"Unheard Voices" (for solo piano; Yael Weiss, Live Performance; 2018) by Sidney Marquez Boquiren published on 2020-10-03T17:40:21Z When Yael Weiss commissioned me to write a work in response to one of the Beethoven sonatas as part of her project “32 Bright Clouds,” I knew immediately which specific sonata I would choose: Op. 10, No. 3. As an undergraduate, this was one of the works that I analyzed, studied, and learned. In particular, I was drawn to the second movement’s overwhelming pathos that opened to the joy of the third movement. Unheard Voices dwells on the emotional content of this second movement while looking forward to the hope suggested by the third. In this new work, I ask Yael to perform the my composition while at the same time listening privately to a recording of the Beethoven movement with headphones. (This is a technique that I learned about from composer/pianist Jocelyn Ho.) As a result, two separate yet joint experiences occur simultaneously: the audience hears my piece being performed by the pianist whose interpretation of the music is in turn mediated, circumscribed, and informed by something that the audience can’t hear. Unheard Voices also uses another technique, which I heard about from composer Felippo Perocco, who devised a creative process that involves “carving away” notes from a pre-existing work. For Unheard Voices, using the second movement of Op. 10, No. 3 as the canvas upon which I created my piece, I “carved away” many of the notes, keeping a certain few and echoing others (like ghostly whispers) in the piano gestures. Embedded toward the end of Unheard Voices is a quote from the “Agnus Dei” of Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis on the text dona nobis pacem: a plea for peace that is the underpinning of Yael’s commissioning project. Unheard Voices is dedicated to the victims of vigilante violence and extra-judicial killings that have happened in the Philippines, whose voices remain tragically unheard. Genre Classical