You
have a curious curriculum: you have a degree in musicology in Bologna
with a thesis on computer-assisted composition, you founded a company
for video production and postproduction, and you studied electronic
music at the Scuola Civica in Milan with Alvise Vidolin, what did it
mean for you to study with a teacher of that level?
It
may seem a little bit eclectic path but I always followed only two
great passions: music and cinema. I arrived at the Scuola Civica
after that I temporarily abbandoned my university studies in Bologna.
Vidolin came from the Padova’s center of Sonology, he had
collaborated with important postwar composers as Nono, Sciarrino,
Berio, Battistelli. He remains the historical memory of Italian
contemporary music so I could not ask for anything better then him. I
made a lot of practice with him about live electronics of repertoire
pieces and I remember many interesting encounters with composers and
scientists.
You
studied at IRCAM in Paris, what did you find in that country compared
to the Italian situation? What kind of environment IRCAM has...?
The
subject of my thesis was: OpenMusic, IRCAM software for composing, so
it seemed natural to further my studies with the same people who
contributed to the development of the software. The IRCAM is a
reality that is aging but is unmatched in terms of organization and
professionalism in the research and production. We must, however, try
to understand the need for this type of research today. Many of these
institutions tend to approach music from a unique
cognitive-engineering paradigm type which has now had its day.
Staying in Paris I have found much more interesting as what goes
musically by GRM. An "Italian situation" does not exist
because there are no similar institutions in our country. But I do
not think this is a bad thing.
In
much of your music I think we can feel the presence of the guitar, it
may seem a little bit strange thingthinking about your studies and
your training about electronics and computer science. How important
is the presence of the guitar in your music?
Please
keep in mind that I began studying music at 12 years old when my
father enrolled me in a course of classical guitar. There followed a
period of intense study lasted almost 15 years and for a some time I
embraced the idea of making it a career. I became pretty good but I
soon realized that it is not enough to be "pretty good" to
become a professionist. I did then also my best experiences with the
electric guitar playing rock but especially metal, thrash metal. I
liked the style of Chuck Schuldiner, Denis D'Amour (aka Piggy) two
young lives too damn early cut short. Then some American acoustic
music, Fahey, Basho, Michael Hedges. Parallel to the guitar, however,
as you pointed out, I began to be interested in other ways:
musicology, electronic music and finally the composition. For example
I consider the attendance of composition’s courses with Alexander
Solbiati another very important moment for my training. Thanks to him
I learned what it means to compose, to be a Composer and then mediate
between a musical thought and writing by means of musical
instruments. In electronic music instead writing is absent or takes
other meanings. Other grammars, other formal possibilities emerge and
are developed. There is thus a substantial ontological difference
between the two worlds, and the difference is made writing. In my
music such as this is reflected in a vast difference between the
electronic music that I produce and I write the instrumental.
Contrary to electronic music that I produce my writing, so even for
guitar, is quite "traditional" and my models remain
composers like Petrassi, Castiglioni, Henze. Going back to your
question about the guitar is right; most of the things I wrote down
was for guitar. And I will continue to do so. I am convinced that it
is an instrument yet to be explored. As a composer, I will not pass
up this challenge.
You
have published other pieces for guitar (besides the Fleurs d'X) for
Ut Orpheus Edizioni, like "Seven short pieces for guitar"
in 2005 and "Eloge de l'Asymptote for Guitar" in 2006, do
you want to talk about them? Have they been performed and recorded?
The
Fleurs d'X are now published by Nuova Stradivarius while the two
works you mentioned are published by Ut Orpheus. Apart Fleurs d'X my
catalog for guitar begins to be quite substantial: two
fantasies-sonatas, five preludes, three collections of songs in a
Suite’s form including the seven short pieces, the Eloge and
Quodlibet and finally a chamber’s music for guitar and five
instruments. The model I belowed to compose the scores you mentioned
above is the one of the great baroque Suite guitarists, Roncalli, de
Visée. Short forms, concise and with an extreme gestures varietas.
Fleurs d'X apart, the majority of these scores have never been
performed and recorded.
How
did start the project Fleurs d'X and collaboration with Elena Casoli?
The
Fleurs d'X is primarily a game born almost by accident. I tell some
curious details about the birth of this work in the CD’s booklet.
Like all games, there are some serious implications and some
half-serious. I read that you called them fragments: I think this is
a correct definition even though I consider them the same way as
emblems. The mandatory nature of the scores is not without
“reservatezze”, very close to the limits of the music game as the
famous Rondeau Cordier or symbolic as in emblemata by Atalanta
Fugiens Maier. There are such small musical puzzles that I enjoyed to
put in a lot of passages. I always then an image, as the music as
courtesan thing sometimes I write for guitar as if it was appropriate
music to sign the hours of an imaginary future court. If you have
ever read Anathem by Neal Stephenson you can easily imagine this
fantastic monastic courtesan community. Talking about Elena I believe
that the greatest fortune for a composer is working with professional
interpreters. Everything she did was made with maximum
professionalism: I offered her the job, we met three times for tests
and at that point I realized that I could also seal the collaboration
in a CD. I wanted to personally follow the studio recordings
experiencing some solutions like using a contact microphone to
highlight some particular sounds.
Berlioz
said that composing for classical guitar was difficult to do because
you had to be a guitarist, this phrase has often been used as a
justification for the limited repertoire of classical guitar before
other instruments like piano and violin. At the same time has been
more and more questioned by the growing interest that the guitar
(whether classical, acoustic, electric or midi) has reached in
contemporary music. Do you think that there is still a trth in
Berlioz’s words?
The
words certainly had a sense in the period in which they were written.
Berlioz played guitar and was a hero of the revolution that was going
through the language of music. But maybe I would talk more about
sound then about language. The romantic sound (his Dionysian
component), is in fact incompatible with the thinness of the guitar
(Apollonian instrument). It 'a sound that tends to saturate space. In
the same instrumentation essay Berlioz considers innovatively
problems as the spatialization of orchestral instruments, acoustics
etc. etc. But romantic saturation was not only an obvious "dynamic"
question.At those time they were beginning to become aware of the
same tonal space’s limits. If the already defined composers “forma
mentis” built on Fux was still unwilling to adapt itself to the
combinatorial guitar, you can imagine it in the post Sturm und Drang.
Guitar was always the Ancient Regime’s instrument, of Louis XIV,
and Berlioz in his music certainly was not celebrating the memory of
the victims of the Vendée genocide. If the romantic sound tends to
envelop the audience, guitar, in contrast, has a sound that tends to
draw to itself the listener. Enchanting him. But here happens
something extraordinary, unique and even tragic in the history of
music. From the point of view of psychoanalysis it is a process that
would call for the” removal of a schizophrenic unconscious desire”.
The novelty expressed by the romantic sound, his ecstatic dimension
is so predominant that prevails even on the imaginary mythic-symbolic
embodied by the plucked string instruments (therefore also in the
processing of the most archaic type guitar lute, harp). Imagery that
is still very much present in the composers (those celebrated by
Canon) who removed the guitar from their practice. You can think
about of the centrality of archaic harp or lute in all processing of
romantic poetry. Another example that would be worth deepening: the
harp-lute of Beckmesser in Meistersinger Wagner. I would not dragging
it too long but, for better or for worse this consideration for me
has important implications for the entire history of the guitar. Here
there is also material, as he wrote Quirino Principe, to define "what
the music is whatever its historical epiphany ... its essence, beyond
existence."
I
have noticed in recent years a gradual rapprochement between the two
aspects of avant-garde music, on the one hand the academic side and
the other one brought forward by musicians far away from the
classical and coming from areas such as jazz, electronics and extreme
rock like Fred Frith, John Zorn, the New York downtown scene and some
electronic music labels such as Sub Rosa and Mille Plateux influenced
by the thought of Deleuze and Guattari. What do you think of these
possible interactions and do you think that there is “room” for
them in Italy? In addition, we often hear about improvisation,
sometimes random improvisation within the contemporary music
sometimes confusing it with game of chances as for Cage, what meaning
has improvisation in your music research?
Never
as today in Italy there are now amazing musical talents, between
performers and composers and electronic musicians. Regardless of the
institutions and their degeneration is an extraordinary period for
both the experimental music as for the academic. The difference in
our country is made by the individual, hardened by all the possible
difficulties to emerge. On contamination between academia and
experimentation I have many doubts but I hope, in the near future, to
be able to hear my voice. My insatiable curiosity led me to attend
both worlds ... but I do not know if you know Cristina Campo’s
verse:
"Two
worlds -and I come from the other."
Improvisation
for me has a very great importance especially in electroacoustic
music. But I was never interested in documenting the act of
improvisation itself.
Apart
from the use of the computer what approach do you follow to compose?
Do you use only the computer or do you prefer a more "traditional"
way? Do you write on pentagram or do you use other systems such as
diagrams, drawings, etc.?
If
it comes to writing music I actually almost always use first pen and
paper. Not for a quirk retro because objectively it is less tiring
write music directly on computer. But the hand’s ancient gesture
imprints more easily in the mind and helps me a lot especially in the
pre-compositional development. Then I take a lot of notes in a
completely disorder. But not always proceed in this way. Sometimes I
use OpenMusic (or PWGL) and Finale opened simultaneously to generate
new material. The transition between these softwares or of these with
the first method is non-linear and unpredictable. In between there
are many prints, many cuts and a lot of dutch tape. I use drawings
and diagrams mainly for electronic music or chamber music. They are
not prescriptive but a repertoire of possibilities regarding the
different parts assembly (these are often improvised on
electro-acoustic instruments, especially nowadays with tapes and
pedals). These patterns refer to narrative procedures and / or
typical of the audiovisual film so as to oppose each other editing
and montage techniques.
What
are your next projects?
After
four
years
since
my last “musique
concrete”
production I’ m
finally
finishing
my
first
electronic music solo.
It
'a
long suite tentatively
titled
Come
to Venus, Melancholy
(the
story by Thomas
Disch).
I
then
picked up
an
old project
of
a series of
scenes
from
Faust
for
viola
d'amore
and
electronics
but
I have not
the
faintest
idea
where and how it
will
end.
Recent
news
is
the
beginning of a
collaboration
with the
online
newspaper L'Intellettuale
Dissidente
for
which
I
will deal with Traditional and
Avant-Garde
music,
finally
in
a
post-ideological
perspective,
with
no easy
concessions
to
the simplifications, that will be followed
by critical
insights,
news
and
advice
listening.
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