The opening page of Luigi Mogrovejo’s Game I shows how a chamber ensemble can be built through changes of presence, colour and apparent distance.

The opening instruction is Prestissimo. Immediately beneath it, however, the horn is asked to play quietly, with a closed sound and da lontano: from afar. This conjunction of speed and distance gives the first page of Luigi Mogrovejo’s Game I a particular character. Motion is already present, while the ensemble has yet to reveal its full weight.

The page belongs to the edition Two Brass Quintet, DV 11595, and identifies Game I with the date 1997.

Its five staves are assigned to horn in F, two trumpets in B-flat, trombone and bass tuba. At the start, most of those staves are silent. A compact horn figure, interrupted by rests and repeated across successive bars, establishes the first layer of the piece. The quintet begins as an invitation to listen to one instrument’s changing presence.

The first trumpet subsequently enters quietly, also marked da lontano. The horn’s instructions change: the page calls for a metal mute and later for an open sound, with the mute removed. Further entries introduce a trill in the second trumpet, a glissando in the trombone and, near the end of the page, a quiet tuba line. These are specific events in an opening texture. They should not be made to stand for the complete work, whose later course requires consultation of the full score.

Even this limited view is enough to reveal a compositional question. How can several instruments occupy the same acoustic space while seeming to approach it differently? Dynamics contribute to the answer, but so do articulation, register and the alteration of timbre. A stopped or muted sound is a change in colour as well as in level. Its relation to an open tone can remain perceptible even when both are played softly.

The notation of distance also requires interpretation. Unless an edition specifies physical separation, da lontano need not send the player to another part of the room. It asks the performer to produce an impression whose means depend on instrument, ensemble and acoustic. The listener perceives the result as a relationship: a sound may feel remote because another is more immediate, more sharply articulated or more exposed.

The rests deserve attention in this process. They separate the horn’s recurring figure into gestures that can be recognised, and they preserve room for the arrival of another player. As the page grows more populated, the opening material remains a point of reference. The ensemble is being assembled in time, through the listener’s developing awareness of what has entered and what continues.

A score can make us hear these decisions before it supplies an account of an entire composition. In Mogrovejo’s opening, the familiar brass quintet becomes a finely differentiated field of sound. Reading the first page alongside a performance offers a concrete exercise in listening: follow the entries, then attend to the changing distance between them.

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