Luigi Antonio Irlandini - official composer site
Compositions
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Sangedatsumon
(Três portas da libertação - Three doors of liberation)
instrumentation: shakuhachi and five percussionists playing narashimono (Japanese Buddhist temple instruments: bonshō, denshō, hyōshigi, large mokugyō, 3 keisu [large, medium and small], hokku, 2 taiko) other versions: --
epigraph: --
score: L.A.I.-EP 57
duration: ca. 20 min.
date/place of composition: 23 May 2026 - 10 July 2026/Florianópolis
dedication: Daijou, Kendo and Zenkōji (Mosteiro Zen do Morro da Vargem)
first performance: 17 July 2026, Hattō - Zenkōji (Mosteiro Zen do Morro da Vargem, Ibiraçu, ES, Brasil)
audio: --
notes:
Sangedatsumon is a musical work for the shakuhachi – in any of its sizes – and narashimono, Japanese Buddhist temple instruments. The piece is dedicated to the current abbot Kendo, and his predecessor Daiju, of the Mosteiro Zen do Morro da Vargem, Zenkō-ji, Ibiraçu, State of Espírito Santo, Brazil.
In Japanese temple architecture, the gate of three liberations (or the three gates of liberation) sanmon (三門 or 山門) or sangedatsumon (三解脱門) (san, three; gedatsu, liberation; mon, gate) is an imposing wooden building located between the sōmon (outer gate) and the butsuden ("Hall of Buddha"). As the Buddhist doctrine of the three doors of liberation, sangedatsumon indicates that these gates are kūmon (空門, gate of emptiness), musōmon (無相門, gate of formlessness) and muganmon (無願門, gate of inaction or purposelessness). In the music, emptiness (kū), formlessness (musō) and inaction (mugan) become the cosmological compositional principles that organize musical time. Thus, emptiness is reflected in the interconnectedness or vacuity of all musical and sound gestures. Formlessness occurs by means of the possibility of improvisation and the indeterminacy of pitch relations between the shakuhachi and the several determinate pitch percussion instruments available, as these may change from temple to temple or monastery to monastery. Inaction is characteristic of temporal circularity and silence, as well as the hieratic and static ethos of the music. The work is composed of three movements played without interruption, but the three moviments are not associated each to a specific gate. In fact, these three gates of liberation are difficult to separate conceptually and, for this reason, all three are equally associated to all the movements of the piece. Although the conceptual framework of the composition is closest to the ideas and rituals of Sōtō Zen, sound elements original from other Buddhist sects are also present.
Notas sobre a Composição
Sangedatsumon é uma obra musical para shakuhachi – em qualquer de seus tamanhos – e narashimono, instrumentos de templo japoneses budistas. A peça é dedicada ao atual abade Kendo e a seu predecessor Daiju, do Mosteiro Zen do Morro da Vargem, Zenkō-ji, Ibiraçu, Espírito Santo, Brasil.
Na arquitetura de templos japonesa, o portão das três liberações (ou os três portões da liberação) sanmon (三門ou 山門) ou sangedatsumon (三解脱門) (san, três; gedatsu, libertação; mon, portão) é um imponente edifício de madeira localizado entre o sōmon (portão externo) e o butsuden ("Hall do Buda"). Como a doutrina budista das três portas da libertação, sangedatsumon indica que estas três portas são kūmon (空門, portão do vazio), musōmon (無相門, portão da ausência de forma) e muganmon (無願門, portão da inação ou ausência de propósito). Na música, o vazio (kū), ausência de forma (musō) e inação (mugan) se tornam os princípios cosmológicos da composição, que organizam o seu tempo musical. Assim, o vazio se reflete na interdependência ou vacuidade de todos os gestos musicais e sonoros. A ausência de forma ocorre na possibilidade de improvisação e na indeterminação das relações de altura entre o shakuhachi e os diversos instrumentos de percussão com altura determinada disponíveis, uma vez que estes podem mudar de templo para templo, de mosteiro para mosteiro. A inação é característica da circularidade temporal e do silêncio, assim como do ethos hierático e estático da música. A obra é composta de três movimentos, mas os três movimentos não estão associados cada um a um portão específico. De fato, estes três portões da libertação são difíceis de separar conceitualmente e, por isso, os três se associam igualmente a todos os movimentos da peça. Embora o arcabouço conceitual da composição esteja mais próximo das ideias e rituais do Zen Sōtō Zen, também estão presentes elementos originais de outras seitas budistas japonesas.
Sanmon at Kencho-ji, Kamakura Photo: L.A.Irlandini
Aker
instrumentation: oboe, violin, basson, contrabass, large tam-tam
other versions: --
epigraph: --
score: L.A.I.-EP 56
duration: ca. 9 min.
date/place of composition: 27 February 2026 - 3 May 2026/Florianópolis
dedication: Ensemble Novas Tríades
first performance: --
audio: --
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The ancient Egyptian god Aker, "he who looks forward and behind", is represented by two lions sitting with their backs to each other: Duaj (Tomorrow) looks East, to the sunrise, while Sefer (Yesterday), looks West, to the sunset. Between them is the solar disk. While the Sun journeys to the Duat, the underworld reign of the dead, the lions guard its entrance and exit.
O antigo deus egípcio Aker, “aquele que olha para frente e para trás”, é representado por dois leões, um de costas para o outro: Duaj (Amanhã) está voltado para o Leste, o nascer do Sol, e Sefer, (Ontem), voltado para o Oeste, o pôr do Sol. Entre eles está o disco solar. Enquanto o Sol viaja à noite para o Duat, mundo subterrâneo dos mortos, os leões guardam a sua entrada e saída.
Hokkaijōin (Mudra cósmico - Cosmic mudra)
instrumentation: piano
other versions: --
epigraph: --
score: LAI-EP 55
duration: ca. 12 min.
date/place of composition: August 2024/Florianópolis
first performance: 24 October 2024, UNILA, Foz do Iguaçu, PR, Brazil. Piano: Luigi Antonio Irlandini
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Hokkaijōin, the Japanese title of Mudra cósmico, indicates my personal preference for zazen, as indicated by master Dōgen Zenji. The round shape of the cosmic mudra, or dhyana mudra, with the back of the left hand resting over the open palm of the right hand and both thumbs touching each other, determines some aspects of the macroform. Thus, circularity takes place in different concurrent planes of musical time. For example, harmonic change consists of two occurrences of a cycle in which four heptatonic pitch collections are repeated in the same order: pūrvi, toḍi, bhairav and “harmonic” phrygian. A cycle of short events is repeated for each harmony, but, due to each harmony’s own color, the light, intensity, mood, perception, and even structure of these events may be changed considerably. In the same way as the hands in hokkaijōin reflect one another, so does the second harmonic cycle reflect the first, as the short events reproduce themselves in retrograde order. The often recurrence of the low C creates an ever-present drone, which actually is the only truly stable element throughout the piece. Although recurrent, the events in Hokkaijōin may be unsettling and surprising, as one might struggle, in a meditation session, to reach a state of quiescence.
Pneuma Espiral
instrumentation: Helder contralto recorder
other versions: --
epigraph: --
score: LAI-EP 54
duration: ca. 7 min.
date/place of composition: January 2024/Florianópolis
dedication: written for and dedicated to Francielle Paixão
first performance:
audio: --
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In Pneuma Espiral, breath and spirit are almost synonyms, as among the stoics. The piece consists of one complete double spiral of growth and decrease. The growth section takes three expanding turns, and the decrease section, also three contracting turns.
The turns correspond to musical time segments in the simple proportion of whole numbers 1:2:3 for both expanding and contracting turns. As the first turn takes 42 quarter-notes, the others follow accordingly (84 and 126, then, in the reverse path, 126, 84 and 42). The turns are marked in the score by double measure bars. Rhythmic organization follows the principles of expanded modal rhythm applied to simple subdivions of the 14-beat time cycle (tāla). The melodic line evolves cyclically, each time with a greater complexity of its motivic/gestural structures in the expansion section, and their simplification in the contracting section.
Namazu - Bestiarium, Livro 2, #2
instrumentation: four timpani (percussion solo)
other versions: --
epigraph: --
score: LAI-EP 53
duration: ca. 6'20"
date/place of composition: 23 November to 15 December 2023/Florianópolis
dedication: --
first performance: Concert #2 of XXXI Panorama da Música Brasileira Atual,07 October 2024 - Salão Leopoldo Miguez, Escola de Música da UFRJ, Rio de Janeiro. Timpani: Tiago Calderano
audio: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65lbcqC_MzQ&list=PLvFygh-apa1M_lAFDqXJ2H5iXB0euGz0L&index=8 starting at 44'50"
notes:
This is the second piece of the second volume in the Bestiarium series. Namazu (鯰), also called Ōnamasu
(大鯰) , is a gigantic catfish responsible for causing earthquakes and tsunamis, according to Japanese mythology. Namazu is kept under control by kami Takemikazuchi, who restrains him under a stone. However, when Takemikazuchi gets distracted, Namazu is able to move, and this results in an earthquake. Growing up in the 1970s in Rio de Janeiro, I would often find street walls that had been graffited by the saying "celacanto provoca maremoto" (coelacanth provokes tsunami). This saying became some sort of a popular carioca "tradition"... It probably originated from the Japanese 1960s television series National Kid, in which a giant fish appears (as the ship of Abyssal creatures) producing tsunamis. I believe this fish would have been called Namazu in the film's episodes, since it does look like a catfish, and not as a coelacanth, and it may have been wrongly identified as a coelacanth. To verify this hypothesis, I would need to watch National Kid again searching for someone in the story mentioning the name Namazu or coelacanth.
Ouroboros - Bestiarium, Livro 2, #1
instrumentation: solo shakuhachi and two contrabasses drone
other versions: --
epigraph: --
score: LAI-EP 52
duration: 12'30"
date/place of composition: August 2022 - March 2023/Florianópolis
dedication: --
first performance: Concert Músicas de Luigi Antonio Irlandini, 01 June 2023, Igrejinha da UFSC, Florianópolis
audio: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YQjRGZEhAc
notes:
The popular image of the Ouroboros (or Uroboros) appears in several cultures around the world since, at least, ancient Egypt. The snake or dragon that bites its own tail stands as a symbol of eternity, perpetuity, cyclic time, totality, primordial unity, self-sufficiency, self-begetting, renewal from its own substance, existence within the circle, and the beginning of creation, which, in the individual, according to Erich Neumann, is the psychic state before the formation of the ego.
A quick description of the compositional process is the following: the piece results from a ouroboric algorithym that generates the entire monody, combined with a time cycle of nine durations that works very much like a Medieval talea. The algorythm is a chain of permutations (vikṛti), a recurring technique in my music since Agnistoma II, which is first applied to a series of eight melodic intervals (the series appears in the first ten measures of the music), and, next, applied again to larger segments of the line in this section, resulting, in measures 11 to 52. A third application of the algorythm, now to the even larger monodic segments that constitute the second section, generates the rest of the music. One could go on expanding the music infinitely, but, in reality, one needs to stop at a certain point... This is why the music does not really end, but simply stops at the completion of the third application of the algorythm, offering to the listener something like a "slice" of eternity: a musical time that is ecstatic, circular and static, where changes are only apparent or superficial.
My Ouroboros is the first composition of the second Bestiarium series and it has two original versions, meaning that I have conceived them as being equally original: one version for symphonic orchestra and the other for shakuhachi, the "pocket version". The shakuhachi part contains the core of the music, and, for this reason, had to be composed first, while the orchestral part, as it expands the monody in terms of timbre, register and intensity, was composed later. The orchestral version is intended for the orchestra alone, and is not to be performed together with the shakuhachi version. The shakuhachi version is performed with a drone, which requires two contrabasses. The drone is not notated, as it is improvised according to a few indications. The score is written for a C shakuhachi, but the piece may be performed on shakuhachi of any size, provided the relationship between the monody and the drone be maintained. This means that, for the C shakuhachi, the drone is G; a D shakuhachi, the drone is A, and so on.
Sūrya Namaskāra (Saudação do Sol - Sun Salutation)
instrumentation: soprano and chamber orchestra
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epigraph: --
score: LAI-EP 51
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Rugido de tigre provoca vento
(Roar of tiger causing wind)
instrumentation: D shakuhachi and 13-string koto (L.A.I. EP 50A) other versions: D shakuhachi and piano (L.A.I. EP 50B) epigraph: --
score: L.A.I.-EP 50
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Visões de Bashō (Bashō visions)
instrumentation: hichiriki and piano (L.A.I.-EP 49A)
other versions: D shakuhachi and piano (L.A.I.-EP 49B) epigraph: --
score: L.A.I.EP 49
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dedication: Thomas Piercy
first performance: Thomas Piercy (hichiriki) and Marina Iwao (piano): https://youtu.be/i1AKtwYkf4M
audio: --
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Axis mundi
instrumentation: strings orchestra (6 6 4 4 2)
other versions: --
epigraph: --
score: L.A.I.EP 48
duration: ca. 9 min.
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