Aurora

This is true for relationships between people from distinct cultural traditions as it is for those with more similar cultural settings, but perhaps even more so, for self-relationships. These are an extraordinary training ground in which to learn to recognise the many contradictions, misrepresentations and distortions between what one thinks of being/becoming and what one is/becomes; between the rigidity of prejudices and the infinite and changing richness of life of each human being. In short, where you can learn to meet the Other.
With this in mind, by way of example among the many I could give, I did not ask Ganavya, whose roots are so very distant from mine, to sing a song that is linked to my European roots in an Indian way, but rather to sing it as an Indian. In other words, I did not want her musical tradition superimposed on mine, but rather I wanted her to share in my musical tradition in full faith of her own culture and to herself. Listening to her version, at first I was tempted to correct her because there were too many differences with my mental interpretation of the melody, influenced by performances given by specialists in medieval song. However, I didn’t and I tried to go beyond my expectations to see that there was actually nothing wrong with the way Ganavya sang. On the contrary, I heard new ways of experiencing time, rhythm, melody, harmony, timbre and breathing in her voice. Neither Ganavya nor I got lost. On the contrary, it was thanks to the strength of our identities that we were able to meet and our lives became richer, more intense and meaningful.

It was thanks to the strength of our identities that we were able to meet and our lives became richer, more intense and meaningful

El Rey de Francia, which is present in four versions on the accompanying CD, is a piece from the Sephardic tradition. In 1492, the Jews were expelled from Spain and emigrated to various European countries and to Northern Africa. The fruit of this diaspora was the emergence of a tradition which, on the one hand, kept Spanish as the main language for daily communication and in literature and it preserved habits, customs and a multiplicity of cultural characteristics of Hispanic derivation, thus not losing its identity and origin. On the other hand, it gradually incorporated numerous features of the populations among which it developed.
The text, reported below with a translation, handed down in all probability orally, suggests a collective work and presents multiple aspects of interest. For example, we can see that it integrates different metric structures, expresses a phase of the pronunciation of the Spanish that is still being defined and incorporates a word of Aramaic origin (aharvar).
For these reasons and for its musical beauty, I felt that including El rey de Francia in this project could constitute a metaphor for, and perhaps an active example of, intercultural dialogue.

It is in this framework that the four repetitions of El rey de Francia must be placed, in an effort to represent a path of reconciliation towards a state of greater completeness and unity. The first, interpreted on the piano, the most mechanical of the instruments, expresses the greatest distance between the human being and sound; the second, on the double bass where the musician’s fingers are in direct contact with the strings, reveals the possibility of a closer relationship with the vibrations; the third on the recorder, suggests a further passage, because the breathing is the raw material, so to speak, which is then shaped through the instrument; and finally the fourth, the vocal part, where the unity between the human being and sound is harmoniously achieved. This occurs in a context where the elements become more and more related to each other: the piano commences alone, then the double bass begins and it is played with its soundboard in direct contact with that of the piano, in which the strings are left free to vibrate, so that the two instruments resonate together. Together then, they give support to the theme when the recorder begins its rendering, positioned inside the soundboard of the piano. To conclude, all three instruments collaborate with the vocal part in the fourth repetition in an ideal of mutual listening and fruitful cooperation (it is among other things, to clearly demonstrate this ideal, that this is musically-speaking, the most elaborate of the four).

The first interval (distance/relationship between two sounds) of El Rey de Francia is a perfect fifth and it assumes, in relation to that need for a reunion with the Self that I mentioned earlier, a particular importance in the whole project in its evoking an ancient and original experience.
It regulates the relationship between the pieces by creating two directions: one, for ascending fifths, turned towards the heavens, in the four versions of El Rey de Francia, the other, for descending fifths, turned towards the earth in the other three pieces.
In particular, for Luminescenze, Aurora and Da una grigia nuvolaglia indifferente, the fifth also represents the generating centre from which each element originates, although intertwining and compromising, so to speak, with other experiences. However, it is not a static centre, because I wanted to give it the possibility of a path of emancipation, which starts from the rigidity of the structures of Luminescenze – to which the unpredictable and interacting relationships between the vibrations of the instrument are the counterpart – up to the relative freedom reached in Da una grigia nuvolaglia indifferente. Here the piano, in its machine-like essence, seeks humanity through its search for a song, while the double bass and the recorder somehow become its resonances, in a luminous embrace that once again pushes towards a collaborative ideal and that anticipates a bare expression of twelve ascending fifths at the conclusion of the experience.

Having specifically chosen therefore, not to record it in a studio, constitutes a further element of imperfection, which was again desired and sought in such a way as to guarantee the absence of control over the individual performers in the same room and the presence, in terms of sound – of the ventilation system and creaking benches – of the place itself, where the unfavourable microclimate has in turn influenced the sound of the instruments and the performances. Finally, the compositional writing is characterised by a certain degree of uncertainty and the performers are constantly required to react with respect to what they hear happening inside and outside of themselves, so as to define the various aspects of the performance in that very moment. It is therefore the whole experience that I wanted to emphasize more than just the musical aspect, once again to have a greater completeness and unity.

The aesthetics of this project are rather far from any formalism: they are based on the conviction that music can influence the human being

It will now be clear that the aesthetics of this project are rather far from any formalism: they are based on the conviction that music can influence the human being on many levels, pushing one towards more or less radical changes in relationship with oneself, with others and with the world, in the belief that music has much to do with life. It is therefore a research that I, first and foremost, have undertaken by creating Aurora, the meaning of which I hope to have transmitted not only and not so much with this presentation, but above all through my music. And it is for this reason that the choice of the recording place, carried out at night when the conscience state is less alert, fell on the Chapel of the Holy Grail in the Cathedral of Valencia, Spain, a place of great symbolic value and extraordinary energy, which welcomed us in its sacred embrace.