Andrea Vigani (1970)

Intensi frammenti di parlato idiomatico (1996)

for solo bass clarinet or tenor saxophone

  • General information
    • Composition date: 1996
    • Duration: 14 mn about
    • Publisher: Inédit
  • Type
Detailed formation
  • 1 bass clarinet [ou saxophone ténor]

Premiere information

  • Date: May 1997
    Location:

    Italie, Pérouse


    Performers:

    Guido Arbonelli : clarinette basse.
    Création de la version pour saxophone ténor en février 1998 à Bassano del Grappa, Italie.

Program note

This piece is an attempt to reconstitute in a real time (the time of the performance), a sonority, a melody, a form, a memory..., starting from a few "Intense fragments of spoken idioms " or, better, the representation of this way.

I have divided this "way" into four different parts (Quadri).

I The first fragments appear and the re-construction and re-elaboration process begins, and this both from the side of the performer and that of the listener.

This first part (Quadro) has a rhapsodic character and must be played in a " nearly improvising way", as trying to recover a memory of a piece already heard or performed in a far-away time, without expression, hinting.

Moreover, it is very important to strongly characterize the different " Idiomatic characters", who are present in this piece (breathe, shadow-notes, melody-fragments, range and time changes, etc...) in order to make them recognizable when they will appear again in the subsequent parts (Quadri).

It will be necessary to perform the choruses marked as a temporary interruption of the memory flow, as an old vinyl grooved record, with the pick-up that got jammed, in an obsessive way.

Consequently, the notes that follow these choruses will have to be played as when the record starts playing again, as an outlet of the tension created by the chorus.

II Strong differences in comparison with the previous part (Quadro), this is infact the piece already heard or played, it is the presence of the memory we looked for in n° I.

The sound must be always present even in the breathes or in the pppp, alwas expressive.

In this case, the choruses have another sense : they must be momentaneous "doubts", sudden "relapses" into the previous situations, they must "undermine" the already acquired certainty, the certainty of the melody, of the form, of the memory, etc..., that have been "refound" and that are "present".

III The "refound sound" in the previous part (Quadro) becomes a "shadow", slowly fades and vanishes, so everithing must be played "up to the limit of audible".

Now, one comes back to look for what he had refound, one tries not to make it disappear again, but not with the tranquillity present in the first part (almost without the expression that is given by the fact that, at the beginning, we did not fully know what we would have re-formed and re-built), but with the agitation and the fear to lose again something that we had long looked for and just re-found.

IV The self-cousciousness of the re-loss of a memory must be performed "without expression".

This "non-expressivity" must be different from the first one, as it is the result of a loss, of a memory told to a stranger and lost by playing it cards.

Now, inside this way, we have forever re-found and re-lost something that belonged to us in a more or less remote past, but we have luckily created new "Intense fragments of spoken idioms" that, in a more or less future, will enable us to re-create additional possible representations and to go on playing cards our memories with a stranger.

Andrea Vigani