What is left after the war?
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What Is Left After the War? is a thirteen-minute composition for orchestra and amplified native soprano recorder, conceived as a transformational work that explores personal and collective trauma through musical expression. Drawing on ethnomusicological research, the piece integrates elements from Venezuelan milking songs (cantos de ordeño) and indigenous war calls from the plains (sabanas), reinterpreted through contemporary academic frameworks. The composition poses a central semantic and spiritual question: What is left after our wars? This inquiry is rooted in a response to decades of systemic violence, political oppression, and internal societal conflict, manifesting as collective trauma beneath the level of conscious reasoning. The work seeks to articulate this internalized struggle through a narrative that merges sonic rage, lament, and a yearning for renewal. Musically, the piece experiments with the fusion of Venezuelan indigenous modal and pentatonic materials with Western tonal and pan-tonal idioms. Pantonality and extended harmonic textures emerge in the lower registers, while the melodic content engages with the idea of collective memory and cultural identity. The work also features a recorded native Venezuelan flute recorder, performed live and amplified, which appears in a meditative interlude marked by microtonal and pan-modal techniques in D minor. Originally conceived as part of a larger interdisciplinary project—including a film of the same title—the composition reflects the composer’s personal journey and broader questions of spiritual transformation: Is it possible to be reborn and sing a new song in one lifetime?
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M.M. (Master of Music)