Commissioned by Festival MX for Voz en Punto and Dresdner Sinfoniker, 2014.

 

The human voice is the most amazing musical instrument that exists, capable of producing a great variety of sounds. Different cultures have developed different aspects: the polyphony of Western music, the Indian tabla's exploration of onomatopoeic percussion sounds, Middle Eastern melodies that require fine control over micro-intervals, and Tuvan throat singers who have mastered the art of overtone production.

​

Music has been called the universal language, given its incredible power for emotional expression, and the singing voice as the universal instrument. On the other hand, the expression of spoken language is limited to knowledge of semantics and confined to a set of valid phonemes, so by separating speech from language, the full potential of the human voice can meet the needs of musical expression. The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) transcribes speech into symbols that apply to all languages, making it an ideal tool for phonetic composition.

​

Polyphonics is a concerto for voice sextet and chamber orchestra that is based solely on abstract phonetics, avoiding the use of meaningful words, which is why it is conceived as a concerto for voice and orchestra, rather than a song cycle. The work is divided into three movements, each devoted to different variables of music: the first movement explores pitch, the second focuses on timbre and the third on rhythm.