A Pierre. Dell’Azzurro silenzio, inquietum

Luigi Nono: A Pierre. Dell’Azzurro silenzio, inquietum (1985)
for multiple choirs, for contrabass flute in G, contrabass clarinet in B flat and live electronics (1985)

Roberto Fabbriciani, contrabass flute in G
Ciro Scarponi, contrabass clarinet in B flat

Dedicated to Pierre Boulez on his 60th birthday (March 26, 1985), "A Pierre. Dell’azzurro silenzio, inquietum" was first performed on March 31, 1985, in Baden-Baden, with Roberto Fabbriciani, Ciro Scarponi, and live electronics from the Experimentalstudio in Freiburg. The score is dated February 20, 1985.

The collaboration with Fabbriciani (flute) and Scarponi (clarinet) and the exploration of their instruments plays a key role in Nono's research during the last decade, in his exploration of the interior life of sound, accomplished with the help of live electronics and several congenial performers. The richness of the double bass flute's harmonics is one of the aspects investigated in the piece, where the contribution of the live instrumentalists and that of the live electronics is difficult to distinguish, because a complete integration is pursued, a fusion between live sounds and electronically processed sounds: together they form an uninterrupted band of sound characterised by a continuous fluctuation, by a delicate and incessant internal mobility, composed in space and for space, on the threshold between sound and the "azzurro silenzio (blue silence)."

Mobility and spatiality are crucial aspects and explain why Nono can use the expression "multi-choir" when referring to a piece for two instruments, drawing on the Venetian terminology from the Gabrieli era, which he used on many other occasions (for example, he called the seven instrumental groups in No hay camino, hay que caminar…Andrej Tarkovskij "choirs").

He wrote in the brief introduction:
Multiple choirs continually changing through formants of inter-dynamized voices-timbres-spaces and some possibilities for transforming live electronics. "Multiple choirs continually changing": this is precisely what it is about. In the part of the two soloists, with dynamics almost always between "piano" (p) and "pianissimo" (ppppp), with rare forays up to "mezzo forte," requires a continuous variety of emission modes, from ordinary emission to one in which air noise prevails, with variable presence or absence of specific pitches, from the very high "Aeolian" sounds, to whistling sounds, to clusters, to double-notes of harmonics, where sometimes the fundamental sound of the double-notes should appear, as an intermittent, discontinuous "shadow sound."

Electronics, crucial for the articulation in space, helps to make the sounds of the instruments perceptible, of incorporeal lightness, transforms them and appropriates them through the "delay," ensuring that with a brief "delay" the fundamental sound of the double-notes is heard. The recorded sound becomes part of the overall sound. With the delay, the instrument's sound can be heard even when the soloist is silent, and this continuity also reveals an aspect of the fusion between instruments and electronics that is crucial to the piece.
[Paolo Petazzi in cematitalia]

My note:
The above delay isn't exactly short, musically speaking. It's made up of two 12-second delays, sometimes used in series for a total of 24 seconds. This creates the sonic continuum.

Back