Prossimo for violin and electronics, was written during the artistic residence St.A.i.R Styria Artist in Residence Program by Steiermark - Österreich, in Graz, between February and April, 2017. The piece was written taking advantage of the support of the violin player Lorenzo Derinni, and the electronic performer Davide Gagliardi, both from Schallfeld Ensemble. The piece was premiered at Schaumbad Freies Atelierhaus, in Graz, on April 23rd, 2017.
The technical setup includes the use of two piezo microphones and a condenser microphone. One piezo has to be fixed on the soundboard and is used to amplify the violin sound. Its signal is mixed with the signal of the condenser microphone in order to have a smoother amplification of the violin sound. The other piezo is used by the violinist to make a few sound gestures on the strings. In Prossimo I experimented for the first time with the introduction of a piezo microphone as an object that the performer can hold in his/her hands to produce sounds. So, this mobile piezo becomes part of the instrumental system as a mediator, (like a bow or a drumstick, following Heyde’s view, see ch. 2.3) which transfers the energy that produces sound from the violinist to the instrument. The sound gestures generated by such a use of the piezo become the most consistent part of the sound material exploited in the composition of the piece. They consist of:
1. glissandos made with the piezo along a specified string. The violinist holds the piezo in her right hand almost flat on the string making a glissando movement from the bridge to the fingerboard (descending movement - audio ex. 4.2.1) or from the fingerboard to the bridge (ascending movement).
2. Tremolo movements made with the piezo placed flat on a specified string. The violinist varies the direction of the movement along the string following the indicated rhythm, within an approximately specified register (audio ex. 4.2.2)
3. Scraped sounds produced with the piezo placed oblique on a specified string. With the piezo in his/her right hand, the violinist has to control the pressure of the piezo on the string, following the dynamic indications, while changing the direction of the movement according to the indicated rhythm (audio ex. 4.2.3)
4. Ribattuto sounds produced by tapping the piezo on the indicated position. These sounds resemble the ribattuto sound presented at the very beginning of the piece (see ch.3.2), but instead of tapping the string with the bow in the right hand, while the left hand press the string at a specified point, the violinist holds the piezo with the right hand, and taps the string with it, always at the same point (audio ex. 4.2.4)
All these sound gestures are the results of a deeper exploration of the possibilities offered by the use of the piezo on the instrument. I spent a lot of time trying all these gestures by myself, recording them, cataloguing and listening back to them, reflecting on their potentialities in terms of sound material. Once I had defined them in a quite precise way, I discussed them with the performer in order to double-check their feasibility. Their execution requires extra effort from the performer, who needs to adjust his/her way of playing in order to be able to get control over these gestures, which imply the use of piezo.
The inclusion of these sound gestures as part of the material I would have worked with, raised a relevant question also from the compositional point of view. Working with piezo implies working with a heterogeneous material, which presents a high degree of noise and a lower level of controllability and precision, compared to the sounds conventionally produced by a musical instrument. Therefore, I was keen to find a way to organically combine the sounds produced using piezo, with the sounds produced with the violin. My search for integration between these two different sound worlds started by considering how I could focus on the richness of these sounds and how I could get a certain control over their complexity. Concerning this issue, a real source of inspiration has been for me the work made by Andrea Valle and Mauro Lanza for Systema Naturae, a cycle of four works, whose peculiarity lies in the coexistence of traditional acoustic instruments and different setups of remotely controlled electromechanical devices. I have already mentioned this work in ch. 3.5, for the way the two composers worked together on creating a shared database regarding the sound material they were going to use, which presents a similar degree of heterogeneity to that offered by the combination of piezos and instruments. During the compositional process, the creation of such a catalogue offered Lanza and Valle the possibility to assume an instrumental perspective for the electromechanical devices, considering at the same time the use of different kinds of preparation and extended techniques for acoustic instruments, in order to create a more coherent vocabulary of sound material. Thanks to their database they were able to foresee very precisely all potential behaviours, concerning dynamics, spectral contents, rhythmical possibilities, etc, of their material. Therefore, the two composers were able to choose very consistent combinations of sound events produced by very different and heterogenous sound sources. My attempt has been similarly focused on exploiting the piezo sounds through an instrumental approach, i.e. organizing them in rhythmical events, organizing their dynamics, exploiting the richness of their spectra. Concerning the violin sound world, I chose instead to work with rather complex sounds such as harmonic bichords played molto flautato, or ribattuto sounds played with legno - which add noisy components to the sound. In this way, I tried to reduce the distance between the two sound worlds, so that all the sound material would have presented similar degrees of controllability and harmonic complexity. Finally, the use of electronic processes has also been relevant in this search for integration, helping me in creating different lines of dialogue between all the sound gestures explored through the piece. The electronic part has also been fundamental in providing a certain coherence to the organization of the formal structure. As already mentioned, Prossimo starts presenting a single sound gesture which is doubled in the electronic part (bb.1-15). A second section starts with the proposition of two new sound gestures (the glissando and the tremolo movements with piezo) and both of them are recorded and processed back through the electronic part. In the meantime, echoes from the first sound keep appearing in the electronic part (bb.16-41). A third section (bb.42-71) is opened by a new sound event represented by a high harmonic bichord, and it goes on presenting again the ribattutto sound, together with echos from the material of the previous section in the electronic part. During this section, the material of the harmonic bichord is developed through repetition, transpositions, and different elaborations. This third section closes with a sudden, complex, and abrupt sfz sound. The resonance of this sound is electronically created with a frozen sound on which a fourth section opens. Here a new material is presented: the scraped low sound produced with the piezo on the IV or on the III strings. Again this material is mixed with granulations of different previous sounds. This darker section closes with a double reprise of the sfz sound, electronically sustained by different freezes. Opening with a third repetition of the same sfz sound, the last section gets back to the elements of the bichords of the third section and to the ribattuto sound of the beginning. But this time the latter is played with the piezo and it is articulated according to a rhythmical structure of two consequent triplets, or it is combined with an ascending glissando. The hierarchies between recognizable elements change, while the pace of the piece is gradually slowed down and the texture moves to higher registers, becoming lighter and more fragile.
>> go to 4.3 Prossimo II, Prossimo III and Sistema di Prossimità