Baroque - Mauro Lanza

Curiosity, why "Baroque"?

Like his other compositions, it is a sort of parody; it is ironic and this is perceived even more clearly when the singer enters

I don't know why, but I find figurative art easier; "caricature" comes to me immediately. Thanks anyway for the clarification.

Not his piece that I prefer most, but anyway I like Lanza very much. I suggest, if you don't know it already, another one of his pieces,

two pieces of news about the song and about him

http://marilenalaterza.wordpress.com/2012/03/10/mauro-lanza-intervista/

Furthermore - it goes without saying - Baroque is the poetry of Amelia Rosselli.

Baroque beautiful all tangled up white broom with the usual blue Maria on the liquid naked wax scandalously the attractive Christ to little girls. Christ Jesus wood that does not rot with the thorny heart.

Here you can find news about the passage

http://mediatheque.ircam.fr/textes/notes2prog/LO38017-01.pdf

The document is in French, and besides hating it, I don't even know a single word of French. I tried, with great difficulty, to make Google Translate swallow it, but you can't understand a damn thing of what it translated. Is there any kind soul who would translate at least the first (Baroque) part for us mere mortals?

[my French is at a middle school level, so please forgive any errors...]

In 1998, before coming to Paris to follow the composition and musical informatics course at IRCAM, I had composed a short piece for voice and a small orchestra of toy instruments. This extravagant ensemble of five musicians accompanying the soprano voice mixed a real viola muted with a mute, Bontempi reed instruments (a small trumpet, a saxophone, and a clarinet), keyboards (two toy pianos and a small metallophone), a plastic guitar, and other different objects (a box that moos, dolls that screech). Barocco would be the first part of a vocal cycle based on a selection of short poetic prose taken from the collection Prime prose italiane by Amelia Rosselli.

These texts which, as their title suggests, were the first essays in the Italian language by an author who lived for a long time in France and England, pushed me to seek means through which to pursue a relationship similar to that which the author maintained with the "new" language, an attitude at once virgin and innovative of conscious ignorance free from rules. An experimental attitude toward the sonic material and the "organs" that produce it has therefore oriented my work: learning to play new instruments by drawing inspiration from the limitations imposed on us by their morphology.

The idea of using objects that are a distorted reflection of "real" musical instruments therefore imposed itself naturally. As playful reproductions of more austere models, toy instruments differ completely from them regarding timbre and the way they are played.

Barocco all tangled up white broom with the usual blue Maria on the liquid naked wax scandalously the attractive Christ to little girls. Christ Jesus wood that does not rot with the thorny heart.

Amelia Rosselli

From Prime prose italiane (1954)

Barocco (1998-2003)

Instrumentation: voice, viola and toy instruments (trumpet, saxophone, Bontempi clarinet, horn, two toy pianos, Bontempi glockenspiel, two crotales, three small cow-shaped boxes, ten puppets with whistles)

Duration 7 minutes

Publisher Ricordi – Milan

Barocco was performed for the first time at the Venice Biennale on May 10, 2000, by Silvana Torto and the Laboratorio Novamusica ensemble directed by Pietro Borgonovo. The piece was then completely rewritten on the occasion of its revival on March 21, 2004, during the Archipel festival in Geneva. The new version is dedicated to Donatienne Michel-Dansac.

Barocco is a piece written for a small orchestra organized in this way: wind instruments – trumpet, saxophone, Bontempi clarinet and horn –; metallophones – two toy pianos, a Bontempi glockenspiel and two crotales –; a "melodic" section – voice, viola, Bontempi toy guitar – and finally three small cow-shaped boxes (which moo) and ten shark-dolls with whistles (which screech). Many constraints derive from the choice of these instruments: most of them produce only the seven notes (more or less out of tune) of the C major scale, with very limited possibilities for articulation and dynamics. Certain instruments, such as the saxophone and trumpet, present instead a scale limited to four notes. Such a limitation of means pushed me to conceive compositional strategies aimed at compensating for these deficiencies. In particular, the monotony determined by the use of such a reduced number of notes is avoided (at least I hope) not only through the instruments of the "melodic section," equipped with a larger scale, but above all thanks to the "economical" use of notes (the first appearance of B does not occur until halfway through the piece).

The untempered nature of the toy instruments contrasts the impression of a permanent C major: at the beginning of the score, the wind instruments manifest themselves with a fanfare of chords; if, in the case of a "horizontal" deployment of pitches, an ear accustomed to the tempered system would have perceived the out-of-tune notes as annoying scraps compared to usual diatonicism, their vertical presentation generates sound clusters tending toward fusion that approach, rather than a classified chord, the multiphonic of a wind instrument.

Beyond these details, the forced economy of means compelled me to focus on the following issues which, in my opinion, constitute the backbone of musical composition: the management of time, form, and rhythm. Working with so few means reduces combinatorial possibilities, and the tight link existing between all the sound parameters of these instruments (on reed instruments, for example, playing "loud"...

significa anche suonare “basso”) esclude la possibilità di utilizzarli indipendentemente. L’organizzazione procede dunque dalla gestione dei vuoti e dei pieni, delle accelerazioni e delle decelerazioni, oppure dal gioco delle ripetizioni.

Lungi dall’essere una semplice declinazione aneddotica, ciascuna trasformazione di una figura si inscrive in un processo dinamico, incarnando un momento preciso della sua storia.

Piuttosto di descrivere la totalità del processo formale del brano, preferisco fornire qualche chiave d’ascolto, vale a dire una breve descrizione di quelle che ho chiamato “figure musicali” (e che chiamerò ora, seguendo Gérard Grisey, “personaggi”) e le loro evoluzioni nel corso del brano (le loro “azioni”).

PERSONAGGI 1) Crepitare scintillante di accordi degli strumenti a fiato accompagnati da un clacson. Questo gesto si estingue (diminuendo e rallentando) e si rinnova periodicamente in un nuovo scintillio. Il ritmo rimane, in rallentando, molto regolare, come la parodia di una marcia.

AZIONI A ogni nuova occorrenza, questo personaggio si presenta in forme più dilatate, come perdendo la sua energia. La sua evoluzione globale sempre riprodurre su grande scala la sua Gestalt.

PERSONAGGI 2) Lucentezza granulare sulla nota Mi prodotta da tutti i metallofoni. Come se degli orchestrali indisciplinati tentassero a più riprese di suonare insieme senza mai riuscirci.

AZIONI Questo personaggio acquisisce importanza fino a perdere le sue caratteristiche puntuali trasformandosi gradualmente nell’ostinato di terzine che accompagna il terzo personaggio.

PERSONAGGI 3) Melodie ascendenti svolte dalla viola, dalla voce e dalla chitarra giocattolo accompagnate dall’ostinato di terzine dei metallofoni. Al punto culminante, le melodie rientrano in fase e l’ostinato si fonde in una piccola cascata di note discendenti.

AZIONI Il punto culminante è raggiunto sempre più frequentemente. La melodia ascendente che lo prepara si riduce fino a diventare un semplice levare di cinque note.

PERSONAGGI 4) Un ritmo giambico sul tritono Sib – Mi eseguito dalla tromba con degli effetti wah-wah e da una voce “stridula”; il tutto accompagnato dallo stridere sempre più invasivo dei pupazzi.

AZIONI Il comportamento dei pupazzi confina pericolosamente con un’anarchia la cui apoteosi concluderà impietosamente il brano.

Thanks for the translation, Red. Although I am not a great lover of contemporary music, I consider myself a very curious person and I like being able to investigate the reasons that pushed a composer to write a certain type of music. In this case, the author also addresses the discussion related to the difficulties imposed by the tonal restrictions induced by toy instruments, and it is interesting to observe how they set out to resolve them. The explanation of why to resort to toy instruments is also very interesting. I believe that the right way to listen to contemporary music is to arrive prepared so as to be able to identify some ideas previously read in the author's preface within the musical context.

Without a doubt. I would also add – for the record – that the use of toy instruments is one of many "fads" that periodically sweep through the world of composition. There was the "fad" of megaphones, and suddenly there were dozens of pieces using megaphones; there was the fad of foot-stomping on the floor; there was the "fad" of saturation (although in this latter case calling it a "fad" is a bit too reductive), etc. etc.

For four or five years, dozens of pieces emerge that utilize toy instruments. Often this use is reduced to an episodic gimmick, easily replaceable by any other gimmick. In the most successful cases – and Lanza's piece falls into this category – the use of toy instruments instead finds an organic meaning: the relationship between the author of the text and the "new" language, used as a toy; the relationship with the text itself (the little girls); the entire subsequent discussion regarding the limitations imposed by these instruments, understood almost as the "rules of the game"...

Regardless of our personal judgment, one can ultimately recognize in this case an articulated thought that corresponds to the musical outcome.

It means that Lanza knows what he is doing and that naturally he does not use instruments for the pure sake of the moment but, precisely, he knows how to use them within a coherent context.

Fortunately, fashion is fleeting! Speaking of megaphones, personally speaking, Steen Andersen's track On and Off etc., uses them quite well. One of these "finds" (even if not so recent) that doesn't drive me crazy is the gunshot; I've heard it in several compositions and it didn't strike (the bullet) me positively. I remember that in Benjamin's At first light, there are ping pong balls and newspapers to tear... but here I am going OT.

Salù