Terry Riley composed Ascencion, his 1993 work for solo acoustic guitar, using borrowed and rearranged materials from his earlier string quartet, Mythic Birds Waltz. In their new setting for guitar, however, the melodies and figurational patterns assume a strikingly different character—and in fact, evoke stylized sounds of Spanish music. Strident chordal statements alternate with spiraling, virtuosic scalar gestures, and simple harmonic statements spin off into multiple strata of melodies and countermelodies. Riley adapts the borrowed materials with a keen idiomatic ear, using the unique capabilities of the guitar to highlight subtle pitch inflections and articulatory nuances. Riley contrasts meandering passages with stretches of insistent ostinatos, against which the upper strings carve out variously angular and lyrical melodies. The overall trajectory of the piece seems rather exploratory, so that while harmonic and metrical context at any given moment seems lucid, the overall piece seems somewhat improvisatory and emotionally complex.



Riley, best known perhaps for his seminal role in the emergence of the minimalist movement in music (most notably through his famous piece In C), would nonetheless find himself attracted on several more occasions to Spanish-inspired guitar music, and in fact, Ascencion was eventually incorporated into an extended series of works for guitar brought together under the mystical (and, Riley tells us, completely contrived) title The Book of Abbeyozzud.



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