Retratos de la Locura

“Retratos de la locura” can be roughly translated as “Portraits of Madness.” The piece is -in my head- an imaginary portrait of a person with dissociative identity disorder made by someone with not-so-imaginary sudden and (sometimes) violent mood swings. Hence, the piece has constant and sudden changes of mood and character throughout. It is in two parts: the first part has three distinct sections (or personalities) where the A section is recapitulated followed by a short coda (ABCA-coda). The second part is a three-part fugue with a subject derived from a brief cell from the A section of the first part. It is by no means a strict fugue, but it does use some fugal techniques like stretti, augmentation, inversion, false entries, etc. Three-quarters of the way into it, the subject is inverted and drives into a brief ascending coda with the subject in both versions is presented in stretto.