Do you notice a mistake?
The first two works in Ivan Fedele’s catalogue are Dodici figlie di O and Totem. In the first, the electronic part is taken from piano material, which it counterpoints and to which it adds a resonant backdrop. Totem is a reference to archetypes in non-European cultures. Thus, from the very beginning, it is possible to make out the major paths the composer has continued to explore throughout his career: dialectical relationships, electronics and resonance, and archetypes.
Fedele himself identifies three phases in his work1. In the first of these, he focused on figure, whose proliferation in time engenders form and contributes to its intelligibility. Figures generally based in idiomatic and strongly characteristic instrumental gestures (scales, arpeggios, repeated notes, trills, etc.) are present in Primo Quartetto (Per accordar) and Chiari, which were awarded the International Composers Award of Gaudeamus Music Week in Rotterdam in 1981, drawing the attention of the music world. To create a discourse and to become a signal strong enough to stimulate the listener’s memory, figures must be reiterated (but not replicated identically). Chord is the first of his pieces to display the principle of binary opposition that would come to direct the sound and the structure of Fedele’s music, where it engendered numerous contrasts. While instrumental gesture shapes figure, it also acts at a higher level, since “the musical figures not only determine the density and rarefaction of the events, in other words a dialectic of the syntax, but also a dialectic of the itinerary 2”.
These interests drew him forward into his second creative period, which began with Epos. Fedele began to pay increasing attention to narrativity, which depended in large part on the existence of a meaningful directionality. “I am stimulated in my composition by the search for a line of force, a directionality in the discourse that corresponds to the appearance of the harmonic, timbral, or rhythmic language3”. The opposition of these elements was integrated into an abstract story marked out with punctuations, changes in perspective (what is in the background moves to the foreground, and vice-versa), and detours, drawing attention to a particular event within an overall trajectory. Mixtim alternates between dynamic and static episodes, the latter of which become longer and longer. Scena makes “characters” of the figures, the basis for a purely instrumental dramaturgy. In this way, the narrative thrust in such pieces is also accompanied by the concept of “dramatization of space” (to which we shall return), since musical signals are treated as actors moving across a stage. It is no coincidence that these ideas crystalized during a period when Fedele was expanding and refining his work on electronics (notably at IRCAM), which gave him new ways to articulate events and to integrate space into the act of composing.
Directionality implies “going toward” but also “establishing relations with”. Unsurprisingly, as a result, Fedele wrote numerous concertos starting in this period, as well as, in a broader sense, pieces for soloist(s) and orchestra. Several strategies renewed the “dialogue” between soloist and group. For example, the orchestra might react to the soloist’s figures according to its own modalities, by “association d’idées” (see his concerto for cello). As the same orchestral treatment is systematically associated with a given figure, it engenders a kind of Pavlovian expectation in the listener that it would be heard each time the figure occurs (concerto for violin). In another form of relationship between soloist and orchestra that sits at the edge of traditional concert techniques, Fedele had the musical ensemble act as a kind of echo chamber, imprinting the material with effects of multiplication, refraction, diffraction, distortion, etc.(Duo en résonance, concerto for piano, concerto for cello). Expanding the principles of repetition and echo in this way, Fedele called on memory in multiple ways. Each section of Duo en résonance, for example, recalls prior episodes or anticipates ones to come, and the conclusion mirrors the beginning of the work. The material and the path it takes resonate in our consciousness, taking form in the “theatre of memory,” to use an expression dear to the composer, who places reception at the very center of his thinking, requiring his students to have knowledge of psycho-acoustics.
The beginning of the twenty-first century coincided with the third phase of his ever-unfolding creative career. While the idea of narrative remained significant, it moved toward the sound’s interior. The story’s characters became the story itself. The composer has defined this phase as the “the time of the crystallization of sound”, and has worked on “sculpting the sound in space”. A less dynamic, more meditative understanding; less literary, more sculptural, absorbing the opposition between ars componendi, favoured in the West (techniques of development and transformation with strong directionality), and ars combinandi, which is essentially Eastern (repetition within the framework of a static, ritualistic process). The listener observes and contemplates an object present in its entirety, but which is never completely revealed; shown in different lights and from varying perspectives and points of view (recalling Cubism, whose principles of fragmentation had already been borrowed in Chiari). The object, like an icon, preserves its integrity as perception evolves. The music unfolds in an eternal present.
In parallel, Fedele became interested in achieving the greatest possible economy of material, and, as a result, of thought. To be sure, this concern for organic wholeness was nothing new for him. One might recall Modus and its three-note cell made up of semi-tones; or works of his second period whose melodic lines used a limited number of intervals (generally two to four). But, starting in the 2000s, Fedele truly focused on determining the “genetic code” of the material (significantly, he immersed himself in the scores of Bach and Beethoven), drawing inspiration from the structures of living organisms and from mathematical models: Georg Cantor’s set theory in Ali di cantor (the title is also a reference to Bach); the Möbius strip in Arcipelago Möbius and Immagini da Escher; Grigori Perelman in Deystiviya; and fractal geometry (where the same proportions govern both the micro- and the macro-structures), used as early as 1992 in Imaginary islands, invoked again in Apostrofe, the first of his Études australes, and again in Arcipelago Möbius.
The influence of electronics and of spectralism was decisive in this three-dimensional music sculpted by sound. While Fedele was influenced early on by the composers of the Ensemble l’Itinéraire, he did not subscribe to their orthodoxy. However, on the strength of his own patiently assembled universe and carefully built language, he felt newly empowered to include some of their sonic signatures, which he combined with chromaticism or modal scales (Arco di vento, Est!, Palimpsest, En archè, to name just a few). He cultivated synthesis not only in the realm of color (harmony, timbre) but also in form: continuity and discontinuity woven together in an unfurling that had no real beginning or end (the defining trait of the Möbius strip), in which the fixed tended toward fusion with movement.
For Fedele, the question of space has never been dependent on a specific instrumentation: it emerges in both chamber and orchestral works, with and without electronics. Nevertheless, it often involves electronics: tape, and then live processing and transmission techniques. The period between 1983 and 2000 was crucial in this regard. In the 1990s, Fedele analysed acoustic space, taken as a real parameter. He sought to obtain fusion between instrumental and electronic timbre, and continuity between timbre and harmony using procedures other than those employed by spectralism, leading to him to reflect on a new relationship between material and form. Form that, at times, was less connected to metamorphosis than to anamorphosis, once the acoustic sounds have been detected, processed, and projected electronically (the phenomenon of anamorphosis has also been invoked in purely acoustic works such as in his concerto for piano, Arcipelago Möbius, Immagini da Escher, or Mudra). The composer moved further forward with this in Capt-actions for string quartet, accordion, and live electronics, in which sensors were placed on the instrumentalists’ clothing. With this type of technology, used again in Antigone and in La pierre et l’étang (…les temps…), the instrumentalists thus sculpt the transformation of the sounds that they and the other musicians produce.
Perhaps atavistically, Fedele referred to the Venetian polychoral style of the Gabrielis in discussions of Richiamo. The piece, for brass, percussion, and electronics, requires that the instruments and the loudspeakers be arranged in a specific way. Other scores use spatialization, too, as Fedele understands sound to be a “representation of space”, composing “for and with space”. Ali di cantor, for four instrumental groups (two on the sides, the “wings” alluded to in the title; the third downstage center, and the final one at the back), creates spatial counterpoint by playing with the way these different spaces overlap. Due notturni con figura for piano and electronics interrogates the very nature of space, giving the listener the illusion of being immersed, as water changes the diffusion and perception of sound and light (intense but opaque).
The works mentioned above suggest that acoustic music and music that uses electronics belong to the same universe. By the same token, the electronic sounds of Barbara mitica and Canone infinito at times recall acoustic timbres. Reciprocally, acoustic music at times is used to transpose electronically created effects, as in his concerto for piano, Ruah, and Palimpsest. Moreover, while Fedele’s work with space often calls on the spatialization of sound sources, it is sometimes also simulated in more traditional contexts. Several scores (concerto for piano and concerto for viola, L’Orizzonte di Elettra – which includes an electronic part) stage a soloist “traveling” in an orchestra conceived as a changing landscape. “Zum Raum wird hier die Zeit” - “Here, time becomes space,” as Wagner would have said4.
Ideas of trajectory, of transmutation from one state to another, underlie a very specific category of Fedele’s work: pieces he has composed based on his own pieces. These may be intertextual quotes (the score for Jean Epstein’s film La Chute de la Maison Usher contains excerpts from Chord, Allegoria dell’indaco, Mixtim, Imaginary sky-lines, Profilo in eco, Flamen, and Allons; 33 Noms borrows from Profilo in eco, Duo en résonance, Études boréales, and Stabat Mater). Other works change the instrumentation without modifying substance, such as in Pentalogon quartet, followed by and Pentalogon quintet (which adds a double bass) and Nohtar (string orchestra); Chord for ten instruments becomes Accord for chamber orchestra.
More complex: when conversion requires processes of elaboration and development, as with what Berio created in his Chemins. Rhapsody thus provides the kernel of the first part of Epos; the third of his Cadenze for piano appears in the finale of his piano concerto. Coram requiem (for mezzo-soprano, bass, two narrators, mixed choir, and electronics) was created by grafting five sections of Richiamo onto Coram, while elements borrowed from Richiamo – augmented by a narrated text – play the role of a kind of echo chamber. Transformation may also be a reductive process: the instrumental Pentalogon originated from a “musical radio commentary” titled Pentalogon, whose string parts then served to sculpt the quartet. In several cases, the new work reveals the latent polyphony of a monodic line (recalling Boulez, whose Donax for solo flute is amplified in Profilo in eco for flute and ensemble, and then again in Donacis Ambra for flute and live electronics5). Mosaïque, for violin and ensemble, expands on Viaggiatori della note for violin, composed a quarter century earlier, with the time lapse adding a dialectic between past and present.
Traces of the past are sprinkled throughout Fedele’s genres, forms, and writing, although he has remained resolutely oriented toward the future. The concerto, the piano étude, the baroque suite (Suite francese, the title of six scores, each for a different instrument) are all a part of his world. His affection for early music should be highlighted as the object of multiple references: the organum (33 Noms), the hocket (Naturae, Ali di cantor, Odós, **33 Noms), isorhythm (Messages), madrigal (Naturae), chorale (Modus), and passacaglia (Chord). In addition, the string quartet Palimpsest, with its emblematic title, should be evoked; its movements also use the terms Sequentia, Tropos, Organum, Cauda, and Corale.
Fedele maintains the traditional fast-slow-fast structure in Ruah, at the same time placing the sections in continuous succession. In the fast movements of his violin concerto, he fuses the development and the recapitulation of the sonata form, while the three pieces that make up SYNTAX 0.1 successively interrogate the syntax of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. He frequently uses canons, which, at times, contribute to resonance effects, or to the elaboration of harmonic material of spectral origin (Ali di cantor). The archetype also appears in the cultural connotations of certain instruments, for example, the flute in Donax, the viola in Elettra, the musical transcription of texts transmitted by the anonymous voice of a people (Morolòja kè Erotikà, after the Canti di pianto e d’amore dall’antico Salento collected by Brizio Montinaro) or by borrowing from folk music (the folk dances of Artéteka and Txalaparta). In the words of the composer: “The use of principles taken from ancient forms reproduces the function of myth throughout the ages. These are cultural archetypes that are still meaningful today and that belong to us because they teach us; through them, we explain ourselves, as well as what is happening in the world, to ourselves. Myths, different music throughout human history, add new strata to our cultural history. But humans and humanity remain the same, ever-changing6”.
Archetype and myth, inextricably linked. Fedele’s works for voice, more and more numerous since 1995 (the voice having the value of “archetype of all musical instruments”) are the concretization of this foundational principle. It is enough to observe the texts he puts to music, or at the very least their origin, as Giuliano Corti has provided the literary groundwork for the majority of Fedele’s work for more than thirty years: material that invokes mythological couples (Barbara mitica); crafted from the Bible, the Veda, and Sufi mystics (Coram); ancient Hebrew names for angels (Messages); Sophocles (the opera Antigone, faithful, moreover, to the tragedy’s original structure); liturgy (Stabat Mater); the beginning of the Gospel of John (En archè); Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda from Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered (Thanatoséros). One can only be struck by the ancient nature of the sources, as well as their sacred character. For Odós, with its highly unusual instrumentation (mixed choir and an oboe that is a descendent of the ancient Greek aulos), Fedele combines excerpts from the Hebrew Bible, the Italian Renaissance (Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo), and German Romanticism (Goethe, Hölderlin) that reach for the origins of humanity and its soul. Fascinated by Marguerite Yourcenar’s Les Trente-trois noms de Dieu which provides the literary material for 33 Noms, Fedele explains that this text immediately resonated with him as a prayer. “I am for a new Renaissance, the third after those of the Greeks and the Florentines. This is why I always speak of music written by men and destined for men,” declared the composer, who, in 2012, composed Times Like That using texts from three Nobel Peace Prize winners (Lech Walesa, Aung San Suu Kyi, and Barack Obama). For Fedele, the point is not religion in the conventional sense of that word, but rather in the sense of the need to relegere (Latin for link, but also gather in, assemble) and religare (link together), movements that form the bedrock of true humanism.
Do you notice a mistake?