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TO
LISTEN TO THE AUDIO CLIP ON THIS PAGE YOU NEED
REAL
PLAYER 8 BASIC
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The title of this piece is borrowed from a painting
by the Finnish artist Hugo Simberg (1873-1917) in which
two children are depicted carrying a wounded angel on
a sedan chair. The music is a fantasia in which I endeavour
to capture the expressive contradictions in Simberg's
masterwork. These could be described as a precarious
balance between playfulness and tragedy, innocence and
knowing world-weariness, love and mischief.
The charango
is a stringed instrument from the Andean highlands of
Bolivia. The strings are tuned to a variable pattern,
usually in five double courses. Traditionally the body
is constructed from the shell of an armadillo.
In my mind,
the contrast between such a roughly-crafted peasant
instrument and the state-of-the-art technology employed
to produce the electroacoustic sounds helped to enhance
the aesthetic contradictions in Simberg's Wounded Angel.
If this piece of music makes you, listener, want to
see the painting, my work will have been worthwhile.
You will find it in the Ateneum in Helskini.

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