Nityaklinnā

Nityaklinnā is the fourth part of the cycle Ṣoḍaśa Nityā. The work was originally written for countertenor and theorbo, but also exists in versions for other instrumentations.

Nityaklinnā is one of the Nityā goddesses from the tantric tradition of Shaktism, connected with the lunar cycle. Within that tradition, she is associated with desire, receptivity and inner surrender.

In this cycle, Diederik Glorieux draws inspiration from historical notation practices of the Renaissance, in which individual voices were notated independently. Here too, each performer is given their own precisely written-out part, without a fixed metre that determines the whole in advance.

This results in a score in which precision and freedom coexist. Dialogue is the point of departure. The musicians freely choose from strictly notated melodic lines and, in the act of playing together, continually determine how their part relates to the others.