FEDERICO COSTANZA Storia
ignota di un segreto nervo rivoluzionario 2018,
1st version for voice and live electronics
Federico Costanzais
composer and sound artist/maker. He has been
graduated in Piano, in Composition and in
Electronic Music (with Alvise Vidolin) at the
Music Conservatory of Venice. Artistic
residence at ZKM Institute in Karlsruhe.
Several courses, as composer, with S.
Sciarrino, B. Furrer, P. Billone, M. Levinas,
T. Murail, G. Manzoni, A. Di Scipio, A.
Richard, etc. Performances of his works at:
Spazionovecento XXIV in Cremona 29° Cantiere
Internazionale d’Arte di Montepulciano, ASTRA
Concerts in Australia, Biennale Musica di
Venezia, XVIII Colloquium on Musical
Informatics in Turin, Music Village 2011 in
Greece, Art’s Birthday ZKM/HfG and SWR radio,
Radio UNAM in Messico City, Music@villaromana
in Florence, Arizona State University,
Symphonic Season of Teatro La Fenice,
Musica/Realtà Festival in Milan,
#Siena2015Lab at Accademia Chigiana, at PLIVKA
in Kiev, etc. His music and project has been
performed by: Lugano Percussion Group, Mircea
Ardeleanu, Young Janácek Philharmonic
Orchestra, Anna D'Errico, Kreutzer Quartet,
DissonART ensemble, Beat Furrer, Liminar, ASU
Contemporary Percussion Ensemble, Orchestra La
Fenice, Stefano Montanari, Ex-novo ensemble,
Alfonso Alberti, Luigi Gaggero and Ukho
esemble etc. Commissions received from some
institutions such as: Cantiere Internazionale
d’Arte– Montepulciano; Astra
Society–Melbourne; La Biennale di Venezia;
Infidi Lumi Company; Scuola di Musica di
Fiesole, arTree company, Fondazione Teatro La
Fenice di Venezia, Associazione Nuova
Consonanza of Rome, M° L. Pestalozza president
of Associazione Amici di Musica/Realtà of
Milan, etc. Collaborations and musical
compositions for dance projects as:
Twothousand | All! by Kinkaleri and performed
in Florence; VN Serenade by dancemaker
Cristina Kristal Rizzo and performed in LAC
Lugano. And for theatre/performance/
installation projects by Stefano Tomassini. He
has been invited by INCOMMON at the symposium
La Lotta per il Teatro # 01, dialogues and
meetings on contemporary performing arts,
where he performed a concert with his electro
acoustic music at the IUAV University of
Venice. Some of his works are published and
recorded by Ars Publica Edition, Report #00,
Rivo Alto and broadcasted by Radio UNAM
(Messico), SWR2 (Germany), Rai Radio3 (Italy).
He is working on some projects around the
amplified toy piano, and the focus is the
development of the relation between the
instrument and the figure of the
“composer/performer/maker”. His musical and
spatial research of sound is conceived as a
continuous experimentation that does not allow
an axiom or an opportunity and are manifested
both in his electronic compositions or in his
purely acoustic writing.
Storia ignota di un segreto nervo
rivoluzionario (2018 – first version)for
amplified voice and electronics on poetic
texts by Anna Laura Longo. A voice in a
desert and in a large space, is searching
for the “sound of a poetic word".
Alchemical-sonorous maps are used to find a
new time, a different practice. A listening
and encounter/performance with the Listening
itself. These maps of an unknown tale of a
secret revolutionary nerve, are based on the
poetic writings by Anna Laura Longo, words
and traces that invite to cross thresholds.
More and more, I believe, poetical thinking
- in all its manifestations - is today
necessary to cross thresholds and change
things.
1. Suolo di protuberanze e(t)
spremo e(t) spargo passo alato (taken from
Procedure esfolianti, 2011, Manni edition.)
2. La spinta viene da terra
nel vortice così come nel nervo
di una causa rivoluzionaria.
La spinta viene da terra,
malgrado la terra blindata.
(taken from PLASMA – Sottomultipli del tema
“Ricordo”, 2004, Fermenti edition.)
MAURILIO CACCIATORE Tutorial 1#:mimesi, 2018, for voice,
reoorders and live electronics
Maurilio Cacciatore’smusic
stems out of a combination of acoustical
instruments with tools for digital music. It
also incorporates electromechanical objects
and uses various resources of informatics. It
results in complex, multi-layered texture,
presenting on the surface classical
instruments and electronics, while containing
an inner coreof
hybrid and non conventional techniques. Beyond
the conventional standard of spatialization,
Maurilio Cacciatore’s loudspeaker setups explore
non-coded solutions that integrate hardware and
software within various musical contents. The
theatrical dimension of his works tends to
integrate visual aspects and music into the
score, seeking an improvement of communication
among the players on stage. He has been composer
in residence at the Studios of the Ircam, the
ZKM, the Muse en Circuit of Paris and the
Elektronisches Studio Basel. He has been student
of Fabio Cifariello Ciardi and Ivan Fedele,
always obtaining the beast marks in Italy,
Sweden and France. He is currently working
toward a PhD at the Catholic University of Porto
and the Academy of Music of Basel under the
guidance of Erik Oña. He is lecturer of
Electroacoustic Composition at the Conservatory
of Castelfranco Veneto (Italy). Maurilio is
active as composer, professor and researcher in
Europe, Asia, North America and Australia. He
has been performed by first class ensemble and
Institutions such as: Ensemble
Intercontemporain, Orchestre Philharmonique de
Radio France, Orchestre National de Lorraine, I
Pomeriggi Musicali, Hanatsu miroir, Ensemble
Linea, Proxima Centauri, Kammerorchester Basel,
Ensemble Phoenix Basel, Aleph, L’arsenale,
Algoritmo, Sentieri Selvaggi,
Contempoartensemble, Choir Le Cris de Paris,
Voix de Strass. Among the soloists who performed
his music: Mario Caroli, Emanuele Torquati,
Matteo Cesari, Maruta Staravoitava, In 2008 he
co-founded the Ensemble L’Imaginaire. His music
is published by the Edizioni Suvini Zerboni,
Milan.
Tutorial
1: #mimesi.I
am starting a new cycle of works inspired by
the video tutorials that can be found on
YouTube or other similar video platforms.
These videos explain how to carry out
particular actions (also in the realm of
everyday life, like repairing domestic
appliances or cooking recipes) and, in the
musical field, how to tackle a performing
technique on an instrument or how to resolve a
given passage. Some of these videos I found
very useful because they allowed me to get one
or two suggestions (you can even find videos
made by people thousands of kilometers away
who decided to offer a contribution on the
same subject independently) regarding certain
doubts that arose while writing my works. The
second source of inspiration are the tags used
in many social networks; the iconicity of the
words used for the tags leads their meaning to
be structured as a conceptual category. This
helps readers to understand the meaning of the
texts, because categorization simplifies the
process of analyzing the symbolic contents.
Providing a category moves the attention to a
subject and allows the understanding of a
message to be reassessed depending on the
point of view. Third and last, this cycle is
inspired by the well known Lessons of Fausto
Romitelli. From the cycle of the composer of
the Bad Trips I have taken inspiration simply
from the metaphor of the title in its absolute
sense, that is the idea of a lesson about
something. Tutorial is the name of this cycle
that intends to offer a point of view on
certain aspects of my musical writing from the
end of the 2010s. #mimesi is the first number
in this series: two very different instruments
like the male voice and the sub-bass recorder
find common ground in order to blend with one
another, without renouncing the physiology of
the individual instrument and its typical
writing, its own instrumental rhetoric, its
own role in general. Mimesis is a technique of
sound construction that I learned in my years
as an apprentice in France and makes it
possible to link instruments and electro
acoustic sources by means of timbres that are
overlapping if not exactly common to both. In
this piece I try to do all this, starting from
an instrument with an extremely connoted
writing like the sub-bass recorder and the
male voice, with all the difficulty the use of
the human voice has in chamber writing. The
voice is treated first and foremost as an
instrument, therefore without any true spoken
text; gradually a text (merely words coming
from various languages and often making no
sense; and yet, they “camouflage” themselves
in the idea that they could be foreign words
of a language we don’t know) emerges, but for
such a short time that it cannot effectively
affirm itself in terms of critical
comprehension. The annulment of time helps the
mixing of the timbres as there is no clear
segmentation of the melodic material; a very
slow tempo, often bordering on the limits of
the breathing possibilities of the musicians,
characterizes the whole work».
SIMONE CONFORTI
WhatAreWeWaitingFor, 2018, for
male singer, live electronics and live video
WeWillNeverBeGreatAgain, 2017,
for male singer, recorders and live electronics
PlastiCity, 2023,
fixed
media
MiserereForOurIndifference, 2023,
fixed
media
Simone
Conforti, composer,
computer music designer, sound designer and
software developer. Graduated in Flute and
Electronic Music in Florence and in Electronic
Music Composition in Perugia, works as professor
at IRCAM in Paris. Currently PhD candidate
at the Basel University, he is working on a
research which combines music composition with
automatic audio data segmentation and
recognition, through unsupervised neural
networks. Specialised in interactive arts
and multimedia, his work passes also through an
intense activity of music oriented technology
design, in these fields he has developed many
algorithms for sound spatialisation and space
virtualisation, for noise masking, and for
generative music and automatic composition.
Co-founder and CTO of MUSI-CO formerly
co-founded MusicFit and MUSST (multisensing
space studio); these companies share a deep
inclination towards the audio technology
innovation and are characterised by the
development of novel and proprietary methods and
algorithms applied to music research. These
range from aided composition, to architectural
design through sounds, reaching sound
processing. He has been teaching as professor in
Electroacoustic at Cuneo’s and Florence’s
Conservatoires and has been working as
researcher for the HEM Geneva, the MARTLab in
Florence in the field of sound digitisation and
computer music design and for the HEMU in
Lausanne where he was involved to develop a new
hyper-instrument based on motion detection
applied to the Paetzold Recorders, he has also
been working for the company Architettura Sonora
as sound designer and software developer.
He has published for AIB, ISTI Institute,
Biennale Musica (Venice), Suvini Zerboni, Mudima
Music, ET’CETERA, die Schachtel, Cramps,
Stradivarius, Dissonance, Artestampa and A14.
WeWillNeverBeGreatAgain.
Un théâtre non théâtral, une
tentative de regarder la réalité détachée de
son réalisme apparent, un effort de changer de
perspective, de reformuler et de souligner la
crise de la mentalité occidentale commune et
le populisme ambiant ayant conduit à la
situation politique actuelle. L'année 2016
s'est achevée par une série de réponses
inattendues de la part de la population du
monde occidental envers l'instabilité
économique et l'insécurité causée par la
réorganisation des équilibres mondiaux. Une
sorte de cycle qui peut être vu de façon plus
terrifiante encore que les mécanismes
populistes qui ont détruit l'humanité au
siècle dernier. Plutôt qu'un sentiment de
terreur, il existe de nos jours une technique
sournoise de l'enchantement et la fausse
amitié rattachée à un humour grotesque. Ces
contrastes, ces contradictions et le ridicule
de la situation, en regard du message tragique
qui les accompagne, ont provoqué en moi le
besoin de les raconter dans une forme
musicale. Le seul moyen que j'ai trouvé pour y
parvenir était d'essayer d'accentuer la
profonde violence qui anime ce vieux/nouveau
vent politique. Cette composition est pensée
comme une pièce de théâtre fantastique dans
laquelle rien n'est théâtral dans une forme
humaine mais où tout est imprégné d'un récit
communiqué par le son. Tout reste au niveau de
la musique et celle-ci prend la forme d'un
outil qui permet de méditer sur ce qui est
réellement encore entre nos mains après avoir
effacé l'impact de l'image de propagande
politique mentionnée précédemment. Grâce à la
liberté que me donne le façonnage du son, j'ai
pu utiliser le même langage sournois et
modifier le sens, implicite et explicite,
d'extraits de discours politiques sortis de
leur contexte. Reformuler les nombreuses
contradictions qui y sont contenues, loin de
leur indissociable connexion à l'image
politique, m'a permis de souligner le fait
que, dans le contexte politique actuel, une
même personne peut se contredire de manière
répétitive sans provoquer de réel scandale
parmi les électeurs endormis.
WhatAreWeWaitingFor.
What
happens to the spirit of human beings
deprived of their identity and their
dignity? Where is the boundary between the
reality that they imagine and what they
really live? These questions make my mind
tremble when I think of all those who escape
from what they often can not even
understand, looking for what they do not
know and perhaps will never know. There is a
land that I closely know and to which I am
intimately linked, from which since many
years a great migration is happening and is
therefore responsible for the loss of
everything for many human beings, up to life
itself. These people's disappears are
silenced and mutilated by the neglect and
the economic interests of the rich West that
sometimes wakes up from its torpor to move
public opinion to his advantage, keeping
hidden the bloody reality that these people
face for the only reason that drives them to
challenge this journey, the survival of
their species, as if this latter were
different from ours. Thus, how changes the
vision of the World and of the reality,
deformed concerning the conscious and the
unconscious of the abused and the disfigured
of all dignity? I have attempted to draw,
through the sounds, the continuous paradox
that runs through the mind of these human
beings, imagining, through the musical
gesture, to describe what happens in the
dreaming moments that are opposed to what
happens in the awake. As if night and day
overturned their function and the remaining
life was only that linked to memory that
still represents a sense for which to
resist. In the night the memory of what has
been left resounds welcoming and reassuring
while the reality of the day corresponds to
an absence of light, to uncertainty, and the
violence and the noise that surrounds it is
silence, the silence of deprivation. It is a
dialectic musical path, that puts the voice
of a singer in comparison with a
electronically elaborated chant. A real man
put in comparison to the reminiscences of a
woman's voice, belonging to those places of
misery, which is transfigured by its memory
representation as well as by the
experienced violence that transforms the
sound figure. WhatAreWeWaitingFor is
articulated through the constant
contraposition of the sonic absence with the
vibrant life of a distant folklore. The
profound processing of sounds and voices,
coming from countries that we believe
distant from us, migrate into a sonic
construct that does not belong directly to
just certain geographical areas but becomes
a place of sensorial sharing through which
the physical (the voice in scene) and the
synthetic (the electronic) collaborate
without distinction of belonging. The music
timbre is contaminated and becomes the only
truly voice absent of prejudice in the clash
of cultures. Fundamental in this lyric work
is the scenography, which is obtained
through a non traditional experiencing
dimension, where the public is asked to move
during the work development, and passing
throughout the darkness of an abandoned
hospital in order to reach the feeble and
obsessive light of the rooms where the work
takes life. Therefore, two musical aspect
are inquired through this arrangement, an
immersive and non filtered listening
dimension to the public, as a kind of
cooperative happening, as well as the
investigation of an alternative perspective
of the musical listening, which depends on
the performative spaces and it is profoundly
connected to their architecture.
ANDREA DAMIANO COTTI
Lo-li-ta!, 2018,
Variazioni su un tema di Vladimir Nabokov, 1st
version for male voice and recorders
Andrea
Damiano Cottiwas
born in Italy in 1985. He studied at the
Conservatorio “Giuseppe Verdi” in Turin (IT)
with G.Elos, G.M.Guida and D.Tabbia and
qualified in both choral conducting (2008) and
composition (2012) with full marks. He took his
degree “summa cum laude” in Literature at the
Turin University (2014) presenting a musicologic
study on Max Reger's works. In 2014 he received
the "De Sono" scholarship to continue his
musical studies. In June 2016 he received his
Diploma di Alto Perfezionamento in Composition
from the Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome,
where he studied with Ivan Fedele.Andrea
Damiano Cotti is active in various musical
fields: he teaches piano and musical theory,
leads the orchestra “Musica Manens and, since
2011, is the Music Director of the choir
“Musicainsieme” in Chieri (Italy).Andrea
Damiano Cotti wrote a large number of works,
many of them received national and international
awards: First prize of Competition ‘Benedetto
XVI’ in Rome (2013), First Prize of the V
International Composition Competition ‘Claxica’
(2013), First prize in the 3rd International
Composition Competition “RDS” (2013), Second
prize at the "A.Giovannini" competition (2014),
Special mention and medal of the Camera dei
Deputati della Repubblica Italiana given by the
jury of the International composition
competition Citta' di Udine(2016). In march 2016
he was admitted tas finalist in the
International Competition “Premio Trio di
Trieste - Giampaolo Coral Award”. In june 2017
he has been awarded with the Special mention by
the “EstOvest Festival”.He
was selected as composer by the festival
"Risuonanze" (2015), in the same year was chosen
by the jury of the “Divertimento Ensemble” to
take part to the first “International Workshop
for Young Composers” in Bobbio (2015) where he
attended masterclasses with Sandro Gorli,
Stefano Gervasoni and Michael Jarrell. He won
the first prize of the “Stresa composition
competition” (2018) and the first prize at the
“London Ear Festival”(2018).His
works are published by “Verlag fur neue Musik –
Berlin”.
Romper del dia, 2014,
poems by Jose Angel Valente, arr. for recorder and
voice, 2018
Born in Bergamo in 1962,Stefano
Gervasonibegan
studying composition in 1980 on the advice of
Luigi Nono: this encounter, as well as others
with Brian Ferneyhough, Peter Eötvös and Helmut
Lachenmann, turned out to be decisive for his
career. After attending the Conservatorio
Giuseppe Verdi in Milan, Stefano Gervasoni
studied with György Ligeti in Hungary in 1990,
and then, in 1992, he attended the IRCAM Course
in Composition and in Computer Music in Paris.
The first three years in France launched
Gervasoni's international career that eventually
led him to be artist-in-residence at Villa
Medici in Rome for the biennium1995-1996. With
commissions from prestigious institutions such
the WDR, the SWR, the Orchestra Nazionale della
RAI, the Münchner Kammerorchester, the Festival
d'Automne in Paris, Radio France, IRCAM, the
Casa da Musica in Porto, the Festival Archipel
in Geneva, the Divertimento Ensemble in Milan,
the Ensemble Intercontemporain, the Ensemble
Modern, the Ensemble Contrechamps in Geneva, the
Maerzmusik festival in Berlin, the Ars Musica
Bruxelles, the Festival Musica in Strasbourg,
the French Ministry of Culture, Milan Teatro
alla Scala and Suntory Hall in Tokyo, Stefano
Gervasoni has established himself as one of the
most important Italian composers of his
generation. His catalogue – which includes
chamber and vocal music, concertos, works for
orchestra, for ensemble and an opera
(Limbus-Limbo), commissioned for the 50th
anniversary of the Percussions de Strasbourg
(2012) – was first published by Ricordi, from
1987, and then, from 2000, by Suvini Zerboni. A
monographic CD entitled Antiterra, which
features the pieces An, Animato, Antiterra,
Least Bee, Godspell, and Epicadenza, released in
2008 by Aeon, bears witness to «a sonic world of
great wealth, subtlety, refinement, expressive
but also organic, that immediately captures
one’s attention» (Philippe Albèra). Other
monographic recording collections include the
Harmonia Mundi CD in the series Musique
Française d'Aujourd'hui (Ensemble Contrechamps),
the Stradivarius CD by Divertimento Ensemble and
the CD Dir-in dir released in 2014 by Winter
& Winter (Académie Charles Cros price and
Diapason d'or in France). A recent CD by Winter
& WInter, released in 2016, entitled Le pré
includes the three books of a piano cycle.
Winner of numerous prizes, including the recent
Premio della Critica Musicale "Franco Abbiati"
(2010), his work has allowed him to be a
grant-holder at the Fondation des Treilles in
Paris (1994) and at the DAAD in Berlin (2006)
and composer-in-residence at the Domaine de
Kerguéhennec during the period 2008-2010. He has
also been invited to teach at the Darmstadt
Ferienkurse, on the courses organised by the
Fondation Royaumont (Paris), at Toho University
in Tokyo, at the Festival International di
Campos do Jordão in Brazil, at the Conservatory
in Shanghai, at Columbia University (New York),
at Harvard University (Boston) and at Takefu
International Music Festival. He has been
composer-in-residence at Lausanne Conservatoire
(2005) and at Yellow Barn Summer Academy
(Vermont, 2016). Moreover, he has been visiting
professor at ESMUC in Barcelona for the 2012-13
academic year. Since 2006 Stefano Gervasoni has
held a regular teaching post as professor of
composition at the prestigious Conservatoire
National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse in
Paris. The musicologist Philippe Albèra wrote a
substantial book on Stefano Gervasoni's work,
Stefano Gervasoni. Le parti pris des sons,
published in 2015 by Editions Contrechamps
(Geneva).
Di questi sei componimenti poetici (Horizonte, El
bosque, Tamquam centrum
circuli, Ni siquiera, Isla, Anónimo:
versión) di José Angel Valente, poeta
spagnolo morto nel 2001, vorrei esprimere
musicalmente tutta la particolare forza
dispiegata in un’estrema varietà di registri,
così caratteristica delle pagine di questa sua
ultima e incompiuta raccolta (Fragmentos de un
libro futuro, Barcelona, 2000). Dalla
confessione intima all’osservazione
metafisica, dall’osservazione contemplativa
all’invettiva civile, dall’autobiografia
pressoché fisica del decadimento del proprio
corpo alla costruzione di un pensiero quasi
filosofico, tutti questi aspetti si tengono in
un’unità fragile e resistente nello stesso
tempo: come la morte incipiente del poeta (le
cui premesse sono evocate in alcune poesie
della raccolta) o il romper del
día che, grazie alle sfumature
della lingua castigliana, connota di un
elemento di rottura il farsi e rinnovarsi del
giorno. Questa dimensione esplosiva, quasi
schizofrenica eppure unitaria e coerente,
appartenente a una persona e a una personalità
poetica a tutto tondo, è alla base dell’idea
di concepire controtenore e corno come un
unicum: entrambi incarnazione della voce, o
delle voci che rompono la voce del poeta, si
disfano in essa, la fanno in tutta la sua
complessità di pensieri, passioni, emozioni,
idee, sensazioni; entrambi tentanti di
sostituirsi l’uno all’altro, reciprocamente, o
di oltrepassare la propria natura, dal puro
suono alla parola e viceversa, dalla fisicità
animale o materiale al puro concetto e
viceversa. Ma sempre in unità, una
“eterogenu(i)nità”. Stefano
Gervasoni, 29.4.14
INTERMINABLE término al que llego,
donde nada termina,
donde el no ser empieza
interminablemente a ser
pura inminencia.
(Horizonte)
+++
A Jacques Ancet
To a green thought in
a green shade Andrew Marvell
EL espesor del bosque,
su verde luz oscura,
la voz que llama adonde,
el borde, el límite
donde comienzan los senderos
que a su vez se entrecruzan
y se anulan hasta el súbito claro, repentino
lugar de un dios
que aquí se manifiesta,
¿cuál dios?,
podríamos hacer en él nuestra morada,
en esta claridad,
al menos hasta el tiempo de las lluvias
para identificar aún nuestro camino
en la hierba pisada, para qué, jamás
podríamos volver, pues los senderos
se cruzan infinitos en el bosque,
me llama el bosque todavía
y la naturaleza madre me reduce,
me asume en sí, me devuelve a la nada.
(El bosque)
+++
LA memoria nos abre
luminosos
corredores de sombra.
Bajamos lentos por su lenta luz
hasta la entraña de la noche.
El rayo de tiniebla.
Descendí hasta su centro,
puse mi planta en un lugar en donde
penetrar no se puede
si se quiere el retorno.
Se oye tan sólo una infinita escucha.
Bajé desde mí mismo
hasta tu centro, dios, hasta tu rostro
que nadie puede ver y sólo
en esta cegadora, en esta oscura
explosión de la luz se manifiesta.
(Tamquam centrum circuli)
+++
TODO parecería ahora
llevarte a la extinción.
Abandonado
de la sola palabra que tal vez aún podría
levantarme hacia ti.
No estás.
No está
la tu sola palabra.
Se espesa en torno el reino de lo gris.
Un ave cae
del centro mismo de su vuelo.
El agua
del manantial, impura, ciega
los pozos de la sed.
En esta noche
no busques luz ni abrigo,
no busques lealtad
ni amor.
Estás sentado
enfrente de ti mismo y ni siquiera
puedes mirarte con piedad.
(Ni siquiera)
+++
SALIR del tiempo.
Suspender el claro
corazón del día.
Ave.
Palabra.
Vuelo en el vacío.
En lo nunca
posible.
Ven, anégame en este largo olvido.
Ya no hay puentes:
Sosténme en el no tiempo,
en la no duración,
en el lugar donde no estoy, no soy, o sólo
en el seno secreto de las aguas.
(Isla)
+++
CIMA del canto.
El ruiseñor y tú
ya sois lo mismo.
(Anónimo: versión)
José Ángel Valente,
Fragmentos de un libro futuro, Galaxia Gutenberg - Círculo de
Lectores,
Barcelona, 2000.