composition: Peer Baierlein
My very special thanks go to:
Špela Mastnak
Sakiko Idei
Hans Rudolf
for their incredible patience in answering all my questions about this instrument and for recording countless videos for me.
'La cabalgata del diablo' is conceived less as a narrative than as a sound object in a constant state of transformation.
Initially defined by clear, motoric structures, it gradually develops into an increasingly organic sound world in which playing techniques overlap, merge and transform, while established structures begin to dissolve.
A central point of reference is the statement attributed to Antoni Gaudí: “The straight line belongs to man, the curved one to God.”
The words themselves appear in the piece and at the same time reflect its underlying trajectory: from the straight to the curved, from constructed order towards something increasingly organic, unpredictable and almost alive.
A further link to Gaudí is musical. Gregorian chant and traditional Catalan song were important musical references for the architect, interests he shared with his friend Lluís Millet, founder of the Orfeó Català.
A fragment of Millet’s El Cant de la Senyera is woven into the piece, creating another, less immediately visible connection to Gaudí’s world.
The marimba itself undergoes a similar metamorphosis.
Aluminium foil, bows, kazoo, rattan shafts and resonator tubes gradually extend and transform its identity.
As in Gaudí’s architecture, contrasting materials and techniques become part of a single evolving form, in which the constructed and the organic, the playful, the grotesque and the subtly uncanny coexist.
Against this background, the title La cabalgata del diablo ('The Devil’s Ride') is not intended to suggest a literal narrative.
Rather, it evokes the restless, increasingly uncontrollable energy that seems to take hold of the music, driving the initially ordered material through a succession of transformations.
At the end, the process turns back on itself: the added material is torn away, the aluminium foil is noisily crumpled up and thrown aside. What has gradually grown into a new sound body is dismantled again.
The piece thus traces an arc from order through deformation and growth to dissolution.
