¿Did the Aztecs have a word for sehnsucht?

Jan 25, 2017, 05:48 PM

Part of the Sacred Spaces project - find out more at http://www.citiesandmemory.com/sacredspaces

Reimagined by Alexander Baker.

"Templo Mayor - temple of the Aztecs in their capital city of Tenochtitlan, which is now Mexico City. Spanish architecture built on the ruins of a site dedicated simultaneously to two gods, Huitzilopchtli god of war, and Tlaloc, god of rain and agriculture, and Quetzalcoatl in his form as the wind god, Ehecatl. Now a major archeological site, a tourist attraction... ¿Sacred rituals, blood sacrifice, the past misting up through layers of history into the present...? Yet as I worked, I heard and closely reheard the everyday sounds and voices of children, women, men, sounds now themselves past, and perhaps those fleeting, precious moments affected me most and coloured the piece with melancholy; hence the title. Transformations from original recording, with some synthesised echoes of likely Aztec instruments - percussion, pipes, horns, whistles."