Muisca (guitar duo)

It's hard to know where to start when describing the journey of this work. Jane approached me sometime around 2010 (possibly earlier) about a solo guitar piece. I've always been pretty much terrified of writing for classical guitar, knowing just how well I'd need to understand the left-right functions and combinations. I committed and decided to take a methodical approach. I asked Jane to film herself playing some familiar repertoire at half speed so I could study it in detail and hopefully arrive at a decent-enough understanding of the instrument before I started composing.

I then proceeded to write a piece that was (still is) utterly unplayable.

I don't know what it is about my composing energy and my aims when writing music, but I always, always very quickly arrive at the threshold of possibility. I don't want to. But there is obviously something triggering to me about straining at the limits of what can be done. I'm sure performers all over the world, who have played my work, would testify to this. A large part of my composing work is pulling things back behind the threshold of impossibility. This space - which is pretty fragile as a creative environment, very hemmed in - is where I find flow.

But in the original (solo) manifestation of Muisca I went well over the line of what can be done on the guitar. Jane tried so hard to find ways around the impossibility of what I'd written. I remember agonising over each and every note that needed to be changed or omitted. When I saw what it looked like on the fingerboard - the stretch that was necessary - and realised I'd have to remove a note from a chord, it was incredibly painful to make the concession.

Eventually we agreed that I would create a two-guitar version. Jane helped me a lot with this. Incredibly, it is still a challenging work when divided between two players! That's some indication of how implausible the original solo was.

Jane and Owen Moriarty recorded the work beautifully on Naxos. Here it is:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

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Some time later I made a solo piano version of the middle movement, called Chia, dedicated to my wife Carla.

Programme Note

Commissioned by Jane Curry with funding from Creative New Zealand, Muisca is a guitar duet consisting of three movements: Soledad, Chia, and El Dorado.

Drawing inspiration from the rich mythology and history of the Muisca people of Colombia, each movement explores different aspects of their culture, from the mystical initiation rituals of the chieftains in Soledad to the worship of the goddess Chía in Chia, and finally, the legendary tale of El Dorado, the fabled city of gold.

The Muisca were the Chibcha-speaking people of the central highlands of present-day Colombia's Eastern Range. They were encountered by the Spanish Empire in 1537, at the time of the conquest.

Soledad: Direct descendants of the gods and fathers of the community, chieftains and priests were initiated in supernatural matters from an early age, acquiring great powers through arduous initiation rituals where they were confined in small churches, forbidden any kind of contact with the outside world for years on end.

Chia: The goddess Chía ("the one who is like the moon"), is a triple goddess in the mythology of Colombia in Precolumbian times. She was worshipped as one of the most important deities in that culture.

El Dorado: The name of a Muisca tribal chief who covered himself with gold dust and, as an initiation rite, dived into the Guatavita Lake. Later, it became the name of a legendary "Lost City of Gold", that fascinated explorers since the days of the Spanish Conquistadors. Imagined as a place, El Dorado became a kingdom, an empire, and a city of this legendary golden king.

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