Contemporary Italian Music for Guitar
A Testimony
Introduction
Willingly responding to the invitation given to me by Marco Bazzotti to write about contemporary Italian music for guitar, I prefer to do it from a certain angle, that is, talking about the pieces of which I saw the beginning. While this point of view excludes any claim of completeness (and also neutrality), I hope it can present the advantages of a direct testimony.
The Occasion
As a performer, I started dealing with contemporary music about 15 years ago; before, in my early years and my first concert experiences, I lived a kind of love-hate relationship towards this type of music that on one hand, I couldn’t manage to understand (I’m talking about serial music, post-Weber avantgarde, etc., not to mention the guitar repertoire up to Britten, Martin, Henze), but on the other hand, it fascinated me, especially when I faced it as a performer moreso than as a listener, also because I was always intrigued by sonorities different from those in tonal music.
The occasion for a more direct contact came about thanks to my long-time friendship with the Milanese composer Pippo Molino (he rightly insisted: the performer is missing something if he doesn’t venture into contemporary music) and to the possibility of recording a album (an LP was my first album!) for Edi-Pan; editorial politics of the record labels imposed artists to record unedited works, and so I started turning to composers that I managed to reach asking them to participate in this project. It was pretty risky for me because I was playing my recording debut with music in which I couldn’t control the quality or the instrumental relevancy ahead of time (I remember that just to have one “sure” instrumental piece I asked a contribution from Angelo Gilardino who dedicated the delicate and difficult “Aubade” to me, but although it was obviously guitaristicly “correct”, it certainly can’t be defined as an effective piece…)
The record was a chance to meet numerous composers like Paolo Ugoletti, who wrote “Nocturne” for the occasion, Chiara Benati (future winner of the composition presented by “Il Fronimo” magazine with the piece “Non Solo.” –a short anecdote regarding this: when I asked her, she told me she had this fairly long piece on the shelf, “Non Solo.” Worried about the balance of the record, I asked her if she could make something shorter, so she said she would have tried to utilize material that she had prepared for the longer piece but hadn’t used yet. So with these “scraps,” she brought forth that gem called “Nel Tempo della Memoria” that would be used for the record and for many concerts, while “Non Solo” for her went on to win the competition…), Carlo Alessandro Landini who wrote “Etude Minimale” (involving me in the study of the fingerboard for chords that had the characteristics that lent themselves to the minimalistic mutations he desired), Aurelio Samori (composer with a language similar to that of his teacher Franco Donatoni) who wrote the structuralist “Due Miniature,” Alessandro Solbiati, today famous, who wrote his first piece for guitar for this occasion, “Petit Cadeu” as an homage to his first-born girl, Sara, then just recently arrived in the world (six octaves, harmonics…in a structuralistic context…), Danilo Lorenzini, professor at the Conservatory of Milan, who wrote a neoclassical “Preludio in Mi,” I had also known for some time other composers present on the record: Giuseppe Cangini, from Forli like myself, author of the revisitation of the chant “Voi ch’amate lo Creatore” and Gilberto Togni, my colleague at the Conservatory in Cesena (“Ai Confini del Nulla”). Naturally included on the record were also te extremely dense “Frammento A and B” by Pippo Molino, also his first time writing for guitar.
The experience of the record taught me many things that I will try to summarize this way: first, it was a way to verify the capability of the guitar, as well as my own, to speak a language common to other musicians (it was the first experience with the guitar for almost all the composers and, in general, they showed a surprising capacity to measure themselves up with the instrument); studying the pieces as much as possible with the composers, I learned to get past my instinctive resistance and prejudice towards the unusual aspects of the writing, behind which I discovered the same musical goals as ever: keeping the piece “on its feet,” creating ad expressive continuity, phrasing…
In addition, the more my familiarity with these new experiences grew and the more I became capable of recognizing the different styles that characterized each composer, his attitude towards tradition, his expressive goals… (it will be fair to come back to this). I found it gradually easier to evaluate the professional level of the contemporary music I happened to read and to distinguish the improvising or “naïve” composer from the professional.
When the work was finished, the record surely presented something new on the Italian scene; all the pieces were also published by Edi-Pan, some if not all, were broadcasted by RAI [Italian Radio], there were good reviews, and I found myself with a small repertoire of concert pieces written for me.
First Developments
In those years I also started my concert activity abroad and I had, therefore, the possibility to guarantee a certain circulation of the music right away, that I tended to insert like I do now, into the anthological programs including pieces from various time periods. This solution pleased the composers as well as myself. I didn’t want to “sell myself” as performer of only contemporary music; composers usually like that their works aren’t heard by only the passionate listeners of the sector. This choice, though, requires the piece to “work” even in a “normal” concert. For example, I found myself, for reasons of prudence expressed before, preferring many short pieces to few long ones, and this fact increased the chances of placing one or two contemporary pieces in every recital (I prefer to put them at the beginning of the second part, when the confidence of the audience has already been gained). And then, the brief piece obligates the composer to synthesize, and this brings it closer to the nature of the guitar. It can also happen, as some composers had to recognize with awe, that the expressive impact of the quickly written brief piece had nothing to envy in the long piece, fruit of months of compositional speculation.
In the years immediately following, there was a natural proliferation around the first nucleus of pieces. For example, I asked Chiara Benati to write a second piece of a contrasting character to the first to be played together in concerts, and so the pulsating “capriccio” was born, then published by Bérben with the kind interest of Angelo Gilardino. Alessandro Solbiati wrote the brilliant “Tre Pezzi” for me, which was then published by Suvini Zerboni. Ruggero Lolini also wrote a piece for me, “Tamerici,” for a performance in London. My encounter reemerged with Angelo Paccagnini who wrote the bursting and extremely difficult “Quattro Aforismi” (Edi-Pan) for me that I played very much (in particular, the first: Gitana”).
Later Developments
Another two occasions were important for the progress of the initial project: the commemorative concert of Armando Gentilucci that was held at Cesena in 1990 and my second tour in Australia. Gentilucci had ties to Cesena where he presided every year over the commission of the “Petrini-Zamboni” competition, reserved for new-conservatory graduates. He would joke around during lunch, for example, giving little musical “presents” for his friends. When he asked me to participate in the commemorative concert organized in Cesena where I would have to perform a small unedited fragment by Gentilucci for guitar and piano, I thought of asking some composer friends to write for the occasion. There wasn’t much time, but I received significant contributions from Fabrizio Fanticini (“Frammento per Armando” –Ricordi), Paolo Ugoletti (“Preludio), and Adriano Guarnieri, whose piece “Per Armando” (-Ricordi), written “on the fly” I believe in two hours and with his heart in his hand, is in my opinion one of the most beautiful pieces written by this famous composer. I’ve recorded it and played it countless times.
In Australia, I took part in a festival dedicated to Italian and Australian contemporary music: between the masterclasses and concerts, there were many opportunities to play, and I could present many pieces from my repertoire while also asking for some new contributions (the long “Rondo” by Ugoletti had its beginning like this). The occasion was also interesting because I found myself representing Italy together with double bassist Stefano Scodanibbio and trombonist Giancarlo Schiaffini: a kind of recognition of the work I was doing for contemporary music.
In the meantime, my repertoire continued to grow. There was a possibility for a second record for Edi-Pan, but it unfortunately hasn’t been completed yet. Chiara Benati wrote a series of small pieces for two guitars entitled, “Dediche,” making a version for solo guitar later on that I played in Siena some years later. In those years, the intense “Cinque Piccoli Pezzi” came out by Umberto Bombardelli, “Studi” by Gabriella Zen, “Trasparenze” by Bianca Maria Furgeri, “Serenata” (Edi-Pan) by Angelo Paccagnini for guitar and tape, “Murex” by Patrizia Montanaro, “Points d’eau” by Cristina Landuzzi and more importantly several compositions for guitar and orchestra: “Serenata” by Paolo Ugoletti (Suvini Zerboni), Concerto for guitar and strings by Chiara Benati (Edi-Pan) and “Jubilus” also for guitar and strings by Gilberto Togni. Furthermore, Pippo Molino wrote a relevant guitar part for his work “La Pretesa Umana.” Unfortunately, of these last pieces I could only perform the concerto by Benati and this in less-than-optimal organizational conditions (even if prestigious). This made me more cautious in asking pieces with a large organum. The compositional results, thankfully, remain…
Stimuli and New Ideas
I was realizing that I kept getting more creatively involved in my relationships with the composers and my requests were made less generic, especially where I felt more free to “risk” in the propositions. For example, after having extended contact with the music of Ugoletti, who tended to use “late romantic” harmonic material in a structuralistic way, I had the idea to try to “push the composer” towards a drier terrain and I asked him to write a “contrapuntal piece.” The result arrived shortly after in the form of the extraordinary “Giga” (Suvini Zerboni), one of the contemporary pieces that I’ve played most. It’s an impeccable inverse fugue in three voices, apparently (but don’t let yourself be fooled) lightened up by a long theme bordering on the line of rock. With a hammering rhythm from beginning to end, the piece is in two sections, the second being none other than an inversion of the first. How a non-guitarist composer could write something of the kind (I barely had to change anything) remains a mystery.
Then I had the strange idea to ask my composer friends (by now I consider them so) to write “something that could be performed in church,” certainly influenced by my assiduous reading of vihuela music and relative transcriptions which were more or less “glosadas” of the polifonists (masses, hymns, motets – teacher colleagues, if you want to provoke your students to make the guitar sing, there’s only the embarrassment of the choice…). So “Sequenza” was written by Bianca Maria Furgeri, “Winter Ground” by Ugoletti (written Christmas day 1991), “Versus” by Bombardelli (ed. Rugginenti), “Frammento D” by Molino, the six rigorously serial “Toccate per una Messa” by Angelo Paccagnini, the brief “Variazione su Vasilissa Ergo Gauda” by Luciano Sampaoli, and the “Tre Frammenti” by Gilberto Cappelli, later followed by “The Question…and the Answer” by Luca Belloni. I’ll get right back to Cappelli, but now I’ll say that the collaboration o the composwers gave life to an extraordinary group of pieces in which the guitar reemerges in the touching spiritual clima of Tientos, Anthems, etc…
Another stimulus came from the collaboration of the American violinist Victoria Martino. I had met Victoria in Tasmania. A few years later she called me from Vienna, where she called me from Vienna where she had moved to in the meantime, and proposed me to play for an inauguration of an exhibit of the artist Zoran Music at the Albertina gallery of Vienna. Other similar occasions followed, linked to a contemporary art exhibit each time. For the watercolor exhibit by Morandi, Victoria asked me for some pieces by Bolognese composer, so Chiara Benati yet again came in to help, writing the extraordinary aforistic tryptic in record time, “Dedicato a un Artista,” inspired by three watercolors by Morandi.
Once the strand was begun, other pieces came: for the exhibits of Peter Willburger in Naples and for “Omaggio a Emilio Vedova” at the Bianual of art at the Novo Mesto (Slovenia).
(It strikes me to think that all those things wouldn’t be if I hadn’t asked for them. Apart from the musical stature of the pieces, this experience makes you understand how, by analogy, who knows how many pieces in the history of music have had their beginnings like this, from external stimuli at times by chance…)
The “case” of Cappelli deserves to be treated separately. I had been “courting” the famous composer since ’79, in the name of old friendship, asking him to write me something and always receiving extremely short, firm refusals. Around ’90 I had understood that something was in the air, but I didn’t dare hope for too much. Finally, on November 16, Gilberto made me a surprise visit, and at a certain point he took out a big score, a piece he had been secretly working on for months and months. It signaled his return to composition after several years of forced inactivity. It was an important piece for him, then, that also signaled a new phase of his style: it was an honor for me to be involved in all this. The piece also presented itself as a challenge to my skills: 20 extremely dense pages of an apparently discouraging difficulty, certainly the hardest piece I’ve played, but I couldn’t hold myself back.
I worked on it, together with Gilberto, for two and a half years, and it was an extraordinary experience.
The difficulties of the piece were linked with its expressive characteristics, a dense contrapuntal texture, a continuous tremolo that was suggestive of a song, almost transforming the guitar into voice, filled with continuous dynamic fluctuations and agogics that for the composer are as important as the notes, if not more so; expressionistic “fortissimo” to the verge of breaking the sound, “trattenuti,” 8 different types of fermatas, sforzatissimi, six principal themes that run through the work, all this and much more are “Memoria” (ed. Ricordi). I believe it’s truly an event in the literature of guitar. Even my sound changed while studying the piece, pushed as I was to almost make the guitar “explode.” The first performance, with following transmission on RAI, came on June 13, 1993, at the “La Fenice” Theater of Venice, during the “Biennale Musica” dedicated to Luigi Nono who was Cappelli’s friend and teacher.
Unfortunately, the guitar scene in all its other busy matters totally ignored the thing. But I don’t complain. Bach was right: “Soli Deo Gloria,” it also saves an ulcer, and who knows, the piece is there, whoever wants it can have it…
Cappelli’s research has continued after that piece and there’s been a bloom of a large quantity of works: the “Tre Frammenti,” “Contrappunto da Ockeghem,” then two pieces written for the baptism of his first son, Andrea; the “Sette Salmi” for chorus and guitar (Ricordi), two more pieces for the baptism of his second child, Laura, some transcriptions of choral pieces and other pieces I’ll mention later, and he still continues. In my opinion, it’s one of the most important contributions to the guitar repertoire. The attempt by the composer to multiply the expressive impact by reducing the notes to a minimum and the new use of tonality used in some of the latest pieces is fascinating.
Recent History
In recent years, two other fundamental things have happened for my work in contemporary music. The first is the publication of “Manifesto Musica 1994,” edited by the composers Pippo Molino, Carlo Alessandro Landini and Gianni Possio, and by the musicologist Renzo Cresti. Published in the “Giornale della Musica,” the manifesto is a precise petition to escape from the purely “stylistic” fixation in favor of an attention to the expressive truth of making music: it seems like the discovery of hot water, but following the contemporary music scene, the impression is evident of a tendency to classify a priori an composer based on his linguistic choices (“in this piece there are too many half notes…”). The “manifesto” intended to shake things up in favor of the freedom and of the interior needs of making music: I totally agree.
The second fact is a concert idea that came to Pippo Molino and realized for the first time at Meeting Per L’Amicizia fra I Popoli in Rimini, edition 1995: the title of the show was “Una Ragione per Cantare” [A Reason to Sing], the place was the Rimini fair auditorium. The audience was composed of thousands of spectators. In the introduction to the concert written on the program, Molino said, among other things, “Today, then, all culture and art seem only full of skepticism, actually of nihilism…there is less and less art being made, less music. When it is made it is over-elaborate and incomprehensible…but beyond all this something else also exists. There are important islands in popular song today and in recent past. There is some rare but authentic vein of religious song from which everything could be reborn…music that exists, that is listened to and sung and that contains in itself a reason to sing…” The program approached classical and popular music from various periods, and for the occasion I performed a new composition by Molino with Valentina Oriani: “Esodo,” for voice and guitar.
I discovered that the needs that both the “manifesto” and the concert responded to were shared by other composers who I collaborated with in these years, and with some in particular these relationships became even closer: the success of the concert and following repeat performances, not to mention other shows that came about on the wave of this same attempt, like the summer seminar in 1996 in Acqualagna (Pesaro). “Un incontro con la tecnica musicale e le sue ragioni” [An encounter with musical technique and its reasons] witnessed not only the involvement of other musicians like violinist Enzo Porta and mezzosoprano Sonia Turchetta, but also the performance of new music of which I’ll list below: “Air and Reel” for violin and guitar by Ugoletti, a very successful attempt to blend sophisticated, easy and communicative language; in particular, the spirited reel is reconstructed in modules of celtic folklore revisited with great taste and irony, a fascinating pieces. Then followed “Love Tune,” also of Irish influence. Also to remember is the explosive “Suoni di Luce” by Cappelli, also for violin and guitar, a new piece by Molino (Frammento C) written to be paired up with “Esodo” and full of that charged positivity that animates the extention of the manifesto and is so rare to encounter in the music of today. “Fantasia” and “Anthem” for solo guitar by Ugoletti (that continue his fascinating explorations into double and triple counterpoint, jokingly teasing me for having made him neglect his original inclination for harmony…for me, it’s exciting to seize and take advantage of the possibilities of interpretive invention that this extremely vigorous music, without dynamic or agogic indications, manages to free), the versions for voice and guitar of some popular Russian songs… but by now we’ve arrived at the present.
Assessment and Outlook
I’m happy to have embarked on this adventure; I’d do it again. I assisted in the beginning of over 100 new pieces, some of which I believe very important. I learned how to get more acquainted with music and the guitar.
Especially regarding some of my latest experiences, to me it seems to be a decisively interesting testimony, even if initial, of rediscovery of the relationship between who writes music, who performs it and the public, an attempt that in a certain way responds to the sense of “distance” that I felt as a boy, and that wasn’t totally attributable to my ignorance…
Willingly responding to the invitation given to me by Marco Bazzotti to write about contemporary Italian music for guitar, I prefer to do it from a certain angle, that is, talking about the pieces of which I saw the beginning. While this point of view excludes any claim of completeness (and also neutrality), I hope it can present the advantages of a direct testimony.
The Occasion
As a performer, I started dealing with contemporary music about 15 years ago; before, in my early years and my first concert experiences, I lived a kind of love-hate relationship towards this type of music that on one hand, I couldn’t manage to understand (I’m talking about serial music, post-Weber avantgarde, etc., not to mention the guitar repertoire up to Britten, Martin, Henze), but on the other hand, it fascinated me, especially when I faced it as a performer moreso than as a listener, also because I was always intrigued by sonorities different from those in tonal music.
The occasion for a more direct contact came about thanks to my long-time friendship with the Milanese composer Pippo Molino (he rightly insisted: the performer is missing something if he doesn’t venture into contemporary music) and to the possibility of recording a album (an LP was my first album!) for Edi-Pan; editorial politics of the record labels imposed artists to record unedited works, and so I started turning to composers that I managed to reach asking them to participate in this project. It was pretty risky for me because I was playing my recording debut with music in which I couldn’t control the quality or the instrumental relevancy ahead of time (I remember that just to have one “sure” instrumental piece I asked a contribution from Angelo Gilardino who dedicated the delicate and difficult “Aubade” to me, but although it was obviously guitaristicly “correct”, it certainly can’t be defined as an effective piece…)
The record was a chance to meet numerous composers like Paolo Ugoletti, who wrote “Nocturne” for the occasion, Chiara Benati (future winner of the composition presented by “Il Fronimo” magazine with the piece “Non Solo.” –a short anecdote regarding this: when I asked her, she told me she had this fairly long piece on the shelf, “Non Solo.” Worried about the balance of the record, I asked her if she could make something shorter, so she said she would have tried to utilize material that she had prepared for the longer piece but hadn’t used yet. So with these “scraps,” she brought forth that gem called “Nel Tempo della Memoria” that would be used for the record and for many concerts, while “Non Solo” for her went on to win the competition…), Carlo Alessandro Landini who wrote “Etude Minimale” (involving me in the study of the fingerboard for chords that had the characteristics that lent themselves to the minimalistic mutations he desired), Aurelio Samori (composer with a language similar to that of his teacher Franco Donatoni) who wrote the structuralist “Due Miniature,” Alessandro Solbiati, today famous, who wrote his first piece for guitar for this occasion, “Petit Cadeu” as an homage to his first-born girl, Sara, then just recently arrived in the world (six octaves, harmonics…in a structuralistic context…), Danilo Lorenzini, professor at the Conservatory of Milan, who wrote a neoclassical “Preludio in Mi,” I had also known for some time other composers present on the record: Giuseppe Cangini, from Forli like myself, author of the revisitation of the chant “Voi ch’amate lo Creatore” and Gilberto Togni, my colleague at the Conservatory in Cesena (“Ai Confini del Nulla”). Naturally included on the record were also te extremely dense “Frammento A and B” by Pippo Molino, also his first time writing for guitar.
The experience of the record taught me many things that I will try to summarize this way: first, it was a way to verify the capability of the guitar, as well as my own, to speak a language common to other musicians (it was the first experience with the guitar for almost all the composers and, in general, they showed a surprising capacity to measure themselves up with the instrument); studying the pieces as much as possible with the composers, I learned to get past my instinctive resistance and prejudice towards the unusual aspects of the writing, behind which I discovered the same musical goals as ever: keeping the piece “on its feet,” creating ad expressive continuity, phrasing…
In addition, the more my familiarity with these new experiences grew and the more I became capable of recognizing the different styles that characterized each composer, his attitude towards tradition, his expressive goals… (it will be fair to come back to this). I found it gradually easier to evaluate the professional level of the contemporary music I happened to read and to distinguish the improvising or “naïve” composer from the professional.
When the work was finished, the record surely presented something new on the Italian scene; all the pieces were also published by Edi-Pan, some if not all, were broadcasted by RAI [Italian Radio], there were good reviews, and I found myself with a small repertoire of concert pieces written for me.
First Developments
In those years I also started my concert activity abroad and I had, therefore, the possibility to guarantee a certain circulation of the music right away, that I tended to insert like I do now, into the anthological programs including pieces from various time periods. This solution pleased the composers as well as myself. I didn’t want to “sell myself” as performer of only contemporary music; composers usually like that their works aren’t heard by only the passionate listeners of the sector. This choice, though, requires the piece to “work” even in a “normal” concert. For example, I found myself, for reasons of prudence expressed before, preferring many short pieces to few long ones, and this fact increased the chances of placing one or two contemporary pieces in every recital (I prefer to put them at the beginning of the second part, when the confidence of the audience has already been gained). And then, the brief piece obligates the composer to synthesize, and this brings it closer to the nature of the guitar. It can also happen, as some composers had to recognize with awe, that the expressive impact of the quickly written brief piece had nothing to envy in the long piece, fruit of months of compositional speculation.
In the years immediately following, there was a natural proliferation around the first nucleus of pieces. For example, I asked Chiara Benati to write a second piece of a contrasting character to the first to be played together in concerts, and so the pulsating “capriccio” was born, then published by Bérben with the kind interest of Angelo Gilardino. Alessandro Solbiati wrote the brilliant “Tre Pezzi” for me, which was then published by Suvini Zerboni. Ruggero Lolini also wrote a piece for me, “Tamerici,” for a performance in London. My encounter reemerged with Angelo Paccagnini who wrote the bursting and extremely difficult “Quattro Aforismi” (Edi-Pan) for me that I played very much (in particular, the first: Gitana”).
Later Developments
Another two occasions were important for the progress of the initial project: the commemorative concert of Armando Gentilucci that was held at Cesena in 1990 and my second tour in Australia. Gentilucci had ties to Cesena where he presided every year over the commission of the “Petrini-Zamboni” competition, reserved for new-conservatory graduates. He would joke around during lunch, for example, giving little musical “presents” for his friends. When he asked me to participate in the commemorative concert organized in Cesena where I would have to perform a small unedited fragment by Gentilucci for guitar and piano, I thought of asking some composer friends to write for the occasion. There wasn’t much time, but I received significant contributions from Fabrizio Fanticini (“Frammento per Armando” –Ricordi), Paolo Ugoletti (“Preludio), and Adriano Guarnieri, whose piece “Per Armando” (-Ricordi), written “on the fly” I believe in two hours and with his heart in his hand, is in my opinion one of the most beautiful pieces written by this famous composer. I’ve recorded it and played it countless times.
In Australia, I took part in a festival dedicated to Italian and Australian contemporary music: between the masterclasses and concerts, there were many opportunities to play, and I could present many pieces from my repertoire while also asking for some new contributions (the long “Rondo” by Ugoletti had its beginning like this). The occasion was also interesting because I found myself representing Italy together with double bassist Stefano Scodanibbio and trombonist Giancarlo Schiaffini: a kind of recognition of the work I was doing for contemporary music.
In the meantime, my repertoire continued to grow. There was a possibility for a second record for Edi-Pan, but it unfortunately hasn’t been completed yet. Chiara Benati wrote a series of small pieces for two guitars entitled, “Dediche,” making a version for solo guitar later on that I played in Siena some years later. In those years, the intense “Cinque Piccoli Pezzi” came out by Umberto Bombardelli, “Studi” by Gabriella Zen, “Trasparenze” by Bianca Maria Furgeri, “Serenata” (Edi-Pan) by Angelo Paccagnini for guitar and tape, “Murex” by Patrizia Montanaro, “Points d’eau” by Cristina Landuzzi and more importantly several compositions for guitar and orchestra: “Serenata” by Paolo Ugoletti (Suvini Zerboni), Concerto for guitar and strings by Chiara Benati (Edi-Pan) and “Jubilus” also for guitar and strings by Gilberto Togni. Furthermore, Pippo Molino wrote a relevant guitar part for his work “La Pretesa Umana.” Unfortunately, of these last pieces I could only perform the concerto by Benati and this in less-than-optimal organizational conditions (even if prestigious). This made me more cautious in asking pieces with a large organum. The compositional results, thankfully, remain…
Stimuli and New Ideas
I was realizing that I kept getting more creatively involved in my relationships with the composers and my requests were made less generic, especially where I felt more free to “risk” in the propositions. For example, after having extended contact with the music of Ugoletti, who tended to use “late romantic” harmonic material in a structuralistic way, I had the idea to try to “push the composer” towards a drier terrain and I asked him to write a “contrapuntal piece.” The result arrived shortly after in the form of the extraordinary “Giga” (Suvini Zerboni), one of the contemporary pieces that I’ve played most. It’s an impeccable inverse fugue in three voices, apparently (but don’t let yourself be fooled) lightened up by a long theme bordering on the line of rock. With a hammering rhythm from beginning to end, the piece is in two sections, the second being none other than an inversion of the first. How a non-guitarist composer could write something of the kind (I barely had to change anything) remains a mystery.
Then I had the strange idea to ask my composer friends (by now I consider them so) to write “something that could be performed in church,” certainly influenced by my assiduous reading of vihuela music and relative transcriptions which were more or less “glosadas” of the polifonists (masses, hymns, motets – teacher colleagues, if you want to provoke your students to make the guitar sing, there’s only the embarrassment of the choice…). So “Sequenza” was written by Bianca Maria Furgeri, “Winter Ground” by Ugoletti (written Christmas day 1991), “Versus” by Bombardelli (ed. Rugginenti), “Frammento D” by Molino, the six rigorously serial “Toccate per una Messa” by Angelo Paccagnini, the brief “Variazione su Vasilissa Ergo Gauda” by Luciano Sampaoli, and the “Tre Frammenti” by Gilberto Cappelli, later followed by “The Question…and the Answer” by Luca Belloni. I’ll get right back to Cappelli, but now I’ll say that the collaboration o the composwers gave life to an extraordinary group of pieces in which the guitar reemerges in the touching spiritual clima of Tientos, Anthems, etc…
Another stimulus came from the collaboration of the American violinist Victoria Martino. I had met Victoria in Tasmania. A few years later she called me from Vienna, where she called me from Vienna where she had moved to in the meantime, and proposed me to play for an inauguration of an exhibit of the artist Zoran Music at the Albertina gallery of Vienna. Other similar occasions followed, linked to a contemporary art exhibit each time. For the watercolor exhibit by Morandi, Victoria asked me for some pieces by Bolognese composer, so Chiara Benati yet again came in to help, writing the extraordinary aforistic tryptic in record time, “Dedicato a un Artista,” inspired by three watercolors by Morandi.
Once the strand was begun, other pieces came: for the exhibits of Peter Willburger in Naples and for “Omaggio a Emilio Vedova” at the Bianual of art at the Novo Mesto (Slovenia).
(It strikes me to think that all those things wouldn’t be if I hadn’t asked for them. Apart from the musical stature of the pieces, this experience makes you understand how, by analogy, who knows how many pieces in the history of music have had their beginnings like this, from external stimuli at times by chance…)
The “case” of Cappelli deserves to be treated separately. I had been “courting” the famous composer since ’79, in the name of old friendship, asking him to write me something and always receiving extremely short, firm refusals. Around ’90 I had understood that something was in the air, but I didn’t dare hope for too much. Finally, on November 16, Gilberto made me a surprise visit, and at a certain point he took out a big score, a piece he had been secretly working on for months and months. It signaled his return to composition after several years of forced inactivity. It was an important piece for him, then, that also signaled a new phase of his style: it was an honor for me to be involved in all this. The piece also presented itself as a challenge to my skills: 20 extremely dense pages of an apparently discouraging difficulty, certainly the hardest piece I’ve played, but I couldn’t hold myself back.
I worked on it, together with Gilberto, for two and a half years, and it was an extraordinary experience.
The difficulties of the piece were linked with its expressive characteristics, a dense contrapuntal texture, a continuous tremolo that was suggestive of a song, almost transforming the guitar into voice, filled with continuous dynamic fluctuations and agogics that for the composer are as important as the notes, if not more so; expressionistic “fortissimo” to the verge of breaking the sound, “trattenuti,” 8 different types of fermatas, sforzatissimi, six principal themes that run through the work, all this and much more are “Memoria” (ed. Ricordi). I believe it’s truly an event in the literature of guitar. Even my sound changed while studying the piece, pushed as I was to almost make the guitar “explode.” The first performance, with following transmission on RAI, came on June 13, 1993, at the “La Fenice” Theater of Venice, during the “Biennale Musica” dedicated to Luigi Nono who was Cappelli’s friend and teacher.
Unfortunately, the guitar scene in all its other busy matters totally ignored the thing. But I don’t complain. Bach was right: “Soli Deo Gloria,” it also saves an ulcer, and who knows, the piece is there, whoever wants it can have it…
Cappelli’s research has continued after that piece and there’s been a bloom of a large quantity of works: the “Tre Frammenti,” “Contrappunto da Ockeghem,” then two pieces written for the baptism of his first son, Andrea; the “Sette Salmi” for chorus and guitar (Ricordi), two more pieces for the baptism of his second child, Laura, some transcriptions of choral pieces and other pieces I’ll mention later, and he still continues. In my opinion, it’s one of the most important contributions to the guitar repertoire. The attempt by the composer to multiply the expressive impact by reducing the notes to a minimum and the new use of tonality used in some of the latest pieces is fascinating.
Recent History
In recent years, two other fundamental things have happened for my work in contemporary music. The first is the publication of “Manifesto Musica 1994,” edited by the composers Pippo Molino, Carlo Alessandro Landini and Gianni Possio, and by the musicologist Renzo Cresti. Published in the “Giornale della Musica,” the manifesto is a precise petition to escape from the purely “stylistic” fixation in favor of an attention to the expressive truth of making music: it seems like the discovery of hot water, but following the contemporary music scene, the impression is evident of a tendency to classify a priori an composer based on his linguistic choices (“in this piece there are too many half notes…”). The “manifesto” intended to shake things up in favor of the freedom and of the interior needs of making music: I totally agree.
The second fact is a concert idea that came to Pippo Molino and realized for the first time at Meeting Per L’Amicizia fra I Popoli in Rimini, edition 1995: the title of the show was “Una Ragione per Cantare” [A Reason to Sing], the place was the Rimini fair auditorium. The audience was composed of thousands of spectators. In the introduction to the concert written on the program, Molino said, among other things, “Today, then, all culture and art seem only full of skepticism, actually of nihilism…there is less and less art being made, less music. When it is made it is over-elaborate and incomprehensible…but beyond all this something else also exists. There are important islands in popular song today and in recent past. There is some rare but authentic vein of religious song from which everything could be reborn…music that exists, that is listened to and sung and that contains in itself a reason to sing…” The program approached classical and popular music from various periods, and for the occasion I performed a new composition by Molino with Valentina Oriani: “Esodo,” for voice and guitar.
I discovered that the needs that both the “manifesto” and the concert responded to were shared by other composers who I collaborated with in these years, and with some in particular these relationships became even closer: the success of the concert and following repeat performances, not to mention other shows that came about on the wave of this same attempt, like the summer seminar in 1996 in Acqualagna (Pesaro). “Un incontro con la tecnica musicale e le sue ragioni” [An encounter with musical technique and its reasons] witnessed not only the involvement of other musicians like violinist Enzo Porta and mezzosoprano Sonia Turchetta, but also the performance of new music of which I’ll list below: “Air and Reel” for violin and guitar by Ugoletti, a very successful attempt to blend sophisticated, easy and communicative language; in particular, the spirited reel is reconstructed in modules of celtic folklore revisited with great taste and irony, a fascinating pieces. Then followed “Love Tune,” also of Irish influence. Also to remember is the explosive “Suoni di Luce” by Cappelli, also for violin and guitar, a new piece by Molino (Frammento C) written to be paired up with “Esodo” and full of that charged positivity that animates the extention of the manifesto and is so rare to encounter in the music of today. “Fantasia” and “Anthem” for solo guitar by Ugoletti (that continue his fascinating explorations into double and triple counterpoint, jokingly teasing me for having made him neglect his original inclination for harmony…for me, it’s exciting to seize and take advantage of the possibilities of interpretive invention that this extremely vigorous music, without dynamic or agogic indications, manages to free), the versions for voice and guitar of some popular Russian songs… but by now we’ve arrived at the present.
Assessment and Outlook
I’m happy to have embarked on this adventure; I’d do it again. I assisted in the beginning of over 100 new pieces, some of which I believe very important. I learned how to get more acquainted with music and the guitar.
Especially regarding some of my latest experiences, to me it seems to be a decisively interesting testimony, even if initial, of rediscovery of the relationship between who writes music, who performs it and the public, an attempt that in a certain way responds to the sense of “distance” that I felt as a boy, and that wasn’t totally attributable to my ignorance…