Nonnenmann)

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