Commission: Fondazione Spinola Banna per l’Arte
First performance: 06/06/2014, Quartetto di Cremona, Fondazione Spinola Banna, Poirino (TO)
Time is a scraping engine, and the piece is a loose attempt to put it in motion. Musicians are four old gramophones, constantly in phase, granulating some old stuff. There’s no electronics, there’s essentially no particular instrumental technique. Not even one pizzicato. However, through the fabric, I’d love to catch an electroacoustic halo, a shadow flying between strings and light, as the halting flow of current through the wires.
Ten minutes run in a single slow passage. Yet, a certain distance remains between musicians and music: even in the most passionate parts, the sense lingers elsewhere. Intimacy is estrangement.
The rest includes: harmony (but isn’t it always the same?) through a jungle of glissandi (but who’s leaving, and who’s arriving? and where? and when?); near the end (but isn’t it the actual beginning?) we dock to something livelier and farther. During the journey: the on and off of the light in a grey hospital corridor. And a scent, as of october leaves, as of tempests.