Secessioni (secessions) is a musical work in three acts and, as the title suggests, it is an
ongoing research for detachment. The name comes from the Latin secedĕre, composed by the
“se” prefix, which indicates separation, and by “cedĕre”, to move away from, to change.
The musical piece allegorically retraces a story in which the evolution of sounds, be they
human, acoustic, or synthetic, represents the origins of the cosmos and of human life on
earth. The sound propagates from an opening great explosion that sweeps over the audience,
who perceive it in its most absolute materiality. This acousmatic sound stream slowly takes
form generating a microcosm accessible to the listener. It becomes the primordial sound, the
urklang, which, following its evolutionary process, reaches harmony and musicality in
relation to human perception.
Secessioni tells of the necessary detachment of things from their origin. A detachment that
moves from the past towards the future and from the center to the periphery, thus enabling
evolution.
In order to create this piece, the composer delves into the concept of sound and harmony
recognizing his historical debt to the last real musical avant-gardes of the 20 th century,
reassembling them into what could be defined as a post-avant-garde that eludes its task.
Neuf Voix examines the fundamental elements of musical composition by penetrating in
depth both the “microscopic” structure of sound and that of harmony and counterpoint.
Classical and electronic music are hauled into a “dialectic twine” so to create a personal and
peculiar language that evades a precise stylistic characterization.
Dodecaphony, microtonality, pandiatonic tonality, and tonality are placed in the same context
thus generating a new sound truth that encourages the spectator to explore multiple harmonic
spaces and tonal singularities and leave the comfortable darkness of his own interior cave.
Neuf Voix seeks the progression of art through the recovery of the historic-artistic flow that
breeds its contemporaneity, so to become the voice that carries on its discourse and not the
silence that interrupts it.
Secessioni is also a reversed allocation of tasks. Each sound reality suffers detachment from
its historical nature. The acoustic component, the sonority of the classical instruments, is
employed in the experimentation process, while the electronic component, generally
renowned for its technical potential in the experimental field, becomes the solid foundation
on which the composition lies.
The work was realized through the synergy between expert classical musicians and complex
sound generation and manipulation machines. Amongst these is a modular synthesizer
designed and assembled by the composer with old electronic components produced in
Germany in the 70s and 80s.
Secessioni exists within the sparkle that ignites detachment and in the chaotic matter that
seeks its form - detachment from the new conception of musical experimentation, whose
meaning is nowadays reduced to a mere aesthetic-musical attempt.
Too often experimentation’s exercise is traced back to letting oneself casually go to the
infinite chaos of combinational possibilities, in the hope that one will guarantee innovation.
Even worse is the current use of the word “experimental” in certain musical contexts, used to
describe something with the exact opposite meaning, due to the homologation of a market
that calls “experimental” the mere use of electronic sounds without considering the
compositional context, which should actually be the core element. Experimentation must be
an exercise of thought and must be nourished by study and by culture and should aim to
reconnect with its traditional affinity to Art music. It should represent the blacksmith’s skilled
hand which knows where to strike the metal, not the smoke that fogs his sight.
Detachment from the concept of the “compositional technique as a dogma”. Every possible
technical tradition is a tool in the hands of the composer. It’s a tile seeking for its place which
must help the composer pour his sensibility into the art. It must not represent, as some think,
an exclusion of what is other, different, detached, at least as long as this “other” is able to
enrich and regenerate it. Technique is a color, and it should stand next to its right counterpart,
the one that completes it.
Detachment from the laws of the music industry and from conceiving artworks as consumer
products and including it in the disposable mentality that permeates everything in the
contemporary world and that plays into the hands of those busy depriving artistic objects of
their claim for significance. Because meanings can fill the mind for a long time, too long if
the necessity is for the audience to spend little time “using” and a lot more time “throwing
away”.
Detachment, finally, from the contemporary thought, accustomed to warding off the Truth by
continuously suspending that seriousness that is necessary for the interpretation of things.
This attitude condemns us to observe the reality around us with a lack of love, as if it was something we own but are not responsible of. Secessioni, in this sense, yearns to be a form of
reunification with Reality.