Author: Roberto Doati

(1999) electroacoustic version [11’ 54”]

Premiered at Auditorium Cordoba University (AR), April 29th 2006

Realized with a Fellowship from Bogliasco Foundation, Centro Ligure per le Arti e le Lettere

The work has been realised during a residence at the Fondazione Bogliasco thanks to a Fellowship from the Liguria Study Centre for the Arts and Humanities. The idea of the work (in his original version  for violin, rainsticks, electronics and interactive system ad libitum) arises from the admiration of certain monochromatic paintings where, according to different matters and techniques, successive paint’s layers give rise to a surface that make “disappear” the raw material. They can be perceived as sculptures or as comprising different changing shades, depending on the light incidence on the colour.

I am struck by the little perceptual bursts due to a strong abstraction.

As in other works of mine, I started here with sound materials that include both concrète [earthly] and abstract [heavenly] elements. I have tried to realise the idea of a monochromatic surface electronically transforming the impulsive sounds of two palo de lluvia (rainsticks), a popular instrument of the South American Indian cultures. It is this granular monochrome that constitutes this electroacoustic version. The violin – as played by Marco Rogliano and submitted to certain transformations – is heard just at 4’38” for a minute, isolated from other sounds.

Thanks to Xavier Serra for his SMS program and Davide Rocchesso for his BaBo program: together with Csound I used them for the transformations of rainsticks. From the formal point of view the work follows 12 within 63 computer-generated drawings I received as a present from my very friend Gianni Revello. Some of these drawings have been submitted to the GraphSco program by Riccardo Bianchini for the extraction of musical parameters both for violin and electronic part.

I am finally indebted to Franco Avicolli, poet of abstract lands to whom I owe the discovery of pouring sounds and lasting friendships in Argentina. I wish to dedicate to him bastone armonico.

(1998) electroacoustic music for a silent movie by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy [5’ 19”]

Premiered at Accademia Musicale Pescarese, Pescara, 1998

«Our century’s reality is technology… machines have taken up the room of the past transcendental spiritualism. All of us are equal facing machines… Within the technology nor tradition nor class consciousness: we all could be masters, but also slaves.»

Moholy-Nagy, 1922

The “Lichtrequisit”, which is shot in the film, is a half sculpture/half machine made of chromium-plated metal, glass, wire and metallic bars. Moholy-Nagy always tried to interpret space within its relationship with time. Therefore all the sculpture movements – most of them slow and circular – are realized with the consciousness that the screen is nothing but flat, like a picture or a painting. Sometimes Moholy-Nagy realizes “virtual” movements through image processing techniques: negative and positive images superimposed, different shapes lightings, dazzling lightings which project shadows of sculpture parts on a white background.

My music idea was to give sound to the silent sculpture. So this is the reason why:

• sound materials are determined by sculpture materials: metal (a scratched and beated metal plate, a synthetic “saw”, a washing-machine drum), glass (scraping with broken glasses);
• sound transformations derive from Moholy-Nagy lighting technique: filtering with parameters values often taken from film frames spectra;
• I have tried to render bi-dimensional the three-dimensionality of the acoustic space. Most of the circular movements are evoked by the material – formal, timbral – character, rather than by actual sound moving.

The entirety of Moholy-Nagy experimentation led him to plan a synchronization of the “Lichtrequisit” movements with a musical score. We could imagine the rules he would have used to guide his action remembering what he said to a friend while drawing his face contours: «I can play your profile. I am curious to know how your nose will sound.» One of his experiments was to engrave alphabetical signs directly on the soundtrack. This is why on the written words images (“schwarz”, “weiss”, “grau”) appearing at the beginning of the film – like a personal “manifesto” by Moholy-Nagy – I superimposed white noise filtered with parameters (central frequency, frequency bandwidth) which follow the contours of each single letter.

Tribute to Pietro Grossi (1997) electroacoustic music [5’]

Premiered at “Festa per gli 80 anni di Pietro Grossi”, Sala Vanni, Firenze, December 11th 1997

Commissioned by Fondazione Ezio Franceschini, Firenze

1917: Pietro Grossi’s birth in Venice.

1972: the RAI (Italian National Broadcasting) broadcasts “C’è musica e musica”, a contemporary music series edited by Luciano Berio. In one of these television presentations Pietro Grossi, at that moment at the Biennale di Venezia Music Festival, is invited to speak about his computer music experiences. He is the first to promote such field in Italy.

1977: I am starting to attend the Pietro Grossi classes on Computer Music at the “Istituto di Elaborazione dell’Informazione” of CNUCE-CNR in Pisa. The most important teaching I receive is concerning the fact that the formalization of a compositional process is not limiting at all the creativeness of the composer, but extend it. I cannot forget the great emotion I felt the day I write and see my very first and trivial FORTRAN program running.

1997: I am “rebuilding” some of the commands that were part of the TAUMUS software realized in Pisa by Grossi and use them to transform those 100 seconds of the Berio television broadcasting. The Pietro Grossi and Virgilio Boccardi – the interviewer – voices and the very “naive” sounds of the TAU2 – the minicomputer with DAC used by Grossi – are granulized with a TAUMUS algorithm simulation. It generates simple combinations with 19 elements and 17 sub-elements. So the three different materials are submitted four times (each time with different values as concerns grain duration, starting point of file reading, etc.) to obtain twelve voices. I then time stretched – three times – the broadcasting to get the formal structure which reflects the “counterpoint” between Grossi, Boccardi and the TAU2. All of the sound events are achieved through reading and filtering with random controlled parameters the twelve voices. Three times the Berio’s voice in the television broadcasting is superposed to the TAU2. So I used it as amplitude modulation and filtering control signal over the TAU2 “voice”.

Thank you to Davide Rocchesso for the combinatorial algorithm and for BaBo.

8 tracks tape [CD Cybele – DEGEM 7] [13’ 32”]

Premiered at Liège University, July 1997

Sound projection: Roberto Doati

Commissioned by Centre de Recherches et de Formation Musicales de Wallonie, Liège

Felix Regula is a work commissioned by and realized at the Centre de Recherches et Formation Musicales de Wallonie in Liège. When I received the invitation to realize a new piece with instruments and electronics it has been natural for me, living in Padova, to think to Johannes Ciconia (1340-1411). Not only because the great composer and theorician from Liège lived his last years in Padova, but also for the deep interaction between science and music there is in his life and work. As a composer working with computer since long time, I developed a musical thought shaped on this new technology. As technology I do not simply mean here the machine. I am referring to the technology as an ensemble of new scientific procedures to investigate and transform the nature (tekhné = Arts and Crafts).

The ‘nature’ to be transformed is a virelai by Ciconia (Sus une fontayne) which represents for me an archetype of the interest many composers had and still have on mirror games. So in the five different versions of the piece I realized, I broke and rebuilt the form of the Ciconia virelai with musical instruments (violin, flute-flute in G, clarinet-bass clarinet-double bass clarinet) mirroring not only each other, as in the music of the past, but also in my preferred mirror: the computer technology.

The computer transformation of the instrumental sounds are therefore conceived as a sort of double of each instrument, but differently disposed in time according the esprit de géométrie peculiar of Ciconia’s work. The instruments are also acoustically treated, as the original pitches of the Ciconia’song are changed as concern the modalities of their emission using instrumental contemporary techniques (slap, tongue ram, multiphonics, etc.).

IV Felix Regula is a 8 tracks version of the piece: track 1 (violin recording), track 2 (flute recording), track 3 (clarinet recording), tracks 4-5 (electronics from violon), tracks 6-7 (electronics from flute), track 8 (electronics from clarinet). The performance of the work is totally free as concern dynamics of the different tracks.

The temporal relation between instruments and electronics could be represented as follows:

(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.