Sound piece Semi No Koe by Manuel Rocha Iturbide.
Semi No Koe for flute and digital tape
Japan, Mexico 2001
by Manuel Rocha Iturbide
musician
This composition was conceived and almost entirely produced in Tokyo, Japan. The artist arrived to this country in the month of august 2000, on plain summer, a station where the cicadas sing frenetically, after years of being under the earth in the form of embryo, they finally come out for only two or three weeks, in order to fly and sing without pause before perishing.
The impression of this phenomena drove to write a work for flute and two digital tracks where the timbers of the flute would emulate the birth of the cicadas. This piece is structured following the Haiku formula, a small Japanese poem form, invented by Basho in the XVII century. These poems are constructed by 17 syllables, in the order 5, 7, 5.
The haiku's written by Basho and by other early Japanese poet's talk constantly about sounds produced by insects and other animals, and about how they break with silence. These types of poems have a strong influence of ZEN philosophy.
A poem written by Basho about Cicadas, draws imaginary images, contrasting rhythm and structure:
Shizuakasa ya
Iwa Ni Shimiiru
Semi No Koe
The stillness
Soaking into stones
Cicada's cry
"Semi no Koe" could be though of as a programmatic work, although the decisions regarding the different formal aspects of the piece were defined starting from the fractal proportions of the ratio 5:7:5. In this way, the work is carefully structured in a fractal way, but it also try's to emulate through the acoustic and electroacustic sounds of the flute and the cicadas, the abstract complexity of nature.