Into the Labyrinth

I. From free fall to increasing entropy

The first movement opens with a cosmic, ethereal atmosphere created by bowed and scraped percussion. Solo guitar emerges and introduces an Argentinian-inspired folk dance as the text reflects a sense of hopelessness underscored by Galileo's quotation:

The music turns tranquil and introduces Sir Isaac Newton's Laws of Motion before dramatically shifting to a malambo, an Argentinian folk dance performed with stomps, kicks, and foot scrapes. Rojo's malambo is paired with Rudolf Clausius's definitions of thermodynamics, specifically the concepts of “energy” and “entropy.”

The book of the universe is written in mathematical language; its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometric figures; if we cannot understand these, we will remain wandering in a dark labyrinth.

II. From electromagnetism to relative time

The tuneful beginning of the second movement alternates between sung poetry and narration which describes James Clerk Maxwell's (1831–1879) and Hippolyte Fizeau's (1819–1896) discovery and definition of electromagnetism. Marie Curie's 1896 discovery of radioactivity follows, musically depicted by highly chromatic, unstable gestures. The movement closes with Albert Einstein's work surrounding relativity.

III. Bolero

Movement three is a bolero in the vein of Maurice Ravel's eponymous work. The narration centers around the work of Max Planck and Werner Heisenberg, theoretical physicists who were pioneers of the theory of quantum mechanics and whose work transformed the understanding of atomic and subatomic processes.

IV. From atoms to dark matter

The work concludes with “From Atoms to Dark Matter,” which introduces the theoretical physicists Richard Feynman, known for the theory of quantum electrodynamics and his work in particle physics, and Vera Rubin, who provided the first evidence for the existence of dark matter. The movement begins with a folk-song-like setting of Luis Pescetti's “Árbol Cuenta” (“A Tree Tells”). The second half of the work alternates between traditional Argentinian chacarera dance and baguala song. The work concludes with the open-ended declamation to continue the search for understanding.