Quod nihil scitur (Tribute to Francisco Sanchez 'The sceptic') (Organ)
Organ Solo - Digital Sheet Music

Organ - Level 5 - Digital Download

SKU: A0.1091330

Composed by Rudesindo Soutelo. Arranged by Pipe Organ. Classical,Contemporary. Score. 53 pages. Publisher by Rudesindo Soutelo #695504. Published by Publisher by Rudesindo Soutelo (A0.1091330).

Xosé María Álvarez Blázquez in memoriam

Rudesindo Soutelo: Quod nihil scitur -That nothing is know (2003, revised in 2022) for Pipe Organ [ca. 33']
1. Natus in civitate Tudensi, diocesis Braccharensi
2. Meditatio mortis
3. Examen rerum (Postludium)

Premiere: 13-X-2006. Catedral de Tui. Int.: Raúl Prieto-Ramírez.

ISWC: T-045.522.035-5
ISMN: 979-0-9007557-9-7

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The structure and the whole organisation of the work is based on the complexes [4,5,6], [9,7], [5,2,8,7,8,13], [9,6] and [6,5,9]. The perfect chords that appear in this and other works of my authorship, particularly in the endings, have no tonal function. It is my musical signature, and they result from the superposition of 9+7 or 7+9 half-tones taken from my name and surname and, in this case, also from Francisco Sanchez´s.

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Program Notes, written by the organist Bruno Forst for the premiere of Quod nihil scitur, in 2006. Quod nihil scitur (That nothing is know) takes its title from the main work of the philosopher Francisco Sanchez, regarded as one of the pioneers of Cartesian philosophy. Born, like the composer, “in civitate Tudensi, diocesis Braccharensis”, he went into exile in France, probably because of his Jewish ancestry. He graduated and lived all his life in France, practising as a professor at the University of Toulouse. Sceptical philosopher. Although he is considered a minor author, his work continues to be studied. How to pay musical tribute to a philosopher? By applying his method of knowledge to musical language, and that is what Rudesindo Soutelo does, in his always subtle language and not without irony (a philosopher’s weapon). Scepticism, a systematic and dubitative consideration of all propositions, is expressed in Quod nihil scitur musical as a serious examination of the fundamental elements of our music: tones and semitones. Born in Galiza, baptised in a Portuguese diocese, an Iberian philosopher exiled in France... are these apparent contradictions the source of a game of sonorous contrasts? After a sombre 7-note pedal call (the first appearance of the number 7 in the work) some increasingly longer polyphonic phrases respond. The dialogue emerges little by little, contrasting monody and polyphony, the immobile verticality, almost choral, and the adorned fugato, contrasting gravity and joy, simplicity and rigorous construction, before resolving itself in the luminosity of a first major chord. The 7 reappears, this time as the rhythmic foundation of a calm and poetic Meditatio mortis. A chromatic lament, obsessive –reminiscent of the Passacaglia?–, this rhythmic formula sustains a whole building extremely refined in its apparent simplicity. In this (Galician) fog appear some almost amorphous ghosts –the series of 7 notes that opened the first movement– some twisted chromaticisms (a descending tone followed by an ascending semitone, anticipating an element of the third movement) –in augmentation– and a Dies Irae, reconstructed and ironic, already used by Rudesindo Soutelo in the Parasitus musicologus of Oppius dei (1997) and in the Prelude of the Magic Mountain, homage to Th. Mann (1999). The obstinate 7 notes get lost in the nothingness, everything is erased returning to the beginning, to obscurity and silence. The Examen rerum collects the old organistic tradition of the toccata 'en fileuse’, as the French say. Serious examination, very serious. It considers all the possible combinations of the flourish, sums up the strongly chromatic atmosphere of the whole work and progresses, relentlessly, towards an unappealable C Major chord.

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