CLEPSYDRA
by Mario Lavista

Composer’s Notes
I wrote Clepsydra for orchestra in 1991, it was a commission from the San Antonio Symphony Orchestra to mark the Three hundredth anniversary of the discovery of San Antonio River, it was premiered on April of that same year in San Antonio, Zdenek Macal conducted. On November of 1992 the National Symphony Orchestra conducted by Enrique Diemecke performed the piece for the first time in Mexico. I like to think that both the river and music are images of the rhythm of time. The river tells us the history of waters while music that of sounds, both are, one way or another, clepsydras, that is water clocks that look upon and measure time.

The clepsydras just like music and the river, transform chaos into order, the continuous in discontinuous and noise and sound into meaning. The piece is inhabited by reminiscences of my own music. It is some sort of a personal diary where motives phrases and fragments of my former orchestral works have been reunited in a different order. I tried in this way to create a structure, a musical form that would be the receptacle of my memory. It is dedicated to my friend, writer Guillermo Sheridan.

From this text one that Clepsydra elegantly synthesizes two of the fundamental themes of Lavista’s music: quotations and time. It seems as though the composer would like, with his music, to turn himself into clepsydra, to steal and stop time, study it, understand it and posses it. The Greek roots “kleptein” --to steal-- and “hydro” --water-- tell us that a clepsydra is but a water thief.