Favola for piano (1990)
Fantasia for solo flute (1990/94)
Meteore di te s’accalcano morenti for recorder (1991)
Melodietta for recorder (1991)
L'energia che dentro ti consuma for recorder (1992)
Ante-rem preludio for contrabass recorder (1992)
Third Sonata for piano (1992)
Scherzo-fantasia for piano (1993)
Musica integrale for piano (1993)
En solitudo chant for any kind of instrumental or vocal solo (1993)
Fourth Sonata for dancing pianist (1993)
Come back, come back for any bowed instrument with 4 strings (1993)
Lontano for piano (1993)
O vos omnes for vocalist (1994)
Mirabile for a silent musician (1995)
Liturgia defunctorum for singing dancer or dancing vocalist (1996)
Opera 1 for singing dancer or dancing vocalist (1997)
Opera 3 for a performer (1998)
Mumonkan for any kind of instrumental or vocal solo (2006)
So Wahr So Seiend micro-Opera for quarter-tone accordion (2009) play
Fantasia for solo flute (1990/94)
Meteore di te s’accalcano morenti for recorder (1991)
Melodietta for recorder (1991)
L'energia che dentro ti consuma for recorder (1992)
Ante-rem preludio for contrabass recorder (1992)
Third Sonata for piano (1992)
Scherzo-fantasia for piano (1993)
Musica integrale for piano (1993)
En solitudo chant for any kind of instrumental or vocal solo (1993)
Fourth Sonata for dancing pianist (1993)
Come back, come back for any bowed instrument with 4 strings (1993)
Lontano for piano (1993)
O vos omnes for vocalist (1994)
Mirabile for a silent musician (1995)
Liturgia defunctorum for singing dancer or dancing vocalist (1996)
Opera 1 for singing dancer or dancing vocalist (1997)
Opera 3 for a performer (1998)
Mumonkan for any kind of instrumental or vocal solo (2006)
So Wahr So Seiend micro-Opera for quarter-tone accordion (2009) play
Ritratto dal vero for harpsichord (2019)
SO WAHR SO SEIEND micro-Opera in 32 scenes
for quarter-tone accordion
dedicated to Krassimir Sterev
The work has to be conceived as a special kind of Opera, a micro Opera, which means a unified formal structure of 32 scenes where both instrumental/vocal sounds and body movements have to be expressed in their meaningfully artistic totality, in order to convey a strong and tense drama from the beginning to the end of the score.
In this micro-Opera the accordionist represents a micro-Opera by himself and through himself. He is instrument, voice, set, choreography, lighting, libretto, etc.
In order to move his body/head confidently through the space around him, it is advisable that the musician interpret the score sitting on a comfortable chair, possibly invisible to the audience (with neither back nor arms). The vocal sounds that the accordionist produces while playing his instrument are metaphorically related to the sound of the sea waves.
In order to be freely more expressive, he may decide to modulate them by the use of vocal internal articulations, but only in case of crescendos/diminuendos and their articulations.
Breathy sounds, by means of nose and mouth, have to be clearly sonorous in order to either be heard by the audience or for them to be related compositionally with the air sound produced by the accordion bellow.
Body/head movements of the musician should be gradual and uninterrupted, which means that never should lead to a visible rest or pause of the body itself unless a specific body/head position has to be repeated as indicated in the score.
Both right and left hands are free to move throughout the whole range of their related keyboards as long as this happens gradually and uninterruptedly during the time that the accordionist has chosen to express each bar-scene.
The directions of right hand are visually and geometrically related to the keyboard, which means that for instance the FRONT indication corresponds to the front of the hand parallel to the keyboard itself (it would be left, considering the body axis), the RIGHT indication corresponds to the upper register of the keyboard (it would be down or front, considering the body axis), etc.
M U M O N K A N
the gateless gate
for shakuachi bamboo flute
dedicated to Christopher Yohmey Blasdel
Stefano Zorzanello, flute
play
play
Originally composed for shakuachi - but also interpretable with other wind instruments - Mumonkan is inspired by the homonymous Zen writing. Conceived and realized during the Canon Foundation residence at Tokyo University of Fine Arts and Music as visiting artist and researcher in traditional Japanese music, the composition is dedicated to the great shakuachi interpreter Sensei Christopher Blasdel Yohmei. Without wanting to imitate Asian sounds or retrace exotic New Age or pseudo-Japanese imagery, the work aims to observe the shakuachi from a Western perspective, but creatively incorporating executive techniques typical of the instrument and Zen aesthetic-philosophical principles. The 48 sections of the original Mumonkan correspond to 48 fragments in the form of cards, which the performer, as soon as he enters the scene and after mixing them, places for reading in a horizontal sequence, like a score. The unpredictable arrangement of the fragments will put a strain on the flutist, who, not being able to know the order of the cards a priori, is challenged to "re-compose" the work in real time in whatever way the fragments are arranged. But in order to do this, he is faced with a great limit (in reality an executive and "energetic" stratagem): he will have to give expressive completeness and grammatical continuity to the composition, through unique and never interrupted inhalations and exhalations, uncontrolled or distracted, even if of variable speed and duration, according to his own physiology and aesthetic taste. Inhalations will be expressed by pause/silences that introduce or follow the exhalations, that is the moments of real sound presence of the performer with his instrument.
The score, “to be composed” in real time on the base of a formal skeleton that changes for every performance, is directed by a typology yielding extemporaneous creative performative decisions. The finality of the composition in fact consists of the ability of the player to “connect” creatively the resulting 48 fragments in order to communicate to the audience the idea of musical continuity.
SCHERZO-FANTASIA
for piano
Questa è una danza o un poema di suoni, irregolare e disperso tra
le nubi o gli abissi, tra l’azzurro e il nero, tra i vuoti di un universo
parallelo o da ricreare nella mente silenziosa di chi ascolta o suona un
po’ nascosto da rumori e da catene. E’ uno strano scherzo per via di un
tonalismo allargato, dell’apparente consonanza o gradevolezza teorica
all’ascolto superficiale e leggero. Il suono però, pesante e percussivo,
persuasivo nei volumi e timbriche da martello squillante e luminoso,
richiede spazio e brillantezza, come campane tubolari amplificate
dal pedale ostinato ed unità di mani e suono che disegnano finestre
metriche regolari e irregolari. Gli accenti sono ben marcati, soprattutto
tra le note grosse e grandi, viste come pietre più evidenti tra le ceneri
o lapilli velocissimi che si perdono tra i cieli di una scala universale,
tra le minuscole notine che volano come insetti minuti da incantare.
Questa è un po’ una serenata, melodiosa e siderale tra le armonie
interiori, tra le consonanze di un pianeta innamorato. Qui non si
accarezzano tonalità o serialismi, non si seducono storture o
asimmetrie per ideologiche teorie: qui comanda il senso e lo stordimento
che accordi e intensità regalano all’ascolto, e non le quinte o le
ottave, parallele a regole e divieti. Questo diatonismo visivo espresso
nella divisione netta tra la mano destra tra i soli tasti bianchi e la sinistra
adagiata su quelli invece neri, aiuta l’occhio a distinguere il piano
e i piani dei due arti, favorendo la differenza percettiva tra le timbriche
disparate o disallineate. E i frammenti poi, tratteggiati tra i gioiosi
pentagrammi, legano le mani e le dinamiche divise, quelle per cui
le note forti, più grandi delle altre dunque, vanno in primo piano. Le
altre invece sommesse e rovesciate come su un tappeto di sonorità rivolte
ai punti forti, le forti note appunto, come stelle in cielo che si fanno poi
notare sulle altre, sui puntini non certo futili, anche se con meno luce.
Il tempo può accelerare o decelerare in qualsiasi momento, e le
pause dei suoni e dei silenzi sono libere corone con funzione
strutturale: decidono da sole densità e rarefazioni che sonorità e
riverberi useranno per dare forma a questo manto senza confini certi.
Il pedale abbassato e pressato tutto il tempo, a incentivare il frastuono
dei metalli e percussioni impliciti e assorbiti tra le trame, anche se
infastidisce ortodossie e conservatorismi, fa la sua parte: come un
pennello costante che scolora su superfici lunghe e lisce come carta
che non cessa mai di esistere nella mente di chi annusa manoscritti.
Il pianoforte dunque, acceso a volumi sorprendenti da amplificazioni su
scenari o palcoscenici da stadio, visto da lontano come rarità sonora,
sarà presente e invaderà l’orecchio di chi ama suono e musica, di chi
per “per Elisa” vorrà ancora cimentarsi tra tecniche e stereotipi, di chi
vorrà intraprendere in futuro la carriera e il divismo di pianismi e
avanguardie smarriti tra i fortissimi e splendenti meccanismi di questo
Scherzo-fantasia, di questo disegno di campane a festa odoroso di poesia.
LITURGIA DEFUNCTORUM
for singing dancer or dancing singer
Daniela Orlando, performer
A liturgy for the dead, but secular, despite the clear title in Latin. To be interpreted also with a male voice, the work was created for the necessary experimentation of the Notation System with incognitos as well as the Creative Kinetography, ideated in the early '90s.
To the numerator the vocal part, to the denominator the body of the performer, conceived as a single performative entity in which voice and movements influence each other, feed each other, clash and meet in abstract structures to the reading, but very concrete and emotional in the execution phase. A challenging and problematic score, rehearsed for its first performance in Italy, thanks to the commitment and overwhelming will to overcome of the amazing performer Daniela Orlando, with whom I had already collaborated for "Mirabile".
The notation with incognitos allows the performer to choose her/his own sounds and materials, and starting from these to arrange the performance of the score. A generative musical grammar that allows great freedom, but also a necessary cage whose purpose is to organize energetically the musical form.
To the numerator the vocal part, to the denominator the body of the performer, conceived as a single performative entity in which voice and movements influence each other, feed each other, clash and meet in abstract structures to the reading, but very concrete and emotional in the execution phase. A challenging and problematic score, rehearsed for its first performance in Italy, thanks to the commitment and overwhelming will to overcome of the amazing performer Daniela Orlando, with whom I had already collaborated for "Mirabile".
The notation with incognitos allows the performer to choose her/his own sounds and materials, and starting from these to arrange the performance of the score. A generative musical grammar that allows great freedom, but also a necessary cage whose purpose is to organize energetically the musical form.
EN SOLITUDO CHANT
for any kind of solo instrument/voice
Even in a single moment, when a psyche worn out by activities of thoughts and actions (not functional to the right contemplation of a world that increasingly hides) abandons obsessive lights, penetrating and overbearing (obvious signs of a social malaise, now almost genetic) that claim to illuminate beings indifferent, unaware, automatons... Even in a single moment, when you turn off these harmful lights, everything seems to have sharper, fresh contours. And therefore expressive: of a completely natural expression. Musical. In this moment, where time and space lose their usual, traditional boundaries, a new light comes on. A light that illuminates almost exclusively the interiority, the essence of a body, or a container of great truths. A light that takes shape in a voice, through a solitary song.
EN SOLITUDO CHANT is probably the song that each of us offers to himself, tired of slavery and frustration of all kinds, daily contingencies and much more. It is one of the possible voices, but absolutely necessary, witness of sadness and contemporary social dramas, but where the whole History has always resounded. At the same time, it is a voice that looks far away at the present and the past, forgetting them. To enjoy a moment of solitude and freedom. It is a meditation on one's true nature or essence. And a forgetting of roles, makes, unnaturalness wanted by false regimes and false ideas of progress, both musical and social/political.
This voice, however, is inevitably and paradoxically imbued with that social horror, those collective dramas from which it itself wants to emerge. It is therefore a voice that sings sadness, but hopes for certainties of possible unions of love. And thinking back to the great happiness that has now passed and lived in primordial cosmic eras, imagine distant futures where towers and languages collapse. But new hugs are built up.
This particular form of solitude, of solitary singing, is only our deepest interiority from which we have always fled for some reason. The sounds, the expressions, the silences that have belonged to him since immemorial time, we have kept them buried, we have avoided them. We know them very well, but we have never heard them directly from another being. Because no one knows how an other being listens.
The main meaning of this act of composition is therefore a revelation, a reflection on something insanely utopian: to probe the psyche of a group of people while listening to music at a night concert. And by connecting to their systems of reception or perception, discovering, revealing and denuding their desires and secrets. Making them sing.
Through this unique experience of listening to music, you can even imagine a new form of musical composition: in reality, the performer is only the performer, the resonator of the inner experiences of each of the people present in the concert hall. It is only a medium, a musical instrument of any kind, interpreting songs that no one has ever listened to. The concrete musical event as a result of the performance organized for a public concert is therefore to be understood as a possible manifestation of a compositional act, philosophically understood as already existing since immemorial time, forever resonating to (and from) infinity.
EN SOLITUDO CHANT is probably the song that each of us offers to himself, tired of slavery and frustration of all kinds, daily contingencies and much more. It is one of the possible voices, but absolutely necessary, witness of sadness and contemporary social dramas, but where the whole History has always resounded. At the same time, it is a voice that looks far away at the present and the past, forgetting them. To enjoy a moment of solitude and freedom. It is a meditation on one's true nature or essence. And a forgetting of roles, makes, unnaturalness wanted by false regimes and false ideas of progress, both musical and social/political.
This voice, however, is inevitably and paradoxically imbued with that social horror, those collective dramas from which it itself wants to emerge. It is therefore a voice that sings sadness, but hopes for certainties of possible unions of love. And thinking back to the great happiness that has now passed and lived in primordial cosmic eras, imagine distant futures where towers and languages collapse. But new hugs are built up.
This particular form of solitude, of solitary singing, is only our deepest interiority from which we have always fled for some reason. The sounds, the expressions, the silences that have belonged to him since immemorial time, we have kept them buried, we have avoided them. We know them very well, but we have never heard them directly from another being. Because no one knows how an other being listens.
The main meaning of this act of composition is therefore a revelation, a reflection on something insanely utopian: to probe the psyche of a group of people while listening to music at a night concert. And by connecting to their systems of reception or perception, discovering, revealing and denuding their desires and secrets. Making them sing.
Through this unique experience of listening to music, you can even imagine a new form of musical composition: in reality, the performer is only the performer, the resonator of the inner experiences of each of the people present in the concert hall. It is only a medium, a musical instrument of any kind, interpreting songs that no one has ever listened to. The concrete musical event as a result of the performance organized for a public concert is therefore to be understood as a possible manifestation of a compositional act, philosophically understood as already existing since immemorial time, forever resonating to (and from) infinity.
COME BACK, COME BACK
for any kind of bowed instrument with 4 strings
The title itself is eloquent: come back, come back. (To me), to the lover waiting for the embraces, which form an arch inside and around us. Return, passionate arch: go (away), but please, return. The perennial gesture of the bow as a metaphor for the coming and going of love, between avenues and walks, between the going and (the) coming (...), between the erotic act that wants to raise and lower the moods and limbs, the physiological pleasures, even if in the arched instruments, right and left.
The score is certainly to be understood as a whining song. "I am looking for you, difficult to live with the nothing of your absence, and that of your body" - these are the ideal words to recite in mind and internalize in an aesthetic and poetic sense before the performance of the work.
The gestures of the bow will be emphasized. Come and go, and even when you pretend to disappear with your sound, in truth you are always there, on the horizon and behind every sound barrier, between silence and the exasperated and desperate sounds of your violin, viola, cello or double bass. And the 4 strings, as a metaphor of mind (thought), mouth (word), heart (love) and sex (intercourse).
The score is certainly to be understood as a whining song. "I am looking for you, difficult to live with the nothing of your absence, and that of your body" - these are the ideal words to recite in mind and internalize in an aesthetic and poetic sense before the performance of the work.
The gestures of the bow will be emphasized. Come and go, and even when you pretend to disappear with your sound, in truth you are always there, on the horizon and behind every sound barrier, between silence and the exasperated and desperate sounds of your violin, viola, cello or double bass. And the 4 strings, as a metaphor of mind (thought), mouth (word), heart (love) and sex (intercourse).
FANTASIA
for solo flute
Sounds of an angry and very sweet flute can be "glimpsed" from afar, you can see the emotional and physical traits. You can listen to them, sometimes distracted, sometimes with great attention, the irregular and rebellious dramaturgical path. The work, written at the age of 20 intends to propose extreme and contrasting sounds in a single compositional design aimed at surprising a classical and conventional audience, accustomed to cabalettas and pan flutes rhetotical melodies. Sooner or later a video clip will be produced.
