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Works

Nicola Sani
Non tutte le isole hanno intorno il mare
(1997)
for vla, harp, cl. b. and eight channels tape


Editor: Suvini-Zerboni
1� Performance: Teatro Pergolesi - Jesi - 2000
Production: INA-GRM Paris - DIEM Aarhus - IMEB Bourges
Buyed by: INA-GRM Paris - DIEM Aarhus - IMEB Bourges

This is a three-composition cycle for solo instrument and electroacoustic music on 8-channel digital audio tape. Sound islands are identified by the sound of the instruments, which is expanded, explored and projected into the space through digital sound techniques. The opera unwinds around sound communication forms, regarding the relation between timbre, space and poetics. It is an investigation on the "sound outskirts" and the possible space and time relations between an instrument and its electroacoustic image. It is a meditation concerning man, his solitude, the diversity and the disparity, but there is also the awareness that the price to pay for an antagonist way of thinking is the solitude of today's composers, the lack of safe landmarks, against an unlimited background of compositional, linguistic and organizational possibilities for sound materials, which will not protect the composer against the dominant order of dominant things.

Isola Prima (commissioned and produced by the INA-GRM, Paris in 1997/98) is subdivided into four sections for 8-channel tape and three interludes for solo viola. The instrument is initially incorporated, almost mingled the electroacoustic sounds built around its expanded image, then it assumes its leading role, becoming the key element of a dramaturgy proceeding along spatial-temporal tension lines. Gradually fading away as an ebb tide, the electroacoustic multi-phonic sounds make room for the sequences of the solo instrument, then they surround it again with the complexity of a spatial polyphony expanding the timbre universe of the original instrument.
The tape section was based on viola sounds performed by Maurizio Barbetti, processed through the "Grm-Tools" digital sound treatment software developed by the research staff of the Group de Recherche Musicale in Paris. Isola Prima is dedicated to Rita Curtatone Baldino.

Isola Seconda (commissioned and produced by the DIEM, Aarhus in 1997) develops itself around a single harp and 8-channel tape structure within which the live instrument sounds uses various performance techniques, the chords of the harp are activated with metal objects, the cello bow on lower strings. All these techniques were experimented together with the harp soloist i began this experiment with, Sofia-Asunciòn Claro. This central section of the cycle highlights the fast dialogue between the complex processing of the rough, metallic sound of strings and the instrumental phrasing, continously disrupted, insisting on extreme registers.
At the centre of the composition fleeting reminiscences appear, elements which remain as suspended, a fluctuating material or a briefly recognisable mark within the permanent mutation of sound, based on temporal dilatations and elaborations of the instrumental sound, based on material recorded at the Diem Studios, with the Danish harp player Joost Schelling.

Isola Terza (commissioned and produced by the IMEB, Bourges in 1997) is the extreme landmark, the remotest shelter of this voyage around the loneliness of the man-island, the antagonist thought, fading into a final ripping scream. After the rough sounds of the harp, the bass clarinet redefines the timbre space of the last leg of this voyage. Flying close to the ground expanded spaces and unfathomable depths are recalled. The sound of the instrument, the keys rattling and multi-phonic distortions are an integral part of a sound universe within which the live portion unwinds as a hypothetical I-voice. The narration manifests itself through sudden gashes and intimate sound reflections. The tape part becomes a sediment, the living memory, testifying this passage, a fading trace on this last horizon. Sound processing was carried out in the IMEB Studios in Bourges, based on material recorded with the French clarinetist Serge Conte.
(Nicola Sani)