• Per Nørgård
  • Roads to Ixtlan (1993)

  • Edition Wilhelm Hansen Copenhagen (World)
  • 4sx
  • 13 min

Programme Note

´All roads lead to Rome´, as the saying goes - but do all roads also lead to Ixtlan, perhaps at another time? Ixtlan being the city of the highest aspirations of the Mexican sorcerer, Don Genaro (according to Carlos Casteneda, the anthropologist publishing a series of books on Don Juan, Don Genaro´s ´colleague´).

There was no final outcome to Genaro´s journey, and there will never be one. ´I will never reach Ixtlan, he said´, so Genaro is still on his way there. (Ixtlan may perhaps be interpreted as the inner goal of your heart).

In any case: in these three movements the three points of departure are utterly different; still they unanimously move towards just one melodic outcome, a kind of musical centre of gravitation.

My three saxophone quartets was composed between 1992 and 1995 and has the following titles:

Roads to Ixtlan, 1992-93
Viltir Svanir (Wild Swans), 1994
Dansere omkring Jupiter (Dancers around Jupiter), 1995

Per Nørgård (1995)

Discography