Negrón: FONO

Description

Fono, for chorus and electronics, is a piece in four short movements inspired by the "Cartilla Fonética" (phonetic book) used in the initial stages of teaching children the phonetics of the Spanish language. The work explores the nonsensical often-humorous character of the "Cartilla Fonética" by emphasizing the inherent wordplay in the way that syllables, words and short phrases are organized in the book. The piece focuses mostly on the purely aural features of the language as well as the possibilities of creating new meanings through the rearranging of syllables and words in the text. Inspired by the indistinct and fragmented recollections of my own childhood, specifically from the time when I was learning how to read and write, the work also intends to access a distant place and explore the translation process of a personal experience into a massive reflection/expression of the original scenario. The piece was written in 2011 for Cantori NY and commissioned by Music At The Anthology (MATA) for their 2011 Festival of New Music.