PAISAJE ANDINO [ANDEAN LANDSCAPE] for marimba
Marimba - Digital Sheet Music

Marimba Solo - Level 4 - Digital Download

SKU: A0.876579

Composed by Daniel Cueto. Contemporary,Folk,Latin,World. Individual part. 8 pages. Daniel Cueto #5030455. Published by Daniel Cueto (A0.876579).

Watch a video of this piece here: https://youtu.be/vObn4aeUQBM

Before writing this piece, I spent time listening to several well-known works of the marimba repertoire. I was fascinated by the possibilities of this colorful instrument, by the variety of beautiful sounds and patterns that it could produce. However, I felt that the sound world I wanted to create for my piece was different from the ones I was hearing in those works.

As I set out to look for a more personal approach, I remembered a short musical idea that had come to my mind a year earlier, while I was at home in the company of my one-year-old daughter. This seminal idea was very simple, and had several qualities that were reminiscent of Andean folk music. I decided to pick up that unused fragment and started to play around with it, experimenting with subtle changes of rhythm and harmony to see what colors would result.

I started to discover some combinations of chords that I found very beautiful. All of those combinations had something in common: though the harmonies were constantly shifting, the music appeared to stay static, in one place. It didn’t seem to be trying to "go" anywhere, or trying to "progress" towards any specific place. And yet, it was rich in color and expression, just where it was. It seemed to contain a hidden melancholy, something like an underlying and subtle sadness beneath a more elegant and restrained surface.

As I continued to work on this music at the piano, I found myself feeling increasingly drawn to its special character, and developed a particularly intimate relationship to it. I didn’t yet know how it would turn into a larger piece. But through a process that is still a bit mysterious to me, and that involved much further experimentation, that initial little idea eventually crystallized its way into becoming a finished larger work.

I think of this piece as being an imagined folksong.

It is my gift to all marimba players, and their audiences, worldwide.