IRIN (2023) FOR AMPLIFIED CLARINET AND ELECTRONICS
EDITION: –
DURATION: 6 MIN
COMMISION: –
FIRST PERF.: 20/05/2023 CHIOSTRO DI SANT’ELENA – PADIGLIONE AUSTRIACO, VENEZIA
MASSIMO RESTIFO PECORELLA, CLARINET; GIULIO CATTANEO, ELECTRONICS
SPIRE VII (2018) for amplified alto sax and live electronics
Edition: Edizioni Sconfinarte, Milano
Duration: 10 min
Commission: Andrea Carrozzo
Dedication: Andrea Carrozzo
First perf.: TBA, XVIII World Saxophone Congres, Zagreb, Croatia
Andrea Carrozzo, alto sax
Cesare Saldicco, live electronics
SPIRE II (2017-2021) for amplified solo piano and LIVE electronics
[work included in NOMOS (2017) a MOA Project experimental music film]
Edition: Edizioni Sconfinarte, Milano
Duration: 12 min
Commission: MOA Project
Dedication: Franco Venturini
First perf.: 20/12/2019 TEATRO LUDOVICO ARIOSTO, REGGIO EMILIA
Franco Venturini, piano
Cesare Saldicco, electronics
SPIRE V (2011 rev. 2016) for flute and electronics
Edition: Edizioni Sconfinarte, Milano
Duration: 8 min
First perf.: 22/03/2016 Centrale Anfossi, Milano
Laura Faoro, flute
Luca Congedo, electronics
Fabrizio Rosso, video projections
SPIRE VI (2013) for “prepared” electric guitar and loop machine
Dedication: Sergio Sorrentino
Edition: Edizioni Sconfinarte, Milano
Duration: 9 min.
Commission: Sergio Sorrentino
First perf.: 01/11/2013 XXX Festival Internazionale della Chitarra di Lagonegro, Auditorium Santuario di Sant’Antonio – Polla (SA)
Sergio Sorrentino, electric guitar and loop machine
SPIRE V (2011) for flute
Dedication: Giulio Francesconi
Edition: Sconfinarte
Duration: 6 min.
First perf.: 20/10/2011 Auditorium Parco della Musica, Roma
Giulio Francesconi, flute
SPIRE III (2011) for violin
Dedication: Francesco Maggio
Edition: Edizioni Sconfinarte, Milano
Duration: 4 min.
First perf.: 13/12/2011 Teatro Dal Verme, Milano
Marco Fusi, violin
SPIRE IV (2010) for “prepared” trombone and electronics ad libitum
Dedication: Dominique Delahoche
Edition: Edizioni Sconfinarte, Milano
Duration: 6 min.
First perf.: Auditorium Parco della Musica, Roma 26/1/2011
Dominique Delahoche, trombone | Cesare Saldicco, electronics
SPIRE I (2009) version scored for bass clarinet, sound sculptures and live electronics
Edition: Unpublished
Duration: 8 min.
First perf.: Roma, 46° Festival di Nuova Consonanza – Sala Casella, 25/11/2009
Roberto Paci Dalò, clarinetto | Anna Troisi, sculture sonore | Antonino Chiaramonte, live electronics
SPIRE I (2009) for bass clarinet
Dedication: Massimo Munari
Edition: Edizioni Sconfinarte, Milano
Duration: 6 min.
First perf.: Reggio Emilia, Compositori a Confronto – Auditorium Istituto Superiore di Studi Musicali A. Peri, 11/11/2009
Massimo Munari, clarinet
Spire is a research and writing project started in 2009 and dedicated to the solo instrument with or without electronics, declining in all its aspects – from formal processes, to syntax elements, to idiomatic language – the concept of spiral; not only as a mere mathematical representation, but as an inspiration of an aesthetic nature and an element of philosophical speculations.
Spirals become formal metaphors of different musical subjects – especially in terms of timbre and directionality – that in common preserve the reading and rereading of the sound material and that lead, both the composer and the listener, in a dimension of incessant research, as suggested by the Latin phrase eadem mutata resurgo, exploring in depth the infinite labyrinths of the psyche, ego, consciousness, spirit, Self.
Starting from this experience, the composer has developed assisted composition algorithms first in OpenMusic, later in Max/MSP environment, for the formalization of spiroid reading processes of complex strings, which have allowed a rapid and effective verification of the procedures adopted.
SHADOW PUPPET SKETCH (2018) for bass flute and electronics
Edition: Da Vinci Publishing, Osaka
Duration: 3 min
Commision: Nùcleo Ensemble
First perf.: 20/08/2017 Teatro da Reitoria, Curitiba, Brazil
Felipe de Almeida Ribeiro, electronics
D’AMORE E PSICHE (2014) for amplified viola d’amore and live electronics
Dedication: Emanuela Pagliarulo
Edition: Edizioni Sconfinarte, Milano
Duration: 7 min.
Commission: MOA Project
First perf.: 24/10/2014 Köln (Germany)
Annegret Mayer-Lindeberg, viola d’amore
Cesare Saldicco, live electronics
[…] “the groom was seated in the place of honor and held Psyche in his arms, then came Jupiter with his Juno and then, in order of importance, all the other gods. Then it was the turn of the nectar, the wine of the gods; Jupiter was served by his cupbearer, Bacchus, took care of the others. Vulcano was a cook, the Hours adorned everything with roses and other flowers, the Graces spread balsams and the Muses spread around their sweet harmonies. Apollo began to sing accompanying himself on the lyre; Venus, very beautiful, came forward to dance to the sweet melody of an orchestra she had prepared and in which the Muses were the choir, a Satyr played the flute, a Panisco blew in the bagpipe. Thus Psyche was married to Cupid, according to just marriages, and at the exact time a daughter was born, whom we call Volupty. “
[Apuleius, from The Metamorphosis – II cent. A.D.]
D’Amore e Psiche. Metamorfosi for amplified viola d’amore and live electronics takes a formal cue from the famous fairy tale of Apuleio and dissolves, in the allegory of the characters, the main reflection: Cupid (love) and Psyche (soul) as elements of a dualism that it divides between authentic and inauthentic, between existential and existent, stereotypes of the ancient anthropic and anthropomorphic dualism that is divided between the projecting towards the deep and the essential or, instead, towards the inessential and the apparent.
In writing two gestures and two contrasting ideas are compared, which however are linked by the same harmonic spectrum.
There are also two modes for managing the time: in the first part, narrative time prevails, where the thickening of the material shows a precise directionality. In the second part, viceversa, the temporal approach tends to crystallization – just as suggested in Canova’s sculptural group: sounds concretize sculptures in space: more than a linear aspect, there is a solidification of sound.
Writing also reflects an oxidizing treatment similar to osmosis, where a coherent string undergoes a progressive “metamorphosis” until it becomes something else. The most representative example is in the central part: the increasing and discontinuous element of the scalar fragment is juxtaposed to the homogeneous figure of the ribattuto.
A final reflection concerns the acoustics of the piece: writing is in fact designed for a place as neutral as possible, since reverberation takes into account two different sound levels: the first, digital, provided by live electronics through use of harmonizer, delays and reverberation; the second, analogical, is intrinsic to the writing and alternates homogeneous and continuous figures with figures that foresee a high rate of instrumental virtuosity.
The combination of the two levels reflects once again a structural dualism: if the first part requires more generous and enveloping acoustics, the second, on the other hand, lets imagine a dry environment, without acoustic reflection.
Only in the end a new reverberant dimension will be reached, leaving the instrument free from any place and time.
L’ATTIMO DI UN RESPIRO (2009) for horn solo
Dedication: Hanna Nikamaa
Edition: Edizioni Sconfinarte, Milano
Duration: 7 min.
Commission: Finnish Horn Club of Helsinki
First perf.: Helsinki, Holger Fransmann Memoriam – Sibelius Hall, 11/04/2009
Hanna Nikamaa, horn
NAISSANCES LATENTES (2006) for amplified cello, pre-recorded sounds and live electronics
Dedication: Ulrike Brand
Edition: Edizioni Sconfinarte, Milano
Duration: 10 min.
Commission: Ulrike Brand
First perf.: Perugia, Auditorium Conservatorio, 10/12/2006
Ulrike Brand, cello
Cesare Saldicco, live electronics
The title of this work refers to a line from a sonnet by Arthur Rimbaud: “Je dirai quelque jour vos naissances latentes”. A yeay earlier, the composer worked on the same sonnet for another piece (Voyelles, to be precise), but only working on the spectrogram of a female voice reciting the poem. In Naissances Latentes the metric of the sonnet, through its syllabic combination, is converted into thuthmic structure, while the assoviation between sounds and colors, made by the french poet as a paradigm, melts into a synesthetic process.
In this context, the piece can be read as a timbric path which explores the physical processes that precede a sound event, tradiotionally understood as the stabillity of an acoustic emission. It is about hidden sound processes, latent, visible only through a magnifying glass that the composer, thanks to the use of electronics, uses to restore dignity to the “noise”.
A celebration on the instability of the sound that melts only at the end, where a small explotion of harmonic underpinning the emergence of a language.
THE FIDEAL (2009) for guitar and electronics (in collaboration with Marcela Pavia)
Edition: Edizioni Sconfinarte, Milano
Duration: 6 min.
First perf.: Milano, Rebus Festival – Teatro Del Verme, 21/10/2009
Leopoldo Saracino, chitarra
Cesare Saldicco, electronics
KADDISH (2000) for cello solo
Edition: Edizioni Sconfinarte, Milano [out of catalog]
Duration: 4 min.
Awards: 2nd prize International Composition Competition “Città di Casarza Ligure”
First perf.: Perugia, Musica e Angeli – Sala dei Notari, 9/9/2000
Luisa Di Giacomo, cello
Kaddish represents one of my first compositional experience. Written between 1999 and 2000, it has been included in a music event with religious theme. This explains the reason of the title, even if it didn’t has musical references; besides, it reminded to me a wonderful collection of Allen Ginsberg’s poems that I used to read in those years.
The main idea comes from the reiteration of a piano waltz theme written by me a few years before. This sentence, in its entirety, shows the character of the exposition: energetic, with strong and decisive dynamics, rhythmic, with many accents. A second thematic cell derives from the remaining chromatic total.
The operation that interested me to experiment was the thematic interpolation linked to the process of sound multiplication. At the base of this principle there is the co-presence of two fundamental dimensions. On one side the temporal parameter, on the other hand the sound information, where the growth of the elements, of the articulations and of the sound energy acts.