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The following
text is for the archive.
It
has been
written in the occasion of the event related to Arci Prize for
musical experimentation awarded by Romina. It took place at
Carroponte (Sesto San Giovanni, Milan) in July 2011and promoted by
Centro Musica Contemporanea.
The event's
program refers to the phase of work prior to its date
and not
to the Spannung album tracklist or to
future performances
related to
the project. |
Presentation of
performance and project
[by Romina Daniele]
«Spannung» is the compositional project
currently in production since 2009 for RDM Records, some of the new
compositions will be presented during the performance.
«Spannung» is the term with which Martin
Heidegger indicates the opening, the space, the tension (and the
yearning) of being in the size of the authenticity of existence:
never properly discussed,
corresponding to the state of research, it requires close and new ways
each time, away from clichés and intellect and compositional schemes.
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Along with the studies carried on for more than
ten years in the philosophical an literature field as in that of vocal
research and studio sound composition, the music with new technologies
is elected as research device, superior to every other one, in the
study on the human being; in the same way, the voice is the most
powerful mean of human expression, from
an anthropological,
physiological, and linguistic |
point of view. The axis for the project and work
is, in a more direct way, the urgent relations between the musical and
philosophical conceptions.
PROGRAM
[Voice,
electronics,
texts,
all the compositions by
Romina Daniele. Additional
credits are noted;
period of
composition in brackets, unpublished in red, additional credits follow]
Tommy Moore
[2009-2010]
Necessity (part
1)
[2009-2010]
Text from:
J. Derrida,
L’écriture et la différence, Parigi, Seuil, 1968;
tr. it. La scrittura
e la differenza, Torino, Einaudi, 2002, p. 5.
Matter
[2008-2010]
Materia
[2007]
Echo
[2002-2007]
Fallacità (take
I) [2002-2007]
Fallacità (take
II) [2002-2007]
La Natura Assente
[2010-2011]
Summertime
[2002-2011]
by
George Gershwin, from Porgy and Bess, 1935.
Resonance
[2009-2010]
Text from:
J. Derrida,
Forcener le subjectile, Munich, Schirmer/Mosel Publishers;
tr. it.
Antonin Artaud, Forsennare il soggettile,
Milano, Abscondita, 2005, p. 78.
All’esterno di me
Spannung Version
[2002-2011]
Vero (remake)
[2004-2011]
The musical research begun with Diffrazioni
Sonore (cd, 2005), a complex recording project focused on the
relation between vocal improvisation and fixed sound composition by
technological means, concerns the fields of extended vocals,
technological arts, fluctuations between compositional and
performative and/or improvised practice. It continues with
Aisthànomai, the Tragedy of Consciousness
(cd, 2008)
in the
field of electronics as in that of
poetical interpretations and vocality as human act, in force of an
original aesthetic conception (from which the term Aisthànomai
comes) corresponding to the linguistic research (on the vocal and
compositional-electronical means) and philosophical (on the
articulations by the perceptive system, on inter-subjective
communication between creator-subject and audience-subject, on the
necessity-will of knowledge and consciousness).
The size
of the authenticity of existence and the state of research regard the
relations, on which the compositional interest since the very
first experiences is about. In particular: coexistence of
different languages
to intend "different but not opposite", with the
words of Gilles Deleuze,
and "philosophical
indifferentiation of grammars", with the words of Pier Paolo Pasolini;
so the relations:
between composition and instinct, sound and noise, construction
and dismantling, ancient and post-modern; between the well
known structures of thinking and new senses and new articulations of
thought to which we aim constantly. The uneasy interest to the
relations is at all levels of the work: text, poetical and
narrative, and the concept of textuality; music and dimensions of
musicality; extended vocals from noise to sound, and not extended from
recitative to operatic; electronics, with synthesis and/or concrete
sounds and/or pure and/or transformed vocal sounds. Thus, each level
works in terms of proliferation, by it-self and in relation with each
other; so at all levels of the works: not the accomplishment but
the opening, not the system nor its negation today system it self,
but the tension, which is always action, force in action.
On the other hand, the opening, the space,
the tension (and the yearning) of being in the size of the
authenticity of existence, which is force in action, are the
conditions of the state of research, from which comes the
interrogation (and the constant tension towards it) about new sense
and articulations of though and perception behind the well known
schemes, feeding doubt and a whirlpool of feelings. So it is the
presence and authenticity of the creative act, intellectual and
expressive, compositional and performative, reticular and not
genealogical as well; or rather it comes from the reflection on man to
the music and viceversa, and it works, it only can works, trough
music. This indicates a primary identification between the
philosophical-linguistical research and the music, so in our
exploration and moods, musical languages and grammars are adopted from
the philosophical point of view.
On the one hand the work is focused on an
emancipated conception of music and performance, in which dealing in
the field of electronics (with synthesis sounds) and
of electroacoustics (with vocal and/or transformed
sound in studio and/or in live), we refer to the categories of
music, from blues to the contemporary, in a field of crossing and
indifferentiation; on the other hand the work is focused on the
sound research and on the sound material composition, as in the field
of vocalism as in that of electronics, and on the exploration of
the sound wave in the frequency and time domains, in terms as poetical
as scientific as well.
Material timbre resonance fixed sounds sound
research and extend vocals from noise to melody, from delicate to
aggressive, from recitative to scream, from hiss to guttural
scratches, to the concreteness of temporality of human condition and
to the size of authenticity of being, state
of research and pure action: "tension of force itself",
with the words of Jacques Derrida, directly
quoted in one of the new compositions.
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The electronic device, like the music, is
elected to the device superior to every other in the reflection on man
an his reality: the electronic devices allow man to observe
himself and his reality with an efficiency otherwise inaccessible,
they are the more powerful means developed by man in order of this.
This is about a detailed observation of the material and of the poetry
of the material, on which depends every things, even the poetry of
mind an its mechanisms. So it is for photography, cinema, electronic
music, as in every field of human application and research, to
medicine.
In the electronic and concrete music, the
vocalism itself, like every kind of sound and noise, is analyzed and
processed with an efficiency otherwise inaccessible. - Furthermore,
the electronic music with which we work directly on sound corresponds,
with its technical reproducibility, to the
will of the author par excellence, not delegating to the performer the
responsibility of creating or altering the sound substance which is
the result of months and years of work, reflections, choices.
- In this line, from the point of view of the musical
composition and creative action, and in consideration of the previous
works, this project develops a fresh size and formal
representation, regarding the relation-coexistence between poetry and
poetical-musical conception and analysis with electronic device from
which the technologies arts came: on the one hand the sound
elaboration and transformation, on the other the pure poetry of
vocalism which par excellence represents man both on the
psycho-physical and organic-perceptive axis; the points of junction
of the two poles: the research on the sonorous and vocal material.
Firstly, the voice is the main and direct
expressive human mean, from the anthropological, physiological, and
linguistic points of view; secondly, it is a musical instrument.
In order to this, we work both with texts (poetical and/or
philosophical) and intelligible vocals, with melodic and gibberish
vocals. In the field of sound research, between the concepts of
"sonorous object" and "musical gesture", and between music and
technological arts, the emancipation of the human voice takes place as
well: in the fluctuations between language and concepts and singing
styles, and the detachment from the language and the singing styles,
until being a pure material and sonorous object par excellence.
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The performance starts with the very first
unpublished composition written within the project,
Tommy Moore
[2009-2010]. Composed starting
from additive synthesis and frequency modulation sounds, the piece is
focused on the relation between the micro varied and imposing sonorous
material, dominated by modulations between white noise and sawtooth,
and a kind of
operatic singing
varying its internal
resonance and marked by |
glottal strokes; while the sonorous stream jerks
the synthetic thunders. From a technical
point of view, the composition represents the emblem of the
match-relation-coexistence between the so made sonorous masses and the
reassuring melody with which it ends. From a conceptual and poetical
point of view, it is also the emblem of the investigation of man on
man declared as necessary: the character of Tommy Moore is one of the
many presented by James Joyce in his Ulysses, as the background
against which the adventures of the protagonist take
place, mentioned occasionally a few times. The metaphoric
reference is not connected to the alleged adventures of the character;
it is connected to Joyce's writings techniques, in which the
characters do not need any historical context and the narrated events
are a very excuse for the author who subverts the language and the
narrative concept itself.
The
operation, often called stream of consciousness, has strong and
ramified linguistic and philosophical implications,
and so the metaphoric reference does: we deduce
that man still lives into the unconscious-inconsistence of the
existential, intellectual and psycho-physical condition; moreover we
deduce the limits of the known language and the transparent adhesion
to this or that system of rules; we deduce that to create, in any
field and in an interdisciplinary and reticular point of view, it
means creating - aiming to create with every possible and new means -
the same language structure with which to work, starting from the
decay of known structures.
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A part of the composition
Necessity (part I)
[2009-2010] follows; we are
presenting here as well this new piece written during the very first
compositional period of the project, and composed starting from
additive synthesis and frequency modulation sounds, from the micro
varied mass of ferruginous and/or industrial sounds, beaten by a
single percussive stroke, the same every
time. A passage from
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Derrida is declaimed:
«Anguish, also of a taken away breath, by itself, to return to itself.
Because to speak is to know that thought must take a distance from
itself.»
The
passage is recited more times, with tune and timbre variations, until
becoming a melodic progression, in a blues and/or jazz style, clearly
in conflict with the sound materials; since the reiteration of the
passage implies a reflection so deep in mind and in the feelings to
keep the voice away from the same passage, from the words, from the
language, with which it manifests itself and from which it twists
itself, to keep the voice close, like an exorcism, to more graceful
and more tormenting feelings.
The reflection implied is about language and
writing, and represents one of the most loved and felt concept by the
quoted thinker, connected in its turn to very technical and specific
reflections on: human though system, its instruments, the language
used in the word and so as thought, the real and not verbal substance
of thought which probably exists before the language (?)
The unpublished piece
Matter
[2008-2010], is
a variation work and English version within the project of the
previous Materia
[2007], published in Aisthànomai,
the Tragedy of Consciousness; it bridges to the part of the
concert dedicated to this previous compositional project and record,
of which the pieces Echo,
Fallacità (take I), Fallacità (take II) [2002-2007]
follow as well.
In the first
and second pieces, the work is mainly on the internal resonances
within the harmonic-based sound streams that is the background against
which the vocals take place. With text, first in English then in
Italian, it expresses its plasticity trough masks and ranges, more
directly than wherever else during the concert; in the other pieces,
the ideal both noisy and melodic counterpoint of the relation between
the different voices or streams is added to the work on the internal
resonances within the harmonic-based sound streams. It is about the
detailed previous work of constructing sounds and spatialization; on
the one hand regarding the same relations as the coexistence of
different elements
and on the other regarding the idea of the
between compositional as "the prolongation of the past into the
present".
The different
voices are both vocal (according to the compositional way based on
editing started with Diffrazioni Sonore)
and of electronic nature. Rigorously, time does not beat anything in
all of this, except the repeating bass sounds which progressively come
out to remark the vocal phrases as the sonorous masses in the first
take of Fallaciousness, to be more evident in the second one.
The texts of these compositions are poetic, both in Italian and
English; the complete versions can be found in Aisthànomai and
are focused on the concept of the "apprehension to the research"
referring to the individual consciousness.
Characterized by a vocal improvisation part, the
electroacoustic composition
La Natura Assente [2010-2011]
is part (like the following piece)
of a more recent or second compositional period, within the project,
unpublished as well.
The original version of the composition is
spatialized on four channels and, like all
the work we are presenting here, it is conceived on the fixed sound
which means its final and definitive form coincides with the
reproduction support and/or the spatialized reproduction.
Here we are presenting the live electronics
version with some variations related with live processing on live
voice, which works against a background of pre-transformed sonorous
materials as results of very long steps of works otherwise not
presentable.
Human voice is the only original material,
transformed or used in the amplified form, in a continuous fluctuation
between recording and transforming. The electro-vocal composition
comes from the multimedia usage of voice, since all of it - phonetics,
anthropology, musicality, reference to intelligible discourse and to
real or emarginated textuality - works within the electronic device.
and interpolation. On the one hand,
transformation is mainly starting from extended vocalism, complex
sounds, sub-harmonic and noisy sounds; on the other hand it regards a
kind of structural and homogeneous morphing between original sound and
constructed sound, paying attention to the recognizability of the
human sound source, varying in relation with the different moments of
the composition.
The poetics of the work carries on as well a
constant fluctuation between lost of sense and intelligibility, and
implies strong linguistic-philosophical reflections connected with the
relation between man and nature; extremely conceptual, the text
consists of passages chosen by the namesake original poem, paying
attention to the pure musical and sonorous values.
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The investigation on the relation between
technological means and poetry through the vocal possibilities has
exactly extended the work to the creation of electronic sounds, with
particular reference to the groups of concepts already described:
Voice-matter-nature. Electronics-sound-technique.
Language-text-concept,
So, considering the following
piece as well, this composition can be defined as emblematic of the
study and work of which |
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the concert that we are presenting here is
representative.
Our version of
Summertime [2002-2011]
by George Gershwin follows; the
dialectical relation with the previous composition (unpublished as
well) is emblematic of the relation-coexistence between
poetical-musical conception and analysis and technological arts in
which we work: where before there was sound elaboration and
transformation, now there is the pure poetry of vocalism, and the
points of junction of the two poles, however: is a research on the
sonorous and vocal material.
The version we are presenting here does not
elaborate so much of the sonorous-musical stream, which, with the
tunes reduced to the minimal harmonic, is focused once more on the
internal movements of sound; it works on the sonorous-vocal material
from a more plastic point of view.
In the first part of the piece, the singing of
the original English text is immediately expressive as it works in the
middle range, strongly empathizing the tradition between blues, jazz
and popular music, historically intended; in the second part asserts
itself with an incisive operatic-like tune clearly connected with the
original opera which the piece is part of (Porgy and Bess) -,
but working in a such revisiting way in which every word or textual
form are eliminated and the singing itself is de-structured until
materialization in the same breath or scratch, within the
dramaturgical and material agitation of the performative action.
At this point, the final part of the performance
presents the following pieces:
Resonance
[2009-2010],
appartenente alla prima fase di lavoro e al gruppo inedito delle
composizioni iniziali (TomResonance
[2009-2010],
belonging to the first compositional period
of the unpublished compositions (Tommy Moore and Necessity),
traces the way presented so far on the compositional and poetical
reflections of the very starting point of the project. The
thunderstorm of sounds and their mass are the background against which
the voice sings in relation with a synthetic bass sound, in a similar
way but jumping on the three ranges of which the distance and
difference come out, and pronouncing just four words from the original
passage in French: LeTTRe [letter] Être [being] AuTRe
[other] ÊTRETÉ [be-ness]. The words, taken from the Derrida's
essay on Antonin Artaud,
and which are quoted here exactly in the
same graphic form used by Derrida, are synthetically and conceptually
referred to the mentioned problematic issue described in the second
piece, Necessity (part I), with the addiction of further
references and considerations to the Artaud opera as to the relation
between this opera and the Derrida's interpretation, as to the same
language philosophy of this latter.
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All’esterno di me
[2002-2011]
is the new version of the namesake piece
published in Aisthànomai in 2008, which is in the same way of
the previous Summertime for what concerns the musical
conception, to focus the work on the pure vocalism poetry away from
every language, regarding the vocal-sonorous material. Voice uses
operatic tunes working on its internal resonance and docile and
feverish tunes agonizing at intervals, to end with a totally |
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de-constructing live processing part, in which
the classical melody turns into synthetic percussions jumping on the
stereo channels; while vocals, with mainly operatic tunes, jerks into
an ideal duet with the computer transformations.
The
experience precedes that of the piece which, in different variations,
closes each performance from the beginning of the activity,
Vero (remake)
[2004-2011].
Originally composed for fixed sounds (published in Diffrazioni
Sonore) and not intelligible vocal material, the piece has been
presented for recitative voice (the poems There are no illusions
for me to the question and Absence (or my threshold pain)
since Aisthànomai was published (2008).Today
it is presented for extended recitative voice with a passage from
Ascenseur pour l'èchafaud (France, Louis Malle, 1959) scenario
movie which was the subject of the study we conducted, during the same
time we worked on Aisthànomai not occasionally, on the
relations between sound and imagine, and connected with all our work
as well.
We worked on this passage with the pieces Dix Ans,
Vingt Ans, Nuit sur les Champs-élysées (take I) e Nuit sur les
Champs-élysées (take II), published in Aisthànomai as well,
of which the last two are tributes to Miles
Davis, taken from the movie soundtrack.
«Regarding the (formal) structure:
I always was been interested in the so-called
"entre-deux-coup-de-dés" by Deleuze: the between of the
composition, the most ambiguous part of it. So the objective is
to exalt the terms of the construction-sensation relationship, not
as conflict but as several extensions.» Cfr. Diffrazioni Sonore
theoretical line text, cd booklet (RDM Records, 2005-2010).
Cfr.
P. P. Pasolini, Empirismo Eretico, Milano, Garzanti,
1972, pp. 9-28.
In
particular:
«"Philosophical
indifferentiation of grammars".
I draw the meaning that is closest to me from the
interpretation
of this definition: Indifferentiation of linguistic codes of a
philosophical nature. Indifferentiation of linguistic codes
starting from ?cognitive? research. Non-individuability of codes
(linguistic grammar is the system, emblem of every system)
within cognitive research.»
Cfr. R. Daniele, Aisthànomai, il Dramma Della
Coscienza, theoretical line text, cd booklet, RDM
Records/Romina Daniele, Milano, 2008.
Cfr. Diffrazioni Sonore
theoretical line text, cd booklet, cit.; H. Bergson,
Matière et memoire.
Essai sur la relation du corps à l’esprit,
Paris, Alcan, 1896; tr. it.
Materia e memoria. Saggio sulla relazione tra il
corpo e lo spirito
(a cura di A. Pessina), Roma-Bari, Laterza, p. 200.
J. Derrida, Forcener le subjectile, Munich,
Schirmer/Mosel Publishers; tr. it.
Antonin Artaud, Forsennare il soggettile,
Milano, Abscondita, 2005, p. 78.
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