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Brief notes:

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Commissioned and dedicated to the Hércules Brass Quintet, Spain. This piece was selected by the prestigious American Brass Quintet for the 'New Music' class of the Juilliard Brass Quintet seminar, New York, EE. UU, March of 2020.

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Sculptures in brass is divided in three movements – or miniatures – without an apparent connection between them, with the exception of somewhat recapitulation of the first toccata theme at very end of the last movement, giving it certain cyclical form. 

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I. Toccata. This first movement is written in a ternary form, concretely in a trio form, but with an austere reduction of materials in its final repetition. Toccata (from Italian toccare, literally, "to touch", with "toccata" being the action of touching) also called Praeludium, or Prelude, is a virtuoso composition – typically written for a keyboard or plucked string instrument – featuring fast-moving, lightly fingered and virtuosic passages; which structure consists of a succession of fugal sections, alternating them with others of free style and improvisational character. In the way of an "urban goulash", this movement explore the grooves taken from funk, rock and roll and techno styles, interconnecting all them throughout the sections. 

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II. Interlude. This second movement was written several years before the conception of Sculptures in brass, being originally conceived as a modern-harmony exercise. In the most general sense, an interlude is a composition which fits between other musical or dramatic entities, such the acts of an opera or the movements within an instrumental work, being a piece that could stand on its own. The term has had several different usages, being generally known as "intermezzo". This slow movement is in the standard 32-bars form of a jazz ballad structure, which all the dramatic attention is close-up on the flugelhorn solo part, written improvisation-like.

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III. Finale. This third and last movement, Finale, is precisely that: a classic finale in sonata form. The first theme is immediately declared in a powerful unison of the trumpets; firstly, in open sounds and in partially incomplete form, followed by its final form using wha-wha mutes, written in multiple simultaneous time-signatures according to the rhythmic layers involved. The second theme, first played by horn and tenor trombone, introduces a more vigorous mood. Multiples entries of this short melody, imitative-like, propel it to the consequent development section. The development section is constructed as a "black hole", metaphorically, where both rhythm and harmony collapse into the "singularity" of its own materials towards the end of itself. Following the recapitulation of the second theme, the first theme of the first movement is employed for the coda as the piece ends in a final, colorful outburst.

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