Category: Acousmatic

(1996) electroacoustic music on a Montale-s poem [8’ 44”]

Premiered at Teatro Civico di Savona, December 1996

Commissioned by Comune di Savona for the Eugenio Montale Centennial

I was always struck by the Montale capability to melt the judgements which are crystallized into the words. He uses simple and concrete words providing them with a strong abstract character: the dream of much of my music.

Inventario delle eclissi (Eclipses Inventory) is a work on words’motivation. Motivation represents the sense prehistory; motivation is not lost, it just disappeared in part, it is eclipsed. Moreover I am convinced of the fact that all the transformations on a sound help to understand it, to “explain” it. This is the reason why I choose to work with the single words of the poem. The kind of transformation of the word-sounds is related to its placing on two different formal spaces. The first one is a sonological space for the arrangement of sounds on Brightness and Attack Steepness dimensions. The second one is a semantic space (the dimensions being motivation classification, multiple meaning, phonetic similarity, meaning similarity and meaning adjacency).

The work is divided into three parts, as the poem is if we analize it following who is going to narrate. The time-density score for each part has been generated automatically with different programs – written by the author – following a path that starts with a more or less plain intelligibility of the treated words to reach increasing fragmentation. A higher level of abstraction is then supported by a collage of the original speech.

Gianni Revello, congenial to the Montale spirit of suspension, revolt, abandonment and voluntary exclusion, out of friendship gave me his voice. This inventory I offer to him for his time’s collection.

L’oboe

Talvolta il Demiurgo, spalla di Dio e Vicerè quaggiù,
rimugina su quali macchinazioni
gli attribuiscano i suoi nemici,
i fedeli al suo Dio perché quaggiù
non giungono gazzette e non si sa
che siano occhi e orecchie. Io sono al massimo
l’oboe che dà il la agli altri strumenti
ma quel che accade dopo può essere l’inferno.
Un giorno forse potrò vedere anch’io,
oggi possente e cieco, il mio padrone
e nemico ma penso che prima si dovrà inventare
una cosa da nulla, il Tempo, in cui
i miei supposti sudditi si credano sommersi.

Ma, riflette il Demiurgo, chissà fino a quando
darò la mano (o un filo) al mio tiranno? Lui stesso
non ha deciso ancora e l’oboe stonicchia.

Eugenio Montale

Sometimes the Demiurge, shoulder of God and viceroy down here,
Brood over which machines
the enemies of him attributes him,
The faithful to the God of him because down here
Journals are not coming and you don’t know
Whether they are eyes and ears. I am at most
The oboe that sounds the A to the orchestra
But what happens after can be hell.
One day maybe I will be able to see too,
today mighty and blind, my owner
and enemy but I think you will have to invent before
one thing from nothing, Time, in which
My supposed subjects are credited.

But, reflects the Demiurge, who knows until
Will I give my hand (or a thread) to my tyrant? Himself
He has not yet decided and the oboe is out of tune.

(1995) electroacoustic version [18’ 29”]

Premiered at XIII CIM, Forte spagnolo, L’Aquila, September 2nd 2000

The strong and geometric form used comes from the chosen poem metre here represented:

The above structure is presented 15 times – one for each strophe. Each time superposing to the preceeding one which is time stretched. So the first presentation starts at the beginning and lasts until the end, the second one starts at 70” and lasts to the end too, and so on every 70”.

I covered this form with mist to break the poem tale. The  purpose is to experience difficulty in understanding the form built up by 15 different ancient vocal styles. One style for each strophe, from the Jewish Salmody to Andrea and Giovanni Gabrieli. Most of the models used come from the Western sacred vocality, above all from the Venetian one. Not by chance, because the Biennale di Venezia music festival – that commissioned the work – occured within the Basilica di San Marco Dedication Nineth Century Celebration and was titled “L’ora di là dal tempo. Moments of spirituality in contemporary music”.

The computer is used basically to multiply Marianne voice. Ideally to increase it as many times as the woman in the poem crosses her own image, to achieve an unpleasant state for the singer to hear her own voice unceasingly rising in hugely  magnified details.

Sounds and noises ideally coming from the periods evoked by the different styles (harp, fiddle, lute, organ, strings, brass, market noises, …)  trickle into the mist of this vocal polyphony.

This electroacoustic version is preferable performed through the 8 tracks tape. It allows a quite large range of interpretation as concerns the mixing of its complex compound of elements.

Forma di nebbia is the third  part of the cycle for female voice and electronics “L’olio con cui si condiscono le parole” (a chamber theatre musical work commissioned by La Biennale di Venezia 1995, never produced for the scene) and it is dedicated to Mario Messinis, with all my gratitude for having let come to the surface the little oil there is in my work.

When forms are not yet distinguishable or when old disappearing forms are not yet substituted by new and clear ones.

(1990-91) electroacoustic music [CD Twilight 07 02] [4’ 58”]

Premiered at IX CIM, Auditorium Montale del Teatro “Carlo Felice”, Genova, November 14th 1991

Through a chance path (a game) I received, from a cagean friend, 70 wood screws as a prize. These screws represent for this friend of mine the essence of a computer music composer.

Like the screws Cage inserted into the piano strings to make his prepared piano, in this work 70 Italian phonemes have been shouted onto the piano strings. The piano resonances which arise, because of the special way in which they have been produ­ced, assume a vocal nature. This material, both natural and tran­sformed through filtering, transposing, mixing, is placed side by side with synthetic sounds chosen from a timbre space the extre­mes of which are coloured noise and quasi-harmonic spectra.

The form of the piece follows closely John Cage 4’33”. In fact it is divided into three parts of the same length of those of the famous “silence piece”. First part is just a crescendo with homogeneous material. Second part proceeds with a centripe­tal motion: the last sounds internal articulation evokes the for­mal articulation of the whole part (from great density of hetero­geneous material to a desolate rarefaction). During the third part concrete sounds (piano resonances and phonemes) and synthe­tic sounds fuse and turn into timbrally ambiguous creatures.

Within each part the material is organized with the help of computer programs made on purpose for random generation of sound events. Each program has been written to produce particular formal organizations: clusters or sequences of very short sounds, sound textures which can be anticipated and/or followed by sounds which are part of them, structures of sounds linked by glissandi, long sounds very rarefied sequences. The computer programs allow a certain degree of choice, above all those concerning structure density and medium sound duration.

This work has been realized on personal computer with the synthesis and processing program Music 5, C.S.C. – University of Padova (Alessandro Colavizza) version and L.M.A. – CNRS Marseille (Daniel Arfib) version.

(1987-89) electroacoustic music [15’]

Premiered at “Avevamo nove oscillatori…”, Civica Scuola di Musica di Milano, November 18th 1989

This work is an history because is lived by individuals which choose (or choose not) different organization forms. Some of them, achieved a steady situation, tend to loose their identi­ty (or rather do not try to make an original one) to join with others in orderly, symmetrical and regular structures. Some others, although having the same origin, try to enrich their personality, also through the confrontation with others but never with the intention to join with them. Finally a few of them don’t look for an internal nor an external organization. They wander restless continuously binding and unbinding each other.

It’s an History because contains concrète fragments of History.

It’s chemical because it’s easy to establish a relation between the science which studies  formation, composition, struc­ture of artificial and natural substances and the music which forms their own sounds starting from sound “atom”. From the whole of primary elements and through strong and weak links, rise mole­cules, steady and unsteady compounds. Sometimes these compounds meet substances which are able to untie their links, projecting single elements in unpredictable directions.

It’s A Chemical History because from a frequency whole grow harmonic sounds which privilege temporal organization joining each other in rhythmic structures; inharmonic sounds which through a continuous transformation of their internal organiza­tion take the shape of very dynamic timbres; glides wandering in the frequency domain, changing continuously their – harmonic or inharmonic – spectrum, never reaching a quiet state.

It’s an homage to the “other” French revolution: the Lavoisier’s chemical revolution.

Una Storia chimica has been realized with the facilities of Centro di Sonologia Computazionale, University of Padova.

(1985-86) electroacoustic music [9’ 11”]

Premiered at Teatro Comunale di Bologna, 1987

This composition utilizes a lexicon of few simple elements (lexes) subordinated to compositional laws which do not reduce themselves to cumulative associations. They give to the whole characteristic features which are different from those of the single elements.

A first set of rules is given by a well-defined ordering of low-level parameters, those which give rise to complex tones: number of partials, entry delay, relative durations, amplitude and spectral envelopes, attack rate, slow amplitude and frequency modulations, etc.

At higher level there is a timbre space built on two dimensions which control the harmonicity of the complexes: compression-stretching and shifting. These determine one of the cues investigated by Stephen McAdams in his study on Auditory Images.

The formal rules are first used for the organization of the single sounds in rhythmic structures and then for the arrangements of these structures to form the composition’s whole.

A fundamental feature of a structure as organization of meaningful parts is self-regulation. The structure controls and adjusts itself becoming a natural phenomenon. Rhythm reaches self-regulation by simple means such as symmetry and repetition. From these considerations comes the use of simple and regular rhythmic structures with a deep repetition character. The timbre space above mentioned enhances and more often alters this self-regulation when rhythmic organization and timbral organization are in conflict.

Isolated concrete sounds represents the relation between synthetic and real worlds.

I wish to thank Graziano Tisato of Centro  di Sonologia Computazionale – University of Padova, where the work was realized.

With Toni Patella and Daniele Torresan (1983-84) voice and sound synthesis [14’ 20”]

Premiered at Audiobox, Università di Arcavacata di Rende, June 6th 1984

Commissioned by RAI-Audiobox

The work comes from the analysis of the formal parameters (duration, pitch, accent of the phonems), of the prosody of three poems (canzoni) of 13th Century written by Dante Alighieri, Guido Cavalcanti, Guido Guinizelli on the same subject: the incoming of their loved woman among the men. The relationship between such parameters and the main characteristics of the musical language, which has been already pointed out by many people, has permitted the extraction of the formal model for the composition.

We have employed the vocal synthesis model with linear prediction coding implemented on the interactive sound system ICMS, realized by Graziano Tisato, to obtain the formal data and those referred to the phonems of the poems. Such data have been opportunely processed by Pascal and Fortran programs and employed for the synthesis and signal processing by Music V, Music 360 and ICMS programs. The work was commissioned by RAI and realized with the resources of the Centro di Sonologia Computazionale, University of Padova.

The voice in the piece is Lorenzo Rizzato.

(1981-82) sound synthesis [8’ 06″]

Premiered at International Computer Music Conference, Palazzo del Cinema, Venezia, September 27th 1982

This work utilizes a timbre space built on three dimensions:

1. spectral energy distribution;
2. spectral fluctuation;
3. (coinciding with I.) high frequency energy which precedes the full attack of the tone.

The sound synthesis models used are simple waveshaping and FM; this one just for the third dimension (it adds the high-frequency energy needed).

The macrostructure of the composition is generated by the projection, on a two-dimensional space with frequency as the ordinate and time as the abscisa, of an architectural structure plan. By means of the ‘slowing perspective’ technique I achieved the desired temporal extension. As regards the choice and the treatment of the macrostructure and its internal organization, they depend exclusively on my compositional parameters: symmetry, regularity, direction, velocity, focus and flight point (terms borrowed fron the visual arts world). The internal temporal organization of the polyphonic rhythmic structures that make up the macrostructure is given by the position of the focus. This one is determined too by the parameters above mentioned.

Each structure takes the timbre that occupies the corresponding position in the timbre space.

The composition has been realized with the facilities of the Centro di Sonologia Computazionale, University of Padova.

(1980-81) sound synthesis [LP Edipan PAN PRC S20-16] [6’ 54″]

Premiered at Varadero Music Festival, Cuba, April 19^th 1981

The macrostructure is made up by seven different curves which correspond to the graphic representation, on a two-dimensional space with frequency as the ordinate and time as the abscissa, of the variations of as many circumference arcs.

This macrostructures determines the formal parameters (repetition series, action time, duration, number of voices, movement in the time-frequency space) of seven kinds of polyphonic rhythmic structures; these are graphically generated on the score mentioned above not with the intention to reach a musical parallel of them, but because previous experiences have shown that the formal perception of both visual shapes and acoustic events are ‘controlled’ by the same laws. Here I have utilized the descriptive principles which have been formulated by the Gestalt School: proximity, similarity, good continuation, etc. The law of Pragnanz, for example, favours the choice of simple, regular, symmetric shapes, and such are the structures here employed. The pure sounds that form them (sine waves with frequency jitter) lose their identity for make up the whole.

These principles being more effective when they are combined with symmetry, I have placed on the left channel the same structures of the right one in specular form.

The composition has been realized with the facilities of the Centro di Sonologia Computazionale, University of Padova.