Primals No. 5 “Yvy Marã E’ỹ”, for flute and flute ensemble

Primals draws its inspiration from what I perceive as the primal sonorities of the flute family and from my own understanding of the instrument as a connection between the immaterial and the material. Through breath — spirit, pneuma, ruach — the invisible becomes audible, acquiring a physical presence in sound. I draw inspiration from Amerindian flute traditions of my native Brazil, from the symbolic significance of the instrument, and from ways of playing that embrace all its sounds as expressions of its nature. This understanding is fundamental to the cycle: tone, noise, the sound distortions produced by using the voice while playing, and percussive sounds all belong to the same instrument. From this perspective, the distinction between “conventional” and “extended” techniques loses its meaning. Every sonority belongs. Primals explores this sense of wholeness through the possibilities of collective flute playing, returning to the elemental encounter between breath and matter from which the flute’s voice emerges.

Primals No. 5 “Yvy Marã E’ỹ” is dedicated to Lelya Bayramoğulları and was premiered in Antalya, Türkiye, in March 2026. Its title draws on the Guarani concept commonly translated as “Land without Evil.” In my imagination, it evokes a place where simply being is enough, where existence is already complete in itself. Yvy Marã E’ỹ expresses this intuition of plenitude: the possibility of inhabiting the world without needing to justify our existence within it.

Victor Somma