Bass clarinet in B♭ and tape
Damnum
Francis Bacon's scars, played on a bass clarinet.
2024
- Instrumentation
- Bass clarinet in B♭ and tape
- Year
- 2024
- Duration
- 5′20″
- Premiere
- 2025
- Concert
- Encargo del proyecto «Modelajes» de Igor Urruchi
- Venue
- Ateneo de Madrid, Madrid
- Performers
- Igor Urruchi, clarinete bajo
Programme note
Based on Francis Bacon's Figure with Meat, Damnum seeks the same unsettling, suggestive effect as his painting. In it, Pope Innocent X appears with a macabre face between two large sides of dissected beef: the sacred against the carnal.
Damnum, Latin for "harm", uses extended bass clarinet techniques to evoke the scars that marked Bacon's life: excess, sexuality, family conflict. The clarinet merges with electronics into a dense, saturated texture that mirrors that turbulent inner world.