Recording scheduled for 2025
by Barcelona Symphony Orchestra

Tesselle is based on the concept of rhythmic canon which in turn derives from the mathematical idea of “tiling pattern” The American composer Tom Johnson was the first to theorize and apply this concept musically in his Tilework series. The piece is dedicated to him.

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To better understand the idea, we can think of the mosaics found in the Nasrid palaces of the Alhambra. The artisans who created them worked intensively on how to modify certain geometric figures so that they could fit together seamlessly, forming patterns that cover the entire surface without gaps or overlaps — this is known as a tiling pattern. Symmetry, in its broadest sense, is key to this technique. In music, of course, we cannot tile in two dimensions, but we can tile in one: time.

In this orchestral work, the concept unfolds along two complementary lines. On the one hand, it employs microscopic rhythmic structures organized into rhythmic canons as described above — multiple identical rhythmic voices offset in time in such a way that they fill the temporal space without leaving gaps. These structures proliferate like an amorphous mass, constantly contracting and expanding. On the other hand, the material itself is radically reduced, much like a single visible motif repeated throughout a tiled mosaic. In Tesselle, a simple scale serves as the germ or motif upon which the entire piece is structured.

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This “ecology” of limited material use continues a path I’ve been exploring in my recent works, many of which are centered on auditory paradoxes (One paradox, Five movements on Pendulum music, etc.). Over the years, my music has progressively moved away from figuration — from the literal and the surface — and toward the inner essence of the material itself. This is a kind of minimalism understood as the use of minimal material presented in time through minimal means. Just as the beauty of the Nasrid mosaics lies in their ability to fill an entire space using a single, minimal shape while maintaining the logic of tessellation, something similar occurs in Tesselle.

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Finally, while musical time inevitably moves forward — and as mentioned, we cannot tile in two dimensions — the idea of tessellation allows us to imagine the orchestra as a kind of Nasrid mosaic. It invites us to project music into a space where sound propagates by recurrence or seems to freeze, spiraling upon itself. This dual image connects to a thought expressed by Eugenio Trías in his book Lógica del límite: “Music, like architecture, gives shape to something that must be inhabited.” In other words, musical time does not always behave linearly; it can also be conceived as a space in which sounds coexist in a process of constant deformation.