As estruturas de Solaris (The Scrutcures of Solaris) was the winning piece of the 13th Composition Competition of the Póvoa de Varzim International Music Festival. It was premiered on 21 September 2020 by the Drumming Percussion Group.
As estruturas de Solaris was inspired by the creations that emerge from the surface of the living ocean of Solaris, the novel by Stanisław Lem that gives its name to the only known planet with life beyond Earth, and whose only inhabitant is the ocean. They are structures that appear for inexplicable reasons, gigantic, and whose logic is still being theorised by solarists, which is how scientists who research the living planet are known.
The different sections of the piece represent these structures in music, which, however exuberant they might be, always have the same fate: annihilation and return to their matrix, which is the ocean. In fact, this piece is formally a rondo, because at the end of the life of each of the structures the music returns to the calm of the ocean, which rests on few notes and broader gestures, taking advantage of the resonances of instruments such as the vibraphone, the alufone and the glockenspiel.
The structures are the longus, symmetrids, mimoids and asymetrids, in that order. The longus are like a gigantic serpent, the size of a mountain range, stretching to the horizon, and of a gelatinous consistency. The symmetrids are large structures with symmetrical sinuous tentacles, as symmetrical as the gestures of the marimbas. They rise like a colossus that ends up collapsing in a tragic way. Asymmetrids have an even more abrupt end than symmetrids and, although they look similar, they are not equal around an axis and their life cycle is much shorter. Mimoids, so called for their ability to imitate the elements around them, are especially musical, since imitation is one of the most effective resources for maintaining cohesion in a piece of music. However, mimoids always imitate in the most grotesque and misshapen way and are totally incapable of representing any kind of living being.