Da Vinci Classics
Empty Words Percussion Ensemble
Physical and Digital Release: 19 May 2018
Empty Words Percussion Ensemble presents Cage's Four4, exploring the changing relationships between percussion sounds, silence and independently unfolding musical events.
13.67€
Empty Words Percussion Ensemble was founded in 2015 by Sergio Armaroli with Maurizio Ben Omar and is directed by Armaroli. It presents concerts for audiences ranging from newcomers to contemporary-music aficionados. Starting from John Cage’s early percussion works, EWPE develops new work and investigates twentieth-century percussion repertoire with a renewed sensitivity to sound and close attention to the musical text and its underlying ideas. Improvisation and invention are informed by a Fluxus-inspired creative tension, connecting twentieth-century percussion music with the future. Its members — Sergio Armaroli, Maurizio Ben Omar, Andrea Dulbecco and Elio Marchesini — trained in music performance at Cremona’s music high school and the conservatories of Genoa and Milan.
Sergio Armaroli, founder of Empty Words Percussion Ensemble, specialises in contemporary music and improvisation and has extensive experience in orchestral, jazz and experimental music. He brings the multiple disciplines of twenty-first-century percussion into a unified artistic practice. He graduated with full marks in painting from the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan and studied electronic music, jazz and percussion at the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory in Milan. He also studied popular percussion at the Instituto Superior de Arte in Havana, Cuba. He has performed with orchestras and chamber ensembles and as a soloist in Italy and abroad, including Poland, Germany, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Mexico, Great Britain and France. His recordings have appeared on Artache, Stradivarius, Rugginenti, BMG Ricordi, Red!, ArsPublica and Dodicilune. His work also includes multimedia and performance projects and sound installations.
Maurizio Ben Omar, co-founder of Empty Words Percussion Ensemble, graduated with full marks in percussion and also studied piano and composition. He has played with leading Italian orchestras and performed as a soloist and chamber musician in Europe, Africa, the Americas and Oceania. His collaborators include Claudio Abbado, Pierre-Yves Artaud, Kees Boeke, Mario Brunello, Bruno Canino, Ensemble Intercontemporain, Jill Feldman, Andrea Lucchesini and Giuseppe Sinopoli. Composers including Bussotti, Corghi, Donatoni, Einaudi, Gorli, Manca, Mosca, Sciarrino, Pisati and Solbiati have dedicated works to him. He has taught percussion at the Genoa Conservatory, and his students have won national and international competitions. His solo recordings have appeared on Ricordi, BMG Ariola and Salabert. In 1985 he founded the percussion ensemble Naqqara.
Andrea Dulbecco graduated with honours in percussion under Franco Campioni at the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory in Milan, where he also studied composition and graduated in piano. He specialised in vibraphone with David Friedman. He has performed as a soloist with Milan’s Angelicum Orchestra, the orchestra of the Graz Conservatory, the RAI Orchestra in Milan, the Sanremo Symphony Orchestra, O.D.A.I. (Italian String Orchestra) and the Novosibirsk Philharmonic. His chamber appearances include the Società del Quartetto, Teatro alla Scala and Società dei Concerti in Milan, Unione Musicale in Turin, the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Amici della Musica in Perugia and the Accademia Chigiana. He has collaborated with Anatol Ugorski, Mario Brunello, Andrea Lucchesini, Pietro De Maria, Eliot Fisk, Giuliano Carmignola, Ennio Morricone and Giovanni Sollima. He is a longstanding member of Sentieri Selvaggi, conducted by Carlo Boccadoro, who has dedicated works to him; the ensemble has also recorded for Deutsche Grammophon. Alongside his classical career, he is an active jazz vibraphonist and has toured the United States, Mexico, Africa and the Far East. He has taught percussion at the Milan Conservatory.
After graduating with honours from the Milan Conservatory, Elio Marchesini began collaborating with leading Italian musical institutions. A winner of national and international competitions, he is a versatile musician whose repertoire extends from classical and avant-garde music to pop and music from other traditions. His approach to sound has led to collaborations with Teatro alla Scala, the Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Giuseppe Verdi Symphony Orchestra in Milan and Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, as well as chamber groups including Contemporart Ensemble, the La Scala Percussion Ensemble and Naqqara. He has curated projects for art galleries and events in Milan and worked on the music of the Milanese composer Davide Mosconi. He is also a composer: his works have appeared in major concert seasons, including that of the Giuseppe Verdi Symphony Orchestra in Milan, and he writes for film, television and theatre.
John Cage (b Los Angeles, 5 Sept 1912; d New York, 12 Aug 1992). American composer. One of the leading figures of the postwar avant garde. The influence of his compositions, writings and personality has been felt by a wide range of composers around the world. He has had a greater impact on music in the 20th century than any other American composer.
Composed in 1991, a year before John Cage’s death, Four⁴ was written specifically for recording on CD, which accounts for its seventy-two-minute duration. This final work devoted to percussion quartet belongs to a period in which recorded media were opening new possibilities for composers and listeners. Written as Cage approached his eightieth birthday, Four⁴ forms part of the “Number Pieces”, a group of works that occupied this composer, philosopher, writer and artist between 1987 and 1992. Cage’s work during these years was supported by computer tools developed by Andrew Culver,…
Composed in 1991, a year before John Cage’s death, Four⁴ was written specifically for recording on CD, which accounts for its seventy-two-minute duration. This final work devoted to percussion quartet belongs to a period in which recorded media were opening new possibilities for composers and listeners.
Written as Cage approached his eightieth birthday, Four⁴ forms part of the “Number Pieces”, a group of works that occupied this composer, philosopher, writer and artist between 1987 and 1992. Cage’s work during these years was supported by computer tools developed by Andrew Culver, his long-standing assistant, helping him respond to the growing demand for new music from performers around the world.
Each title begins with a number written as a word—One, Two, and so on—indicating the number of performers. A superscript distinguishes successive works for the same number of players. Thus Four⁴ is the fourth work in the Four sequence. The first Four was written for string quartet in 1989; Four² is for chorus (1990); and Four³ (1991) is for four performers using one or two pianos, rainsticks, violin or oscillator, and silence. The fourth Four, for percussion quartet, is the work heard on this recording. Cage subsequently wrote Four⁵ for saxophone quartet and Four⁶ for unspecified sound sources.
For listeners unfamiliar with this late music, the contrast with Cage’s more overtly virtuosic and densely eventful works may be striking. Bare, elemental sounds suggest an open landscape and a deep connection between our inner nature and the surrounding environment. The pitches and resonances of individual elements seem to continue sounding in the mind. We cannot know when nature will produce its sounds, any more than we can predict the arrival of the wind. A similar atmosphere emerges in Four⁴ through the spacious use of time brackets.
The time-bracket principle underlies much of the Number Pieces and was also discussed by Cage in his mesostic writings. In Four⁴, as in other works, the choice of percussion instruments is left to the performers. This is not indifference to the result: it accords with the Zen-influenced thinking that informs so much of Cage’s work. Silence, rhythm and repetition become part of an economy of means that invites the players to explore the possibilities of limited materials.
Cage deliberately refrains from determining every aspect of the resulting sound, allowing the performers and the circumstances of each performance to bring something new into being. The flexibility of the time brackets supports this intention. Their structure provides a framework without fixing every event within it, granting a freedom different from that available in conventionally notated music.
In Four⁴, the beginning and end of a sound are separately specified, and each time bracket contains only one sound. The four players have twenty-two, sixteen, ten and fifteen brackets respectively. For example, the first player may begin the opening sound at any point between 0:00 and 1:00, and end it between 0:40 and 1:40. Cage can therefore establish the work’s overall duration while leaving the precise timing of individual events to the performers. Each musician’s decisions, and their changing relationship to one another, make every performance different.
As the brackets unfold, extended stretches of silence emerge. Each decision becomes a choice of peace: a vibrating calm within the storm, interrupted by sound—an inner sound—in an imagined, endless alternation that recalls the breath of the spirit.
Edmondo Filippini. English revised and details of the Four sequence corrected for this edition.
Selected awards, reviews and interviews. Radio broadcasts and podcasts are listed separately below.
Modern Music
“particularly dynamic tapestry via a range of subtle & even haunting sonorities”
McComb’s survey of Cage’s Number Pieces discusses this recording favourably in its Four⁴ section, highlighting the ensemble’s dynamic range and distinctive sonorities.
Read the review ↗ - Modern Musicil manifesto
“la varietà, persino un certo eclettismo, la sorprendente «cantabilità»”
Gamba explores the ensemble’s colour, variety and expressive approach to Cage’s late percussion work. Review reproduced in Sergio Armaroli’s official press archive.
Read the review ↗ - il manifesto
