Mauro Lanza (1975)

Le nubi non scoppiano per il peso (2011)

for ensemble of nine instruments, coloratura, electronics and computer-controlled water drops

electronic work

  • General information
    • Composition date: 2011
    • Duration: 21 mn
    • Publisher: Ricordi, Milan
    • Commission: Ensemble Court-Circuit et Birmingham Conservatoire (UK) pour le projet européen "Integra - Fusing music and technology”
Detailed formation
  • soloist: solo soprano
  • flute, 2 clarinets, trombone, percussionist, piano, violin, viola, cello

Premiere information

  • Date: 11 September 2011
    Location:

    Norvège, Oslo, Festival Ultima


    Performers:

    Omo Bello : sorpano et l'Ensemble Court-circuit, direction : Jean Deroyer.

Information on the electronics
Studio information: Malmö academy of music
RIM (réalisateur(s) en informatique musicale): Kent Olofsson
Electronic device: dispositif électronique non spécifié

Program note

Who cuts a channel for the torrents of rain,
and a path for the thunderstorm,
to water a land where no one lives,
an uninhabited desert,
to satisfy a desolate wasteland
and make it sprout with grass?
Does the rain have a father?
Who fathers the drops of dew?

The Book of Job, chapter 38

 

To the eyes of the unknown authors of the Book of Job, the creation appears as an indecipherable enigma. The only one who knows its laws is the engineer who establishes the weight of the wind, who counts the clouds in the sky and apportions the water by measure. And these laws seem to have no consideration for man; there is no punishment or compensation for his behaviour. Rain falls in the desert too, on a land that nobody harvests. Disgrace befalls on the righteous and the unrighteous alike.

The long, scoffing reply that God gives to Job’s relentless existential questions (a short excerpt is sung in the piece) is itself composed of questions, almost suggesting that, as Wittgenstein wrote: “when the answer cannot be put into words, neither can the question.”

Le nubi non scoppiano per il peso deals with heaviness and fall, and with measuring what seems to have no measure.
The piece is dedicated to my parents.

“An altar begins where the sense of measure ends. Being a saint means losing
control, giving up weight, and weight is organizing one's own dimension”

Carmelo Bene, Our Lady of the Turks