compositions

For solo instrument or voice (also with electronics)

CORTEX (2021) for amplified harp
FP 08.12.2023 Rotterdam Doriene Marselje, harp, V. Sannicandro, sound projection

Decays (2018) for solo cello with live sound-projection FP 25. 10. 2018 Firenze. Michele Marco Rossi, cello Tempo Reale, F. Canavese, V. Sannicandro, live-electronics.

Burial Songs (2014) for amplified violin (or violin in a resonant space)
FP 09. 11. 2014 Düsseldorf, P. Rosner, violin

Songs of Anxiety (2012) for amplified flute
FP 27.07.2012 Darmstadt, Matteo Cesari, flute, V. Sannicandro, sound projection

SonnetX (2008) for tuba and L.E.
FP 30. 01. 2008 Karlsruhe, M.Poore, tuba, 
J. Martin, V. Sannicandro, live-electronics, ZKM-technique

Aliae naturae (2004) for violin and L.E.
FP 14. 10. 2004 Paris, Jeanne-Marie Conquer, IRCAM-technique

Chains (2002/2003) for solo oboe
FP 21. 02. 2003 S. Francisco (USA), P. Veale

Apogeo/Ipogeo (2001-2010) for solo trombone and echo-instrument
FP 29. 04. 2010 Tokyo, K. Murata, K. Nakamura

Strali (2001) for solo voice
FP 28. 11. 2002 Frankfurt, S. Kammer
FP 02. 12. 2002 Paris, M. Jordan (version with electr.)

Le nuove forme (2000) for piano
FP 11. 05. 2000 Köln, F. Hölscher

‘Ein (1998-99) for solo viola (UNAVAILABLE FOR PERFORMANCE)
FP 08.08.1999 Klagenfurt, Valerio Sannicandro

SCAN (1998) for flute (UNAVAILABLE FOR PERFORMANCE)
FP 03.09.1998 Darmstadt, Laura Zattra

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Chamber music or Ensemble (also with electronics)

ITER-RETI (2022) for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano, vibraphone, live-electronics in two spaces FP 28.02.2023 Milano. Ensemble Divertimento S. Gorli, conductor V. Sannicandro, live-projection FP 04.03.2023 München. Ensemble der/gelbe/klang A. Merino, conductor V. Sannicandro, live-projection

RETICULATUM (2022) for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano, vibraphone FP 04.03.2023 München. Ensemble der/gelbe/klang A. merino, conductor

Ephemeris/Ékleipsis (2015) for clarinet in Bb (also contrabass clarinet), sax soprano (also baritone sax) and live-electronics in two adjacent environments (Ephemeris for Bb clarinet and soprano sax can be performed also separately, ca.15 min.) FP 25.09.2015 Berlin. I. Vilhjalmsson (clarinets), J. Saez Belmonte (saxophones), V. Sannicandro, G. García Karman, H. Fritsch (live-electronics)

Tre nuclei (2017) for flute, clarinet and violin FP 17.10.2017 Parma. Ensemble Prometeo

Tactile Songs (2017) for bass-flute, cello, guitar, percussion FP 29.05.2017 Münster. P. Tseliapnu, M. De Oliveira Pinto, R. Evers,  G. Voss

Tactile Songs II (2018) for bass-flute, clarinet, viola, percussion FP 13.02.2018 Freiburg. Ensemble Recherche

Tactile Songs IV(2021) for sax, clarinet, violin, piano (prepared) FP 18.02.2022 Madrid. Ensemble Opus 22

KERN (2018) for clarinet, trombone, double-bass, harp, two percussions FP 28.05.2018 Münster. Ensemble Festival ZeitKlang, V. Sannicandro, conductor

SEA FORMS (2020) for flute, oboe, clarinet, violin, viola, cello, harp, piano, percussion FP 07.01.2021 Paris. Ensemble Cl’Instant donné.

LIMINA (2018) for clarinet (bass-clarinet), violin, viola, cello, double-bass, piano (with assistant) FP 22.01.2019 Paris. Ensemble Court-circuit, J. Deroyer, conductor

AQUAE (2014) for clarinet, horn, two violins, viola, cello, double-bass, piano FP 09. 11. 2014 Berlin. Orchestra Academy of the Berliner Philharmoniker, D. Ward, conductor

ILLUMINA FACIEM (2016) for two guitars and electronics. FP 29.10.2016 Magdeburg. Duo Conradi-gehlen, V. Sannicandro, electronics.

Silvae (2013) for bass-flute, english horn, bass-clarinet, harp, violin, viola, cello. FP 27. 09. 2013 Detmold. Ensemble Horizonte, V. Sannicandro, conductor

lasco-editLasco (2010) for violin, viola, cello, double-bass, piano and two percussions. FP 28. 05. 2010 Cottbus. Ensemble Mosaik and members of Philh. Orchester Cottbus, E. Christ, conductor

Odi di Levante (2008) for flute, clarinet, violin, viola, cello and piano. FP 11. 04. 2008 Essen. AlterEgo Ensemble, V. Sannicandro, conductor

A Book of Depths (2019), for 1) flute, violin and perc. ad lib. 2) oboe, harp and perc. 3) clarinet, cello, piano and perc. ad lib. 4) flute, clarinet, violin, viola, piano and perc. ad lib. 5) harp and percussion.

A Book of Clouds (2015-2016), for electric string quartet (or string quartet) and live-electronics. FP 12.10.2016 Venice (electric string quartet) Repertorio Zero, FP 06.12.2016 Tokyo (acoustic string quartet version) Hemmi String Quartet.

A Book of Forms (2014) for oboe, clarinet, soprano sax, trumpet, trombone and percussion FP 12.11.2014 Vigo. Ensemble Vertixe Sonora.

A Book of Waves (2012) for Theremin, Ondes Martenot and live-electronics, FP 06.05. 2012 Paris. Marc Chourain, Thomas Bloch, Valerio Sannicandro,Benjamin Miller (live-electronics)

A Book of Myths (2008) for flute, violin, viola, cello, two percussions, electric guitar and hammond organ (or synthesizer), FP 20. 06. 2008 Strasbourg, Ensemble LINEA, Jean-Philippe Wurtz, conductor

…all shadows of red and yellow II (2008) for alto-flute, clarinet in Bb. viola, celloepisto and harp. FP 07 .03. 2009 Cottbus. Members of Philharmonisches Orchester Cottbus, Evan Christ, conductor

constructa (2007) for flute, clarinet, trombone, violin, viola, cello and piano. FP 22. 12. 2007 Dublin. Argento Chamber Ensemble, M. Galante, conductor

…all shadows of red and yellow (2006) for alto-flute, viola and harp. FP 19. 11 .2006 Paris. Members of Ensemble Intercontemporain

A Book of Ayres (2006) for speaker, contrabass clarinet, horn, harp, percussion, cello and double-bass. FP 03. 06. 2007 Mönchengladbach. Musikfabrik NRW, T. Engel, conductor

clinamen (2006) for bass-flute, engl. horn and bassoon
FP 28. 06. 2006 München, Aeolian trio

Llanto (2005) for oboe and double-bell trumpet (or traditional
trumpet). FP 8.8.2006 Darmstadt, P. Veale, oboe, M. Blaauw, double-bell trumpet

Quadranti (2004) for four trombones
FP 08. 06. 2004 Stuttgart, slide quartet

Enfasi cobalto (2001/2003) for oboe, clarinet, viola, cello, piano and percussion. FP 18.02. 2004 Strasbourg, ensemble LINEA, J. P. Wurtz. ESZ.12280

Scripta (2003) for alto-flute, double-bass-clarinet, cello, percussion, alto-sax and fluegelhorn. FP 13. 02. 2004 Munich, members of Orchester des Staatsoper, V. Sannicandro. ESZ.12315

Pour te sauver de l’ombre (2002) for flute, clarinet, violin, cello and piano. FP 22. 10. 2002 Köln, Ensemble e-mex, V. Sannicandro, conductor. ESZ.12263

Des horizons liquides (2002) for percussion ensemble
FP 28. 09. 2002 Stockholm. KROUMATA

Profili del grido (2001) for flute, oboe, 2 clarinets, horn, trumpet, trombone, tuba and percussion. FP 24. 07. 2001 Avignon, ensemble UMZE, V. Sannicandro

Repercussio (2002) for cello and piano
FP 23. 05. 2002 Recklinghausen, J. Ludwig, M. v.d. Heydt. ESZ.12409

Renaissance (2000) for violin and piano
FP 12. 02. 2001 Bari, N.Roubiau, D. Capotorto

Due esegesi del canto (2000) for clarinet in Bb, sopran sax in Bb, harp, guitar, double bass, percussion and two echo-instruments (version for accordion and recorder). FP 02. 02. 2002 Oldenburg, ensemble oh-ton

Ades (1999-2000) for bass flute, bass clarinet, cello, percussion and 4-channel tape. FP 08. 12. 2000 (old version) Essen, ensemble e-mex, V. Sannicandro. FP (new version) 11. 10. 2003 Leipzig, Forum Ensemble, T. Engel, conductor

Ma le lacrime etterne (2000) for female voice, violin, percussion, cello, bass clarinet, piano (prepared). FP 09. 10. 2000 Paris, ensemble Aleph, M. Jordan, voice

IRradio (2000) for flute in G, percussion, cello, bass clarinet, piano (prepared). FP 20. 02. 2001 Köln, ensemble e-mex, C. Wagner

Corps célèstes (1999) for ensemble, flute (in G and C), bass flute, cello, bass clarinet (or tenor sax), trombone, tuba, piano, percussion. FP 28. 07. 2000 Darmstadt, Ensemble der Ferienkurse, Mikel Toms

Dans un sentiment sourd et tumultueux (1999) for flute and piano
FP 11. 05. 2000 Köln, E. Drescher, flute, M. v. d. Heydt, piano

Per il vuoto sospeso dell’assenza (1998) for flute (in G, piccolo, bass flute) and clarinet (in Eb, bass clarinet). FP 28. 05. 1999 Köln, C. M. Bott, flute, J. Striepens, clarinet. ESZ.12279

Apoteosi del blu (1998) for flute (also G- and bass flute), clarinet in Bb (also bass clarinet), violin, cello, piano (prepared) and percussion. FP 09. 01. 1999 Frankfurt, Ensemble Modern, R. Rivolta

Memos (1998-99) for clarinet in Bb (also bass clarinet), cello and percussion. FP 12. 03. 1999 Darmstadt, Ensemble Phorminx (UNAVAILABLE FOR PERFORMANCE)
Transmissions (1997) for ensemble (1-1-1-1 / 0-1-1-0 / piano, 2 perc. 2-1-1-1). FP 08. 11. 1997 Köln, Ensemble Köln, B. Kedem (UNAVAILABLE FOR PERFORMANCE)
3 Lieder der Erinnerung (1997) for female voice and viola
FP 18. 06. 1997 Köln, J. Hagemann, V. Sannicandro (UNAVAILABLE FOR PERFORMANCE)
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For music theater and voices (also with electronics)

VISIO – FICTIO (2021) for 24 voices and 3 violas (in a separate space) FP 04.02.2023 Stuttgart SWR Vokalsolisten, G. Strosser, E. Spies, P. Torres, violas, P. Rundel conductor, Valerio Sannicandro, sound-projection Recording>>

VOIDS (2019) for six voices and live-electronics FP 24.05.2019 Heidelberg Schola Heidelberg, Walter Nußbaum, conductor, Sebastian Schottke, Valerio Sannicandro, live-electronics and sound-projection

Zaubersprueche (2018) for six voices FP 19.01.2019 Berlin Neue Vocalsolisten Recording>>

Last Words (2018) for Noh-voice (or traditional voice), two violins, viola, cello FP 15.12.2018 Tokyo. Ryoko Aoki, Ensemble Arcipelago, V. Sannicandro, conductor

Corps/Riens (2015) for female voice and five instruments (flute, clarinet, violin, piano, percussion), texts by Benoît Gréan. FP 13.11.2015 Kyoto. Ensemble Kujoyama, Maki Ota (soprano), V. Sannicandro

Mare Logos (2015) for bass-flute and twelve voices. FP 08.11.2015 Arezzo. R. Fabbriciani, Vox Cordis, L.Donati

Doglie (2013) chamber opera for three female voices, actor and ensemble (flute, two violins, piano/keyboard, two percussionists). FP 13.09.2013 Spoleto (Italy). Ensemble del Teatro Sperimentale, M.Angius

Trois Chants Noh (2011) for Noh-singer and flute (textes from Hagakure). FP 23.04.2011 Strasbourg, Ryoko Aoki, Ayako Okubo

Finesterrae (2016) for 5 voices, viola (also e-viola, viola d’amore) and live-electronics (textes by T. Campanella). FP 01.07.2016 Stuttgart, Neue Vocalsolisten, Garth Knox, Experimentalstudio Freiburg

Anteterrae (2005) for 32 voices. FP 20.06.2007 Paris. Choir Accentus, N.Krueger

Epistolae (2003) for male voice, bass flute, cello and percussion. FP 05. 10. 2003 Dresden, Ensemble SurPlus, J. Avery, conductor (UNAVAILABLE FOR PERFORMANCE)
Epistolae II (2003) for voice (M/F) and percussion
FP 15. 11. 2003 Boswil (Switzerland), A. Harpaz, voice, M. Favrod, percussion

Epistolae III (2003) for bass-flute, percussion and L.E.
FP 03. 12. 2004 München, C. Levine, flute, S. Blum, percussion
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For large ensemble / Orchestra (also with soloists or electronics)

Windstroeme (2012) for orchestra with amplification (4-2-1e.h.-2-2bclar. 3 4-4-3- tba. 4 perc. harp synth. piano 12-10-8-7-6) FP 11. 01. 2013 Cottbus. Phil.Orchester Cottbus, Marc Niemann, conductor, V. Sannicandro, sound-projection. Recording>>

CORI (2008) for solo violin and orchestra (2-0-0-0 2-0-0-0 3 perc. harp 12-12-10-8-6) FP 21. 02. 2013 Torino, orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della RAI, Francesco D’Orazio, violin, Fabio Maestri, conductor.

Forces Motrices (2010) for orchestra (3-2-EH-3-3 4-1-3-0 4 perc. harp  14-12-10-8-6 theremin live-electr.) FP 04. 03. 2011 München, Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunk, Arturo Tamayo, conductor.

Beweise über die Abwesenheit der Seele (2008) for orchestra (4-3-4-3 4-4-4-1 4 perc. harp  13-11-8-8-6) FP 28. 11. 2008 Cottbus, Philharmonisches Orchester Cottbus, Evan Christ, conductor. ESZ. 13267

Ius Lucis (2006/2007), for two ensembles in two theatres and live-electronics. (Ensemble 1: 2-1-1-0 2-0-0-0 perc.-keyb. 1-1-1-1-0)
(Ensemble 2: 0-1-1-0 0-0-2-0 0-0-1-1-0). FP 06. 06. 2007 Paris
Ensemble Intercontemporain, François-Xavier Roth, Clement Power, conductors, S. Lemouton, V. Sannicandro, live-electronics, IRCAM-technique

Fibrae (2005) for two soloists,chamber orchestra and live-electronics (2-0-2-0- 2-0-2-0 Harp-Keyb., 2 perc. 3-0-3-3-2)
FP 15. 10. 2005 Donaueschingen, P. Veale, oboe, M. Blaauw, double-bell trumpet, Hilversum Radio Chamber Orchestra, P. Eötvös,
Experimentalstudio d. Strobel-Stiftung d. SWR Freiburg, A. Richard, J. Haas, V. Sannicandro, live-electronics

Environments (2000) for chamber orchestra
FP 20. 05. 2000 Gewandhaus Leipzig, Mendelssohn Kammerorchester, Evan Christ (UNAVAILABLE FOR PERFORMANCE)

Births (2002) for large ensemble with solo percussion (2-1-2-1-sax 1-1-2-1 2 perc., piano, cemb., harp, guit., 1-1-2-2-1) with amplification. FP 19. 07. 2002 Darmstadt, Ensemble Resonanz, T. Engel, Laszlo Hudacsek, percussion. ESZ.12385

Strali (2002) for voice, electronic sounds and orchestra (4-3-3- 4-4-4 6 perc. 14-12-8-8) FP 07. 11. 2003 München, M. Jordan, voice, M. Poore, electronics, Orchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, U. Zimmermann, conductor. ESZ.12389
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Work descriptions

Le nuove forme

Imagining to work with a computer, and imitating the procedure that I usually follow when I’m composing an electroacustic piece, I prepared first the “row” material (comparable to three “samples”): in this case I pre-composed three objects consisting of very different musical characters, ranges (that means also timbres) and harmonic qualities.
The first object, in the very high region of the instrument, is thought as “repertoire” of pitches in which some of them are on an upper degree of importance: they appear often and create a sort of harmonic polarity.
The second one, in the middle register, is a monody based on four main pitches, simple and contrasting with the other two, is the only one that appears in nearly its original form. The third one is a chord sequence in the low register. The way these objects are used explains the title of the piece: “form” as aggregation of materials forming a sort of “crystals”. On the other hand the interaction between them reminds some sound-synthesis processes like PHASING, CROSS-SYNTHESIS, GRAIN-SYNTHESIS and it can be seen like the gradual process to reach, from the “raw” sound material, a more “defined” and “shaped” form (the sections notated with measures) that appears at the end as it were its final result.
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Cortex
Two very distant soinc layers create a continuous, breathtaking line made of moving agglomerates, explosive complex sounds, sudden screaming gestures that project auditors into a kaledoskopic – but still dark – sound world. Onone side, the use of very low frequencies – especially at narrow intervals – creates a very haptic acoustic feeling (pitch- interferences), on the other side the exploration and combination of high and noisy pitches will produce extreme gestures, colors and sonorities.

Decays
A cellist, in deepest darkness in the middle of a concert hall, transmits impulses, long and short ones, signals: this is the image explaining at the best the musical attitude of this work for solo cello. No traditional musical figure appears throughout the work, eventually only few reminiscences and residual fragments, the rest is a continuous morse-code (words are taken from some W. Withman poetry), a flux of rather industrial sounds. The title explains also another aspect of its musical character: only descending figures are used, in form of various glissati, forming complex rhythmical structures intersecting together.
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Burial Songs
What is singing? Why singing? And when? What happens – while singing – to us, to time perception? Is any ritual moment its quintessence? Maybe a dialogue, if not between two human beings, between two different sides of what we consider ourself? Therefore, is a song perhaps a kind of mirror? Or rather a chance to sink into the abyss of now? By suspending the usual stream of time or by accelerating it?
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Songs of Anxiety
This work is composed for a flutist, male or female, performing with extroversion and theatre-like attitude. Every music element appearing in the score, sound, figure or action needs to be expressed according a gesture that discloses a peculiar psychologic mood. Tension, fear, release, etc. must be placed in time and in a succession that creates a dramaturgy: such gestures are disclosing a dialogue with a deeper state of conscience through seven sections.
1. exposure (distance) – 2.panic – 3.obsession – 4.exposure II (shortness of breath) – 5.exposure III (pressure of blood) – 6.grief – 7.despair
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Strali

„Strali“ means, in a rather old Italian language, something like „light rays“. It’s in assonance to the Michelangelo’s poetry, to the moments, among his verses, where a particular word-association shines with a stronger expression, that this title has been chosen. But also to one of his recurring themes, the light (together with the ideas of fire, life that progressively dies, darkness. tears and death), that is musically expressed by the „airy“ timbres of the voice. The vocal techniques used (from the normal voice to the half-inhaled/exhaled) are thought to create not only a musical expression that translates the sense of despair in Michelangelo’s text, but also to escape the traditional “bel canto”, and composing, thus, the same interpretation. The chosen fragments (coming from several poetries) are grouped according those „themes“ and each one has been assigned an own „harmonic field“, i.e. different pitch-constellations that are creating, together with the same text material, a kind of „polyphony“.
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Apogeo / Ipogeo

The work consists of three sections called APOGEO (the farthest point), in which the trombone simulates sound movements going toward different directions; TRANSITIO (passage) in which the Trombone and the piano are playing extremely melted together); IPOGEO (“the closest point”) in which the trombone is hidden and the piano prolong the low tones. Beyond the theme of “space” and “distance”, the main mood of the work is definitely dramatic: an instrumental dialogue of a solo instrument (split in order to create a multiple “linear polyphony”) with a sort of resonances (played by the piano, in this version) that reaches often a high degree of intensity up to madness.

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Chains

The work, composed for Peter Veale, consists basically of six multiphonic sounds: their partial frequencies are used to build new harmonic fields and to re-build the same origin source. The beginning of each process is marked by a „refrain“ where the multiphonics, heard in fast succession, prepare the new field in which the transformations will occur.
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Llanto
If the title comes from the character of its musical gestures and does not need further explications, the choice of the two instruments leads to an own way to think to spatialisation.
Following an attitude whose beginning is impossible to define (it has been somehow constantly present in my work) and developed in „ anteterrae “ (for 32 voices, commissioned by accentus chamber choir), I consider each sound-source in its „depth“, i.e. I work with it in a way that simulates trajectories, approaching movements, for instance, from a frontal placement.
The choice of oboe and trumpet was thus made in force of this idea: two instruments one of them (the double-bell trumpet) that is particularly able to reproduce (with different mutes: effect of „filtering“ or with the reversed position of the second bell) an impression of a spatialised sound.
Similar effects are reproduced by the oboe by changing timbres on the same pitch, as well as with quick changes of dynamic nuances.
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ITER-RETI
A work conceived for six instruments in two spaces. In the first one (RETI – for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, vibraphone with conductor) a dense structure of sonic layers builds complex and at the same time this sound-aggregates; in the second one (ITER – for solo piano and live-electronics) some sounds coming from the first space are transformed and spatialized throighg 4 or 8 loudspeakers creating a dialogue with the solo piano. The audience is divided in two groups, one for each space, after the intermission they switch room and the piece is performed again so that two different perspectives of a dyptich are perceived. Along such a network of dense musical cells transformed by live sound-projections (short and rapid sound-movements, vibrating and oscillating timbres, strong and incisive screams) music develops according several states – dramatic, primitive and mysterious – often projected at the borderline of perception.
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RETICULATUM
Reticulatum is a dense and sonic stream built on a network of musical layers evolving continuously in time. It is conceived according a strict symmetrical metric form, where pitches are explored according a musical languages that comes from a spatial approach to sonic material. Founded on a strong abstraction, this work represents a sound development going through very diverse states: dense, thin, ephemeral, primitive and intricate structures.
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SEA FORMS
After being fascinated by the opening pages of L’Arcipelago by the Italian philosopher Massimo Cacciari – a keen philosophical reflection on the five names that ancient Greeks gave to sea – i found very inspiring to read that scientists divide oceans into five layers: Epipelagic, Mesopelagic, Bathypelagic, Abyssopelagic, Hadopelagic. I could then imagine a correspondence between the meaning of those ancient names and the phisics and characteritics of the five layers, that was the starting point to develop my idea. In A Book of Depths (2019) i firstly designed five moments each one with a peculiar sonic identity and a different „luminosity“ simulating therefore a progressive descent into depth. In the further expansion of my idea, such elements would combine together, one by one, reaching a final degree of density and comlexity by creating diverse superpositions and interpolations.
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Tre Nuclei
A contemplative work, Tre nuclei is a three-movement work made of sound segments, without any attempt of dramaturgy or rhetorical discourse, three states of sound frozen before they could even become a form. Each section starts with a pulsation introducing each time into a different sonic facet: ephemeral or intense, with a huge density and with high rarefaction, these three moments are intended to be performed like etchings, avoiding any affection but interpreting all notes and actions with extreme decision, differentiating all articulations very carefully. This work has been composed foe Ensemble Prometeo and Festival Traiettorie for its jubilee. Tre nuclei ed echi is a work that enhance the piece into a spatial-acoustic perspective: performers are playing in a distant position (around the audience) and the cello provides a series or echoes, resonances coming from the main sonic texture.
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Tactile Songs (I – II – IV) (2017 – 2021)
The series of works called Tactile Songs is intended to be performed autonomously as well as together, all works are germinating from a single unit and can be organized as a quartet, octet or combination of several instruments. The timbre palette used in these works is made of ephemeral sounds and pulsating aggregates, conceived to build a continuous and restless flow of sonic changes. Composed according the idea of morphing, four instruments are imitating timbres that are actually quite far from their idiomatic range. So, by inverting the usual „space“ of each instrument, roles are upside down: it happens that the percussionist performs a sort of singing sequence (scratching on the membrane) or, for instance, the bass-flute plays very percussive impulses. The haptic side of instrument playing is here emphasized as much as possible so that all instruments are, in various ways, attracted by the bass-drum sounds leading the musical discourse. The act of singing, in this composition, is conceived according a relatively dark perspective, an inner singing maybe, expressed by a constant unsureness or instability, a dramatic feeling with a somehow acid attitude, nothing opnly spiritual but mainly connected to body, as metaphor of s state of being.
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Kern
This spatial composition has been written not only for the peculiar space of the LWL museum in Münster (Germany), but also with it: all musical materials (pitches, rhythms, etc.) have been extrapolated from the acoustics of the Foyer (according a resonance mode analysis), as a direct exploration of a physical room-acoustic phenomenon. Thus. the character of this piece approaches much more that of electronic music, since dramaturgy is strongly structured upon the actual perception of timbres, distances and sound-aggregates, therefore keeping a quite strong abstract quality. Although instruments are placed in several positions (changing at each section), at the end of the work, during a short final section, the harmonic nucleus of the room-resonances is heard, as a pitch kernel, the core of the whole work. I would like to thank the Staab-Architekten Studio for providing all information and schemes concerning the LWL-Musueum Foyer that have been necessary for the composition of this work.
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Limina
Limina, from Limen [meaning thresholds, doorsteps, by extension boundaries] can be at the same time an insurmountable, impassable line, an icy horizon, announcing a new space, a different place and sonic situation. Concerning the nature of such line, sometimes it looks like a zero-point, sometimes as an asymptote (where no encounter is possible), sometimes as a tragical demarcation influencing – or even stopping – any further musical development. Each time that such division sign appears, we are introduced or abruptly projected into another region, corresponding as well to the different positions of the clarinet player on stage. Nevertheless such new areas that they describe – as it is in this composition for small ensemble – contain a common origin, we might recognize few contrasting states (dense, ephemeral, for instance) of the same musical material. They project ideally into various listening perspectives: sound aggregates, often built as a complex unison, are conceived to be constantly moving (timbres localization of instruments according their disposition on stage). Therefore, along a more human point of view, every Limen is a mark conceived to be trespassed, following a natural tendency leading to overcome barriers, finding every time a new spatial-acoustic context revealing a farther view, a broader perspective of the same Logos. At the end we find a section Eskaton, along melodic skyline, that embodies the sense – or final destination – of this kind of journey.

EPHEMERIS/ÉKLEIPSIS
A contemplative work, this diptych composition is a work conceived in the first part for two high instruments (clarinet, soprano sax) and in the second for contrabass clarinet and baritone saxophone. A clear opposition is made: bright – dark, moving – static, ephemeral – telluric, willing to explore two very different territories (and moods). The first part, Ephemeris, is at the same time a study on spatialization, perception of multiple spaces and follows a personal research (on sound projection) that was started in 2003 with different techniques and technologies. This tendency (of constructing sounds according different criteria then harmonic or discursive ones) can be called Sound Architecture: here we have an exploration of spatial behaviors where sounds – essentially blocks of several densities – focus on almost the same pitches but with various movements and dynamics. The second, Ékleipsis, is a constantly moving, highly dense piece for two very low instruments representing a definite contrast with the preceding one. Therefore, the experience of listening is the main content of this work (that belong to a series of so-called “spatial pieces” that I am composing since few years). Between concert piece and sound installation, the aim is to listen at this very unique environment (two adjacent spaces) were sound objects would move around. We may perceive them, conscientiously or not, and build relations between foreground and background sonic events. Moreover, the concept of sound osmosis (sounds from the first hall is coming into the second and affecting the general perception) is a main factor in the composition of the work.
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AQUAE
A contemplative work, based on one side on an almost restless sound flow, on the other side on a melodic idée fixe. In the work AQUAE timbre is associated to an idea of distance, as well as, concerning its orchestration, to a mise en place (of sounds) according to spatial-related criteria. Listening sounds and its dynamics mostly under the perspectives of closeness and remoteness is translated into a very precise sound differentiation (different kinds of mutes, open and closed sounds – for the horn – sounds projected inside the piano, etc.). The idea of water, that envelopes everything, inspires the various states of sound: a compact mass moving with numerous nuances, violent and almost primitive sounds shuddering, the thinness of something suspended between earth and sky. AQUAE ideally continues (and maybe closes) a series of works inspired by water: Odi di Levante (2008), Lasco (2010).

ILLUMINA FACIEM
The idea of interval, space and time related, as expressed by the word MA [] taken from the Japanese culture, in thematized in this work with a series of time intervals shaped by short, percussive vocal sounds. The recording of a vocal piece from the XVI Century is erased, fragmented, corroded, up to the point where only some small cells, the friction of some text consonants are audible. Such a network of short implulses is framing the sounds of the two guitars, that are mirroring and completing this extremely abstract patchwork, used not as western instruments but rather like a Koto (Japanese plucked instrument).


Clinamen

Dans la physique épicurienne, le clinamen (ou déclinaison) est une déviation spontanée des atomes par rapport à leur chute verticale dans le vide, déviation spatialement et temporellement indeterminée, et qui permet aux atomes de s’entrechoquer. Ce concept fut inventé par Épicure pour préserver la liberté de la volonté humaine au sein d’une théorie physique déterministe.
Dans La Nature des choses Lucrèce expose que « les atomes choient tout droit dans le Vide, emportés par leur poids propre : à des instants indéterminés, ils manifestent une quasi-déviation infime, tout juste suffisante pour qu’on puisse parler d’une modification d’équilibre.
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… all shadows of red and yellow
Primo tentativo di avvicinarmi alla scrittura per il mio strumento, la viola, questo trio (uno dei miei primi lavori di musica da camera) é pensato come un gesto musicale continuo, un’arco che si dispiega dall’inizio alla fine con rari momenti di interruzione.
Al suo interno é peró estremamente articolato; la scrittura comincia ad annunciare alcune caratteristiche che oggi mi sono proprie e divenute perció irrinunciabili: un discorso armonico che nella sua apparente fissitá si percepisce come „contemplativo“, un’estrema definizione dei dettagli timbrici, affinché il suono, in costante movimento, percorra sentieri e direzioni sempre diversi.<br>
Il titolo, proviene dal frammento di una corrispondenza privata, non vuole sottolineare il descrittivismo (di un paesaggio autunnale americano), quanto il tono intimo, quasi da annotazioni di un diario, in cui questa composizione ha visto la luce.
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A Book of Depths
In 1997 the Italian philosopher Massim Cacciari wrote L’Arcipelago, a reflection on the geopolitical situation of Europe based on some examples of Mediterranean Cultures, a state of art of the human being confronted to others and its identity. This bok starts with a philological analysis over the different names that ancient Greeks gave to the sea: Thálassa, Pélagos, Póntos, Atrygetos, Polyphloisbos. Such names will represent the five movements (or sections) of this composition for chamber ensemble (each one with a different instrumentation, from duo to sextet) and called after the five ocean’s layers: Epipelagic – Mesopelagic – Bathypelagic – Abyssopelagic – Hadopelagic. They range from the most luminous (flute, violin and percussion ad lib.) to the darkest one (harp, percussion) and are carachterized by a constant but always changing sonic flux, without beginning and without end.
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a Book of Ayres

A double symbolic level. On one side fragments from poetries by Emily Dickinson, Dylan Thomas, William Shakespeare and John Keats represent an emotional path (due to their immediate and intense significance); on the other the music, fragmented and at the same time polarized on very definite gestures.
A quite static harmonic development underlines timbres, each of them is conceived to be a sort of “ritual” (given mostly by their tendency to reiterate musical materials and to repeat them in a light-modified form).
Every moment is both reminiscence and an inner resonance of heard words.
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A Book of Myths
1. Hidari. A legendary Japanese sculptor. He saw once a woman of such exceptional beauty that he made a sculpture of her. It was such a perfect image of the woman that the sculpture came to life.
2. Atai. A goddess of the Efik (Nigeria), wife of Abassi. She convinced her husband to allow two humans to settle on the Earth provided they did not procreate and work, so that they would not exceed Abassi in wisdom. When the humans eventually broke Atai’s rule, she killed them both.
3. Ran. Ran is the goddess of storms, and the wife of the sea god Aegir. She rules over the realm of the dead which is situated on the bottom of the ocean. She sinks ships and collects drowned sailors in her nets and takes them to her hall where she tenderly ministers. With Aegir she is the mother of nine daughters (the billows), who wore white robes and veils.
4. Dhakhan. The ancestral spirit of the Kabi tribe of Queensland (north-east Australia). He is half fish, half snake and when Dhakhan moves himself, he appears in the sky as a rainbow. The spirit resides in deep water holes.
5. Anaye. The Navajo name for unnatural or alien spirits, a grouping of giants and monster who were born to virgins who had engaged in unnatural practices. Many of the Anaye were slain by the twins Nayanezgani and Thobadzistshini upon their return to earth, but even they were unable to overcome them all. They sought the help of their father Tshohanoai, the Sun-Bearer, who presented them with four magical hoops. Using these hoops, their mother Estanatlehi sent a terrible storm which destroyed all but four of the Anaye, but the storm reshaped the very Earth as well.
The four remaining Anaye were Cold, Hunger, Poverty, and Old Age. They were allowed to live after they had convinced Estanatlehi that, if they died, mankind would no longer prize the good things of life, or even life itself.
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A Book of Waves (2012)
If there is a sound that accompanied me throughout my life this is the sound of the sea. Doesn’t matter where I was, listening that sound, so complex and familiar, projected me in one same place. While I was in Japan, in 2010, I decided to discover two different places, the extreme North (Hokkaido – the island of Rishiri-To) and the extreme South (Okinawa – a small isle called Zamami-Jima) collecting some sounds (sea waves coming to sandy shores or cliffs) that – I knew – they would have been a new music piece along with the other „A Book of…“ that I started in 2006. Speaking about music, waves are not only a concrete sound in which is possible to find unexpected worlds and configurations, they can be also synthetical sounds that do not exist in nature. This opposition between figurative and abstract always interests me and my work, therefore the contraposition between concrete sounds (worked and transformed with the GRM-Tools) and some sound-waves (sinusoidal, triangular, for instance) seemed to me a beautiful image to transmit. Two instruments, that work with waves too (theremin and Ondes Martenot) are the best actors to picture the true protagonists of this work: endless movement, eternity of distance, sadness of remembering.
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A Book of Forms (2014)
Metaphor No musical rethoric path ios followed, none that would be based on melody, expression but only sound-related factors, abstract sound-aggregates, in the sense of organized sounds. At the boundary between concert piece and sound installation this work is conceived as a sonic sculpture: audience can move around the space to perceive different sound perspectives. Indeed the moving musicians are interacting with the architecture by moving and changing sound-projection directions, producing a series of acoustic reflections and resonances.
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A Book of Clouds (2015-2016)
Metaphor of forms between corporal and ephemeral, each section of this work for string quartet (electric or acoustic) is a symbol of a different cloud type: strati, cumuli, altostratus, nimbi, cirrus, nimbostratus. The string instruments are used to build sound accumulation and sudden rarefactions, complex timbres and gradual sound dispersions, cruising the space over eight loudspeakers, at several speed and along several trajectories. In some sections, the presence of one or more acoustic instruments with mutes (normal one or metal mute) creates a further acoustic perspective (or depth). An imaginary distance between earth and sky where electronic sounds are so tiny and delicate to be perceived almost as echoes. A Book of Clouds has been realized after a period of research at Tokyo Wonder Site.
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Constructa

The Latin word for “constructions” refers firstly to the piece morphology (several sections appear, recur in a light transformed way, or progress their obstinate evolution), secondly to the quite orchestral character of musical writing (very seldom a single instrument come out as soloist) that treats the seven-musician ensemble as a compact “corpus”.
Apart its counterpoint and timbre density running throughout the piece, a certain sense of rest (but not motionless) has been given by some moments of temporal “dilatation” in which the focus switches on the idea of “musical space”.
Indeed, the work on spatialisation made on my recent pieces has evolved into a research of the same effect (projecting sounds) but with a frontal sound source: starting from the meaning of the term „dynamic“ (movement), I am exploring the effect of creating different “spaces” thanks to the utilisation of very detailed and contrasting timbres and nuances.
As a result, this work can probably give the impression of moving along a room with different pictures on its walls: each of them suggests a peculiar light, ambience and action, overlapping in our memory and creating thus a true “polyphony”.
„constructa“ has been composed fort he Argento Chamber Ensemble and for its conductor, Michel Galante with whom I am linked with a deep friendship and professional esteem.
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Lasco
Lasco is the italian name of the point of sail “Reaching”. This is not only the fastest way to sail but also the most “dramatic”: caused by the tension of the wind it seems to “fly” on the waves whereas the sound produced on the boat develops a huge energy based on a fragile balance. Lasco (2010) is divided into four sections each one reproducing a certain impression linked to my sailing experience, a work between chamber music and ensemble with a character of Tagesbuch (as I did in “Odi di Levante” composed in 2008). The overall musical gesture is extremely various: from the beginning through the end is  made of vibrating and trembling sounds alternating with waving aggregates and sudden calmness.
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Odi di Levante
The constellation of Orion, visible in our hemisphere during the winter, is the symbol on which the piece is built; Alnilam, Mintaka, Alnitak, three moments with three different characters introduce the listener in a suspended world in which the richness of sound details opens a listening experience that is at the same time immediate and deep.
Two sections, one at the beginning, the other at the very end of the work constitutes formally a “frame” (with a voice coming from far away) giving the impression of a cold, nocturne “place in the place“.
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…all shadows of red and yellow II
L’interesse per forme, esperienze e processi musicali „multipli“ mi ha portato recentemente all’idea della „rilettura“ di un mio lavoro scritto nel 1999, un trio per flauto in sol, viola e arpa.
La nuova prospettiva della rilettura tende da un lato a  mettere in luce alcuni aspetti del lavoro precedente, e dall’altro, a seguire nuove strade che, nel processo di composizione iniziale ancora non apparivano.
Sebbene sia, per un gusto personale, proteso maggiormente alla „sovrapposizione“ di  eventi sonori, l’idea di un pezzo „satellite“ (quasi un corollario a quello già esistente) sembra comunque rivelare un certo interesse: oltre a „rispondere“ ad alcune domande poste dalla struttura compositiva, il nuovo lavoro moltiplica anche le valenze o i „canali“ interpretativi.
Al di là di queste riflessioni „…all shadows of red and yellow II“ rimane un lavoro trasparente ed immediatamente comprensibile, come del resto la fine „aperta“ del trio „…all shadows of red and yellow“ segretamente mi suggeriva: una “lettera” dal tono intimo, annotazioni dal carattere di un diario, atmosfere ed immagini con in cui la composizione originaria ha visto la luce.
(This work may be performed both as extension of the trio “…all shadows of red and yellow”, and as autonomous piece)
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Silvae
Silva frequens trabibus, quam nulla ceciderat aetas“ (Ovidio, Metamorfosi, Libro VIII, v.229) – It is interesting to discover how, in the ancient mythology, woods were always the place where transformations occurred, from human being into tree or plant, surrounded by a magical and mysterious environment. In Ovid’s Metamorphoses such transformations are both cruel and full of grace, connected to Death and at the same time to God’s compassion that gives, instead of life’s end, a rebirth.
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epistolae III
Metaphor of an intimate writing, in epistolae III both instruments are intended to be like ink on a virtual surface: the background of electronic-produced sounds.
In the nine ”pictures” of the work, different situation are created, a dialogue between instruments and tape, electronic sounds used ”virtually”
only to activate a real-time sound transformation, until the point where one is the ”writing surface“ of the other.
A strong ritual character affects the whole work: refrains to be repeated in a diminuendo until a hardly audible sound, pulsating figures always changing in timbre and sound quality, to underline the art of hand-writing: the sign charged of secret, symbolic significance.
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Enviroments

In Enviroment (2000), a work for chamber orchestra, the instruments are divided into two different (concerning the range of the winds) but symmetric groups, that in the course of the piece are creating a kind of dialectic: playing alternatively but also together according to a technique already used in the old „scuola veneziana“ of the so-called „cori battenti“.
In addition the ensemble is required to behave more as a soloist-group than a traditional orchestra, this permits the creation of various timbre combinations that relate to the title itself: the spatiality of ENVIRONMENTS is given not only by its „stereophonic“ disposition of the players but also by the sound aggregations that seem to come from several points in the „acoustic space“ of the pitch-disposition, according an idea widely used by Edgard Varèse.
Moreover, the structure of the piece consist of three major sections, the first with a marked soloistic charachter, the middle one that with its static harmonic gives a sense of rest after the ever-moving pitch centre of the previous one, and the last one that makes join the two orchestra groups together, and often takes elements coming from the beginning section.
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Births

Time as in living organisms is always conditioned by many parameters: both “static” and “dynamic”. It seems that time representation is more similar to a vertical line and that an horizontal one (the flowing of the time-perception) is a creation of the first one, from the interactions of the forces, information and possibilities present on it. An upper “Memory” is also present: it projects and influences the course of the music evolution, accelerating and slowing, increasing and decreasing the information density, introducing and taking back “frames” of a time that already was. Three ensemble groups, in different instrumental combinations, embody seven “stream-like” objects, always moving transforming and being transformed, with a common task: join together in a common “sound-sculpture” that will appear as soon as the individual evolution will be taken to the end. A soloist, the percussion, as the “territory” where all objects receive their first input, where they see an higher degree of interaction, the place where they will also fade out, again into the silence.
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Strali
(2002)
The presence of soloist(s) has always meant, in the classic music repertoire, a situation of contrast that reflected the particular way of understanding the current life and philosophy; turned into the contemporary world, this contrast between two individuals, can be translated into the binomial man/machine.
Two soloists, a female voice and a computer represent, for their nature itself, a dialectical situation that before being musical is surely dramaturgical.
But this contrast is musically expressed already by the musical material that these two subjects will show: the voice sings fragments taken from texts by Michelangelo Bonarroti, while the computer plays samples (more or less recognizable) of the voice of a pop-singer: Suzanne Vega (two contrasting aesthetic of today’s musical and cultural landscape).
But the starting discrepancy flowing into a musical process will have as target the integration of all these levels, and the orchestra (clearly focused onto middle-high frequencies) is the territory on which this will take place: the sampled sounds, since transformed, will give its missing fundamentals, the solo voice will find in it a plenty of resonance, constantly waving, oscillating, changing in their colours and dynamic nuances.
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Aliae naturae

My utopic view: spatialization as a true mean of sound synthesis, has meant a scientific and at the same time aesthetic approach to the ”parameter space” or better, sound projection. According to such a musical perspective, space is conceived to be finally an ”active” (since able to transform sounds) and ”continuous” environment (not ”sampled” by several loudspeakers), from the moment when it is possible to have a control on sound projection by a new system developed at IRCAM: the TIMEE, multidirectional sound-projection device, coordinated by N. Misdariis. Result of those processes of ”spatialization-synthesis” is a complex and constantly transforming sound achieved by starting from a (pure) violin sound and shaping it into an object with an extreme timbre depth.
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Sonnet X
As result of a close work with Melvyn Poore, this work is composed on sonnet by John Donne:
HOLY SONNETS.
Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those, whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy picture[s] be,
Much pleasure, then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul’s delivery.
Thou’rt slave to Fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy, or charms can make us sleep as well,
And better than thy stroke ;  why swell’st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And Death shall be no more;  Death, thou shalt die.
(John Donne)

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Apoteosi del blu

Apoteosi del blu (1998) was composed after a picture by Kandinsky (im Blau), in a time when I started to get interested in some themes of the semiotic researches by U. Eco, that still continues, and that produced two years later, my Dissertation („Komposition als semiotischer Prozess“) Even if at the moment of the composition I was at the beginning with this theoretical work, it was anyway quite clear that my musical language shouldn’t follow any of the “manierism” streams of the current new music, but focus itself on the “communication” , a term that should be understood in different ways. What could mean, today “communication”? The will to make get the “serious” music near and near to the “commercial” styles? To communicate is for me the first target of each artist; this is the reason why I was willing to understand until which point the music could be structured in a way that reminds the language structures, for instance, or other sign systems. That meant the creation of a very defined CODE: a REPERTOIRE of elements (how simple or how complex depends from piece to piece), and a SYNTAX, that is able to join them in a coherent way. Since I was at the beginning of the development of my “composition-strategy”, I needed a very strong dramaturgic path, that could even offer different reading/interpretation levels. It’s not difficult to find in the music history other examples of this attitude of “translating” other arts into music, but more near to my case, is that using a well-established Syntax (for instance, poetry: the language; music itself: the sonata form), has been a very important step for composers like Varèse, Sciarrino, Webern, particularly in the moment when their language was still going to evolve. In Ionisation: the sonata form joins together new “sound elements” (the percussive sounds), in Webern the text, with its semantic keeps together a harmony way not yet focused on the 12 tones basis, a similar attitude that has Sciarrino with musical forms of the past.
Communication means anyway not the strive to produce only one possible meaning (as in the spoken language), but more on the task of looking to its structures and analyse them to create an aesthetic message, open, as we know, to many interpretations.
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Per il vuoto sospeso dell’assenza
In this work, written for the Duo Katarakt, the three words appearing in the title, are also the key-ideas for the organisation of its musical elements.
The first one, emptyness, refers to the extreme far registers of the two instruments (e,g. at the beginning and at the end), two frequency regions that since they cannot join together, create the sense of an „empty space“ between them.
Suspension, is the mood created by two monodic instruments, as well as by the ever-transforming harmonic structure that allows the listener to find a gravity point.
The last one, absence, seen in a symbolic way, as a perception of time, given, for instance, by the heart-like pulsation of the bass clarinet at the very end of the piece.
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Corps Célèstes

With this work I developed what I call “object-oriented composition”: this term means the creation of a CODE of macro-elements (complex and already defined structures with different musical and expressive character), interacting together according to a net of relationships given, in the case of Corps célèstes, by a poem by Cesar Moro (1903-1956).
That means that the form and the structure organisation follows my personal way of reading (or interpretation) this poem: not only the verses but also the semantic connections between the expression and strenght of its symbols.
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IRradio

The title reminds to an idea of „projecting light.
Two more meanings are playing in this word: „radio“ refers to the instruments‘ disposition, in particular to the cello in the middle point of a bow that joins, starts and comments the various sections; the beginning IR refers to a sound-synthesis process (Impulse Response) ideally used for the interaction of the pre-composed musical structures.
But the piece is formally the dialectic contrast between those complex structures and the one consisting of irregular impulses; this one takes more and more place and importance transforming the other and itself.
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Ma le lacrime etterne

Ma le lacrime etterne (2000) has been composed after fragments taken from diverse sonnets by Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564), those moments where the expressive force of the poetry reached a climax of poetic and emotive intensity.
With this work I tried to give my answer to the problem of the relationship music-text: I refused any kind of transposition in music 1:1 or “madrigalism” and composed the part of the voice as the 6th instrument.
In addition the instrumental writing is chosen to create a sort of “dramaturgy” thanks to its gestual character. But if the expression in the terms of belcanto reminissence is neglected, the extreme sonorities that the voice creates with a kind of “shadowly” technique (the half-singing breathing out, for instance) creates a new kind of expression that is COMPOSED, that means not joined to performance praxis coming from other styles.
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Ades
de mille il foco ho drento
c’arso m’ha ‚l cor nelle mie parte interne;
ma le lacrime etterne
se quel dissolvon già sì duro e forte,
fie me’ null’esser c’arder senza morte.
(Michelangelo Bonarroti, 1475-1564)
It was at the latest while reading Michelangelo’s poetry that I recognized how the idea of death is not only associated to a place, like in the old Greek mythology, but also a dimension coexisting with that of life itself.
Even if it is sometime comparable to a sickness, in Michelangelo this „sense of death“ is part of his life up to the point that finally it isn’t seen anymore as a negative entity.
Indeed, as we can see from his poetry, it is an essential point to lighten other human and soul experiences.
„Ades“ embodies this idea and the impression of reading through several sections with different timbre characters.
After a series of ritual impulses, electronic sounds work as a sort of “alter ego” of the instruments: they extend their spectra and, at the end of the piece, they build a white-sound like texture that contrasts to the ensemble.
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renaissance
A chord from  the solo piano work  ”le nuove forme” is the generating cell of this short, contemplative almost ritual music. The violin, far away from a virtuoso role, can be considered as a resonance of some pitches played by the piano, with the tendency to colour (using a metal mute) or empathize (prolonging the sounds) them.
A long high melodic line, quite abstract, is cut by sudden and violent prepared piano sounds; a static section with pulsating chords interrupts twice the music development projecting the music into another order of significance.
An incision into the silence.
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Due esegesi del canto

The work consists of two gregorianic melodies that appears slightly modified in the clarinet and saxophone parts. Furthermore an „artificial“ harmony has been crated on the tones of the initial material itself: this means that the melodies are played not alone but „accompanied“ by a deeper level that gets more and more complex. in this way two couples of three instruments each develope the linear material; two more „echo“ instruments comment the musical development harmonically (the accordion) and melodically (the recorder), at the same time create a kind of „sound spatialisation“ and stop or take ahead the evolution of the piece.
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Repercussio

The term „repercussio“ has indicated, in the Gregorian chant, the tone around the monody did move. In the tonal world, it can be associated to the dominant (at least for its „polarity“ ). In this work the presence of a recurring element (the regular pulsating repetitions) has, in a way, a similar function: in the course of the piece it break s the evolution, divides its formal sections, gives rests, starts a new “dramatic” moment: all the harmonic material finds in this (developing) element a focus, a gravity center. But it’s because of the musical character itself (repetitions, of percussive quality), that reminds the direct meaning of the old word.
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Profili del grido

The scream, the one that emerges, voiceless, from a deeper abyss of human experience: this one seems to have an own shape, a weight, a life. To this kind of inner state, we can even think in terms of those materials that are able to transmit panic: cold metal, unreal glass, timeless stone.
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Des horizons liquides

What from far away seemed us to be a thin line, is actually a plenty of changing light-nuances, a surface constantly moving and turning into waves of kaleidoscopic colours. The transparent shadow of a far melody line knows now the depths of hidden harmonies and unknown spectra that already secretly contained. Every wave as an echo, every movement causes a reflex in some region of this always-changing territory.
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Pour te sauver de l’Ombre

Sometimes, when we come across the need to let music carry a true intimate message, we put along its textures, harmonic and melodic movements and structure a quantity of elements that are integrating with the essence of the composition itself. Vice-versa, it is also thinkable a structure made of particular (musical) signs, gestures, elements that are representing for us something specific. The aesthetic message, at least at the moment of its creation, seems thus to have apparently an unambiguous character; actually, since those elements are entering a new (semantic) world, what we perceive is its “essence”, the inner self-flowing along the music: both unambiguous and impossible to portray. The inner dramaturgy of this work is made of different “states” of music, since it may remind a speech (in the music flowing), as well an imminent darkness (low piano tones, prepared), as well as a ritual (the refrained sections). This work is dedicated to the Hungarian pianist M. Marczi.
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Scripta

An unmistakable symbol, the human voice , has always been a neverending inspiration source: both for its transformations for the generation of electronic sounds and for its interactions with instruments (as in “strali 2002” for instance). But a further one, the name (spoken), is carrier of secret resonances, in a way that its spectral analysis becomes an extremely rich acoustic symbol. It opens many paths to our imagination that we can thus explorate in a sort of esegesi: harmonic fields derived from spectral frequencies, recurring pitches throughout its enterely length, microscopical melodic mouvements, its fundamentals. A path that in spite of its scientific approach tendes to a higher semantic and expressive need.
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Enfasi cobalto

Enfasi cobalto is a work that ideally concludes a trilogy of ensemble compositions whose main idea is the colour blue, some elements (the leading chord, as well the “central” tone) and fragments (a percussion texture) come from the two preceding works (Apoteosi del blu and Corps Celéstes, respectively composed in 1998 and 1999). If in those pieces I used a picture by Kandinsky and a poetry by César Moro to generate the structures of the compositions, in ENFASI COBALTO several pre-composed “objects” are interpolated in a quite dramaturgic process. But always, in the course of the piece, comes back the first of those, a calm and harmonically steady texture that divides the various sections of the work.
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Quadranti

Difference-tones (frequencies), derived from a fragment for Ondes Martenot from Saint François d’Assise by Olivier Messiaen, are used like the negative of a photograph as the basis for this piece. These same frequency values, scaled into a different dimension and interpreted as pulsations, can be used in the domain of rhythm. Time is not exclusively a direct expression of frequencies: rhythm is articulated also as a projection of the timbral transformation achieved through constant manipulation of the harmon-mute. While the main part of the piece is quite textural, a short figurative fragment interrupts the discourse in a radical change of perspective. The origin of this fragment is to be found not in the frequency-„data“ (microscopic environment) but in the morphology (interval disposition) of the Messiaen-fragment (macroscopic). Importantly, space is explored by distributing the four instruments throughout the concert hall and also, by the use of various ‚envelopes‘ of sound production, as a real parameter of modulation. This represents the actual basic idea of my work: spatialisation used as a parameter of modulation and of transformation.
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Corps/Riens
Although Benoît Gréan poetic language in “corps et riens” is developed to achieve an unique and very personal expression, reading this poetry reminded me a theme that I discovered in the japanese buddhist philosophy: “Bodies come from the middle of Emptiness”. Paraphrasing a verse from Hagakure, such contrast between material and immaterial has been the trigger and inspiration for this composition for voice and ensemble. As I usually do in my works with voice, I have used a special vocal technique (between singing and an exaggerated expiration), giving to the voice not only a very specific charge of dramatic power but also a “composed” expressivity. This does not come from usual archetypes from the tradition, but follows the dynamics and the elements indicated in the score. The text has been musically interpreted: some fragments are connected to others not following the  given order that appears in the original text but according a process of reminiscence, following the sound of the words (and the images they produce) and the secret links inside a reader’s mind, as it happened while I was reading. This composition has been written for the Ensemble Kujoyama, a new music ensemble based in Kyoto, founded in 2010 during my residency at Villa Kujoyama,  with whom I am linked with a profound and beautiful friendship.
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VISO – FICTIO

Some years ago, just by chance, I discovered a Canzona by Dante Alighieri written in three languages that revealed how the need to express multiplicity, complexity, coexistence, can be found so back in time. Sometimes the past can be very surprising: going beyond, trying to inquiry human perception, inventingquestions rather then answers, suggesting a political and cultural-anthropological vision, seemed to me the main point expressed by this piece of literature. A diptych, made by a first short paret (VISIO) for three violas and a second part (FICTIO) for 24 voices and three violas in a separate space, would like to create a remembering process, switching the usual way to listen and perceive sounds in time and space. Such listening perspective is thus triggered by the first part, exposing a compressed version of the work that moves over three different timbres (different mutes to reproduce a sense of spatiality). The second and main section of the work is built according the four stanzas whose form follows the text-language structure and creates a situation of interpolation between two acustics (the voices and the amplified violas coming from a separate space). Dephasage of time, dephasage of acoustics. As for the vocal parts many different ways of sound-production are conceived to create a sense of spatiality within the frontal voices‘ disposition on stage: effects of echo, change of sound-projection, actions with hands, effects of simulated resonances.

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VOIDS

Apart from all suggestive and poetical vision of cosmos that we can find from ancient times, there is one idea that today still strikes and shakes our imagination: the concept of emptiness. Beside astronomic and cosmological achievements, it is interesting to see how the number 0 [zero] appears quite late in the language of some ancient cultures, showing eventually the complex meaning that what we call void (or nonexistence) may have. Along this perspective we find in this piece that no text has been chosen (except the words corresponding to the numbers zero and one in 14 languages including Indian-American, Arabic, Latin, old Chinese among others). We see also how phonetic and other unusual vocal techniques reproduce or match electronic sounds, an extensive use of spatialisation, and we can hear some low-fi sounds taken from the N.A.S.A. Moreover, there is another element that i consider more and more essential in my latest works using (live) electronics: the alternation and even juxtaposition of electronic and acoustic sounds, so that a double spatial quality appears. On one side we hear sounds projected through loudspeakers – representing an artificial space – on the other we perceive the actual roo-acoustic of the performance space, through the singing without any amplification. Such difference is not only a sonic symbol of dichotomy between human being and infinity, but also a way to simulate a multitude of spatial perspectives, one example for all: the combination of natural voice (acoustic) with noisy sounds (spatialized) to simulate a live-electronic effect. Shadows, edges, sonic figures having different weight and characters are interpolated evoking emptiness, distance, opening a time for contemplation.

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Zaubersprueche

Composed on ritual texts from old German (Althochdeutsch, a language sounding quite mysteriously) it features six solo voices performing in various spatial dispositions so that acoustic sound projection simulates a sound spatialization. Each refrain or section is composed on a different text representing an old ritual, whereas singers are placed in various orientations in order to create a timbre (and dynamic) variation of a single pitch/word. Further tools and small objects are also used to project vocal sounds in peculiar ways, giving to each movement a special timbre and atmosphere. The character of such texts consists on one hand in their unique linguistic nature: words sounding familiar but actually rather inscrutable, on the other, in the incomparable mixture of christian religion with archaic and popular practices, sort ot esotheric rituals suggesting unusual musical (sonic) situations.
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Finesterrae

Finesterrae (neologism, the ends of lands/earth) is based on text fragments by Tommaso Campanella (1568 – 1639) and is conceived to precede a work for 32 voices (Anteterrae, composed in 2005, also on texts by thge same author). In this work for five voices and viola (one performer playing also electronic viola and viola d’amore), moments with live-electronics and/or amplification are alternated to acoustic sections, giving an impression of a constant change of space, of perspectives (sound-sources closer or farer, moving or unmoving). Two main parts in form of short movement succession (Finis I and II consisting of very different sounds and gestures), are followed by a section where voices produce noises, ideally like single words stretched in time. Within this part, three sections featuring viola d’amore and countertenor project drastically the atmosphere into an unreal world, made of archaic timbres and voices. The very last part of the work (Lumina) opens to an ephemeral, suspended world, where tiny vocal sounds (imitating nature noises like wind or water) are flowing parallel to the resonances of the last viola ricochet.

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Mare Logos

Thálassa è […] quello più usuale perché quello materno: nel suo grembo sono cresciuti, lungo i suoi cammini hanno viaggiato per conoscere, […] Non è nome generico del mare; è nome di persona. […] Pélagos rappresenta la vasta distesa, l’interminabile plaga dell’alto mare. Quando come un deserto, il mare ci abbraccia da ogni lato, e ad un tempo ci custodisce e minaccia […] E le „salmastre parole“ che ne intessano il canto appartengono allo háls […] Ma quando possiamo immaginarci il Mare come cammino, quando l’occhio discerne nell’inquietudine del pélagos la possibile via, e la cerca e la prova, allora póntos diviene il suo nome più proprio […] Il Mare non è arabile […] questo indica il suo epiteto, […] Atrygetos non implica nessuna idea di assoluta sterilità, di assenza di vita, non contraddice quell‘intelligenza del Mare […] Polyphloisbos, multirisonante, il Mare d’Europa; tutte le sue lingue congiurano nel nominarlo nella molteplicità dei suoi volti, senza mai esaurirne il significato. Mosaico di nomi, che ritroviamo in quell’instancabile (átrytos, davvero!) gioco di echi […] L’agitazione del Mare (sálos) è immanente alla città dell’Arcipelago; il Mare non si arresta alle loro rive, marisuona nelle voci dell’agorá. (Massimo Cacciari, L’arcipelago. Adelphi, Milano 1997)

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Last Words

Second composition written for the Noh-voice, this work is based on some funerary haikus (jisei) from XVII until XIX Century. The voice is used here mostly emphasizing its percussive quality, linked to a kind of naturalistic sound aesthetic (spatialized string instruments are reproducing sounds from nature – wind, insects – as suggested by texts). On the other hand, the cello placed on stage, accompains or extend the sound of the Noh-voice, sometimes imitating a Koto.

 

Trois Chants Noh

I

Mi wa, musou no uchi yori shou wo uku to ari. Nanimo naki tokoro ni iruga, shikisokuzekuu nari. Sono nanimo naki tokoro nite banji wo sonauru ga kuusokuzeshiki nari. Futatsu ni naranu you ni to nari.

Our bodies are given life from the midst of nothingness. Existing where there is nothing is the meaning of the phrase, “Form is emptiness.” That all things are provided for by nothingness is the meaning of the phrase, “Emptiness is form.” One should not think that these are two separate things.

II

Kojin no kotoba ni, shichisoku shian to iukoto ari. Takanobu kou wa, “Funbetsu mo hisashiku sureba nemaru” to ooseraresourou. Naoshige kou wa “Banji shidaruki koto touni nanatsu ashi. Bushi wa monogoto tetoribayani surumonozo” to ooserare sourou yoshi. Shinki urouro to shitaru tokiwa, funbetsu mo rachi akazu. Nazumi naku, sawayakani, rin to shitaruki nitewa, shichisoku ni funbetsu sumumono nari. Mune suwarite, tsukkiretaru ki no kurai nari. Kuden.

In the words of the ancients, one should make his decisions within the space of seven breaths. Lord Takanobu said, “If discrimination is long, it will spoil:” Lord Naoshige said, “When matters are done leisurely, seven out of ten ill turn badly. A warrior is a person who does things quickly.”When your mind is going hither and thither, discrimination will never be brought to a conclusion. With an intense, fresh and undelaying spirit, one will make his judgments within the space of seven breaths. It is a matter of being determined and having the spirit to break right through to the other side.

III

Ooame no kan to iukoto ari. Tochuu nite niwakaame ni aite, nurejitote michi wo isogi hashiri, nokishita nado wo tooritemo, nururu koto ni kawarazaru nari. Hajime yori omoi hamarite nururu toki, kokoro ni kurushimi nashi, nururu kotowa onaji. Korewa yorozu ni wataru kokoroe nari.

There is something to be learned from a rainstorm. When meeting with a sudden shower, you try not to get wet and run quickly along the road. But doing such things as passing under the eaves of houses, you still get wet. When you are resolved from the beginning, you will not be perplexed, though you still get the same soaking.This understanding extends to everything.

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Windstroeme (2012)
Windstroeme is part of a diptych together with the orchestra work Seelenstroeme: composed with the same metric structure, they can be played in the same space, with two orchestras or in two different rooms overlapping and spatialising each part toward the remote room (through loudspeakers or wave-field synthesis system). In the case of two orchestras, conductors will use a click-track in order to perform sinchronously. The orchestra in this work is used to produce an immersive acoustic effect given by a naturalistic sonic approach: instruments perform almost exclusively wind-like sounds, with few shadows of melodic contours (two amplified flutes) and some violent sudden clusters.

CORI (2008)
Una voce sospesa, che a tratti ondeggia e si ripiega in veloci arpeggi, produce attorno a se‘ una serie di strati, colori, echi in continuo movimento. Il violino solista è il vertice di un prisma, l’orchestra, la quale accumula con lo scorrere del tempo una quantità e qualità sempre variabile di riflessi: i suoni si intersecano, si sovrappongono, si affiancano allo strumento solista e ne trasformano sia il timbro che la sua funzione, mentre il discorso musicale attraversa in modo ciclico diversi stati, dalla contemplazione di un lontano orizzonte a improvvise scosse segno di una latente drammaticità.

Forces Motrices (2010)
Movement, in a metaphorical sonic representation conceived at various levels, is the fulcrum of a work that began with a series of sketches in 2004, was continued in 2008 and was completed in 2010, behind which lay various considerations (of an extra-musical nature) on Velazquez and Bacon.Forces Motrices had accompanied me in silence for a long period of my development, marked by my growing interest in electronic means of transforming sound into real time (culminating with Ius Lucis in 2007) and aimed at the exploration not only of „spatiality“ already widely investigated by then, but also of the morphing, of the possibility to transform the identity of the sound in a dynamic way. If these aspects (space and timbre) can be identified in the arrangement of the instruments of the orchestra (five groups varying combinations and symbolizing just as many „sources“ of sound each with its own characteristic timbre) and in the spatialization of synthesis sounds, that of movement can be recognized more especially in the „dramaturgy“ (compact but extremely varied) of the musical gesture. The central group, based on cellos acts as the symmetrical axis, as the backbone for the principal movements in the instrumental groups on the left and on the right, coordinating and supporting its complex movements, the sudden „eruptions“ and changes in register and contrasting musical situations. The Theremin, used as an instrument of control for the transformation of sound in real time, ideally links the immateriality of the gesture and the sonic „body“ (the „ether“) to the immateriality of the electronic sound and eventually takes over, secretly and discretely, the whole orchestra, shaping it on the basis of a pr-established plan. On a more global level, this tendency towards sonic discourse (at times I believe I am more an „architect“ of sound than a „musician“) thus leads me to see the aggregations of sound become shaped and consolidated in the space of our auditory memory, taking on a „materiality“ that – apparently – betrays the „ephemeral“ nature of the actual sounds. The image I would like Forces Motrices to offer is one of a race that is both impetuous and rich in accelerations and moments of stasis, almost oneiric, where everything we meet is inevitably blurred by the speed and re-transformed in the memory.


Fibrae
(2005)
During the last three years, the approach with music-applied technology gave, even before influencing the nature of the”sound” in my recent works, as direct consequence a radical and deep reflection concerning the basic parameters in my musical composition technique. Concerning fibrae, it is impossible to divide those two aspects and explain separately its fundamental principles since speaking about the idea of ”space” means to enter the way the real-time electronic has been used, and from this to enter the nature of the armonic structure. The main thought, extended into the whole work, consists in the construction of a harmony that is far away from both empirical and abstracts laws. Therefore the harmonic structure has been created as a network of relations, proportions and symmetries (simple and interpolated),”centers”, ”focus” (in architectural meaning) based on acoustic scales. As starting point, the analysis of complex sounds has given the fundamental proportions that are explored, transformed end evolved not only according their acoustic quality but also their ”geometric” nature. If such a composition process moves toward a strict point of contact with architecture (i.e with a harmonic space built with rigorous proportions), the use of electronics underlines the harmonic path of the musical discourse. At the same time it allows an inner interaction by transforming the instrumental sound according a resonant space ”tuned” with a certain harmonic environment. Away from this ”implicit” aspect to the composition structure, spatialisation is conceived to simulate various and complex sound reflections. Those are not intended to be merely as ”moving sounds”: the loudspeakers in the concert hall (a point-oriented sound source disposition that creates what I call ”sampled space”) are organized in order to build a dense system of echoes made of precisely designed geometric trajectories. According to this view, live-transformed sounds and spatialisation has been thought to integrate the main instrumental ensemble that remains the most dominant sound source, but its projection is compositionally transformed. The instrument position (two soloists and four orchestra instruments are placed around the perimeter), finally, reflects the same tendency of considering sound motion as synthesis: in the orchestra corpus quick alternation of instrumental “zones” give the impression of sources approaching and moving away, whereas the other instruments polarize the architectural space describing several zones and environments with their constantly changing timbres.
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Beweise über die Abwesenheit der Seele (2008)
Sometimes, instead of focusing primarily on musical and sound matters, I need first to turn my attention on the inside of myself, imagining a  music so full of thoughts and personal issues that it carries a high degree of signification. This is the background in which I wrote „Beweise über die Abwesenheit der Seele“, commissioned by Evan Christ, a conductor who accompanied me professionally often during my life as composer. I gave up for a moment the complexity of music structures I was used to conceive in other previous works, and focused instead directly on a very basic aspect of music: the melody. Although this aspect might sound like anachronistic the realisation is not traditional at all: the orchestra is used in a very unusual way. Similar instruments are playing together in opposition to normal orchestration rules; this makes a coexistence of simplicity (the reduced musical material) and complexity (sound nuances, similar to phasing phenomena) allowing the sound to be expresses along with an idea of “depth” in the meaning of spatiality. The singing is continuous but transformed, at the same time, it is human and transcending.
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Ius Lucis (2006/2007)
Ius Lucis  (2006/2007) is a work conceived for two instrumental ensembles playing in two different cable-connected concert halls. Each ensemble is used in different ways for a real time transformation of the other one, the degree of interaction creates in each “perspective” extremely various sound-synthesis combinations, for this aim the work needs to be performed two times, one for each ensemble/room.
After the intermission, audiences (listeners are divided in two groups, one for each room) change concert hall and listen the second part that is both complementary (since many recognizable musical elements and situation are interacting and overlapping in listeners’ memory) and new (a radical change in spatialisation and instrumentation nature) at the same time. The form of the work is essentially created as a palindrome (mirror-like); the middle section “des Schattens Lob” is the centre of its symmetry, a turning-point after that ensemble 2 reiterates (with consistent changes) the music played by ensemble 1 but in opposite motion. This moment marks at the same time the beginning of a temporal and metric “de-phasing”  between the two instrumental groups.
Written for the peculiar concert halls of centre Georges Pompidou (grande salle) and Ircam (espace de projection), this work is deeply immerged into the idea of architectonic space. First of all the construction of ensemble 1 (stereophonic) and ensemble 2 (musicians placed around the audience) allow an “orchestrated” spatialisation. Second, sound movements realized by electronics (loudspeakers) are strictly connected with music (accents, envelopes, articulations are “translated” into spatialisation combinations) and even with instrumental directivity of the clarinet (producing a timbre variation when moving); enhancements of these processes are several exchanges of sound movements between the concert halls that represent an extended form of counterpoint.
Finally, the exploration of room acoustics (analysis of resonance modes), used in the  composition  structure, has served as a true harmonic and rhythmic “Gestalt”.

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