was initially created in September 2007 during my composition residency in Bellagio Centre (Italy) sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation. Later, between 2008 and 2009 in La Paz, Bolivia, the work was widely developed thanks to a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship. Cantos ofertorios is spiritual music. Its sounds invoke and convoke, offer and thank, give and take just in the same way the yatiris (Aymara priests) do in their prayers. The interpretation of the piece should be connoted as such, like a faithful sounding prayer. Through Cantos ofertorios, I want to give back to Mother Earth, with grace and faith, all that she has provided to me.
The music seeks notably to incorporate the ancient traditional Aymara concept of sound, taking into account the multiphonic idea, the massive and dense sonorities, both in sectional and multisectional features. The concept of tropa (troop) as a matter of amplification of sound is—in this context—fundamental.

Cergio Prudencio