It is very difficult to choose which compositions could represent the Guitar today, seen through the eyes of various Italian composers. An attempt, which I tried to follow, was to maintain a very high level of writing, and yet to present very different languages, schools and idiomatic characters. This is also the reason of the choice of the album title, “Free Guitar on Earth”, taking inspiration from Giovanni Sollima’s work, but also representing a boundless and limitless view, free from prejudices and open to new perspectives. I am very glad that many of these compositions are here presented in a first studio recording, with the consequent challenge of not having any previous recording as a comparison element, or as a testimony of the collaboration (often needed, specially for non-guitarist composers) between the composer and the performer. In the case of dedicated pieces I had this luck personally, to work in tight collaboration with their own “fathers”, and I must admit that this has been a very interesting type of work: bringing out an idea through the instrument, which has been thought by a non-guitarist composer, can force the performer to go beyond his previous limits; on the other hand, also guitarists-composers may write using a language which is far away from different performers’ technical peculiarities, and entering into their world of sounds may be quite challenging. Besides presenting works by the most eminent figures in the Italian musical world, I am really glad to have the chance to give voice to young talented composers, such as Edoardo Dadone, Andrea Noce, Marco Ramelli; and I am extremely thankful to other ones, such as the “rising star” Filippo Perocco, Cristiano Porqueddu, Alfredo Franco, Franco Cavallone, for writing their marvellous dedicated pieces which appear here. Composers who earned since longtime worldwise reputations, like Sciarrino, Ambrosini, Dall’Ongaro and – in the specific area of guitar music – Gilardino, do not need any introduction. However it is a remarkable evidence that all of them are here represented by works which retain the features of their compositional styles at their highest levels.
Note by Alberto Mesirca
Angelo Gilardino:
I composed this Sonata in 2014 for Lukasz Kuropaczewski, the great Polish guitarist, for whom I always harbored much esteem and friendship. The title of this composition (Letters to Fryderyk) does not entail any attempt on my part at referring to, or echoing Chopin’s style and, even less so, at imitating it. It simply discloses my intention to express thoughts engendered by field trips to the places which marked his existence and to depict them by dint of music: Warsaw’s somewhat ashen beauty, the rather grave sternness of Valldemossa’s convent, the bright peacefulness of the Nohant-Vic residence, blended with childhood recollections of Želalowa Wola, Fryderyk’s native village. by Angelo Gilardino
Claudio Ambrosini:
Since the mid-70s (Tre studi sulla prospettiva, 1973-4) I chose the guitar as the instrument for reflecting on history (this could not have been possible with the piano, which was created comparatively late). The history of the guitar (preceded by the vihuela), instead, crosses several centuries. I started to reflect on history, on its forms, on the evolution of phrasing and sound production, following the model of the Tre studi: a love for antiquity, which should be made live (again), not with nostalgia, but in perspective. A backward look, with curiosity and affection, cast from today, with a conscience of the evolution of time, of technique and theory. Several works were composed in this way, including this Notturno (Tombeau per Jimi H.) composed in 1975, a memento-reflection on the death a few years earlier of the legendary American guitarist Jimi Hendrix. Conceived as a lament, in the style of the Renaissance tombeau. There are no direct quotes from Hendrix, although there are effects that recall rock or blues techniques. Instead, as in a passacaglia or ciaccona – a cyclical reappearance of some chords and a progressive, dramatic thickening of the sound flow until reaching a convulsive climax, metaphor of the end of this musician, as great as reserved and sensitive. by Claudio Ambrosini & Alberto Mesirca
Edoardo Dadone
Lubrico (written in the fall of 2018 upon an invitation by Alberto Mesirca) starts from the eponymous graphical work by artist Stefano Allisiardi: a series of ink drawings which increasingly clarify and define the features of a face whose filthy traits complete the adjective’s meaning. It does not stand only for the becoming matter, but also extends itself to the presumptive negative moral traits of the subject. Thus, I ventured into a difficult field in the guitar technique, finding two possible “obscene” traits in this instruments, i.e. the continuous gestures on a variable surface and the systematic recourse to idiomatic solutions, capable to intervene on the formal mechanisms previously designed. Thus, the instrument’s natural incinations are allowed to create their own path, either in parallel to or coincident with what I had created; possibly falling in the sin of gluttony. by Edoardo Dadone
Ennio Morricone
With these four short works, written in 1957, Morricone both enters into dialogue and separates himself from the Darmstadt serialism, attempting to go beyond it and to rediscover an almost “archaic” tradition for this instrument (in Sergio Miceli’s words), “purified” from the automatic and the superfluous that could (also historically) characterize a single passage. by DV
Salvatore Sciarrino
Silence as the “swarming of microscopic sounds” (Sciarrino) is mirrored in L’addio a Trachis II (harp original: 1980; guitar transcription by Maurizio Pisati: 1987). As in other works, Sciarrino employs soft dynamics for realizing complex timbral transformations; he focuses both on the problems of what is audible in nature and on differentiating the instrument’s timbral layers, which are harder to perceive rationally. by DV
Michele Dall’Ongaro
Written in 2004 and dedicated to Arturo Tallini (and in memory of Goffredo Petrassi, who had written Nunc for guitar in 1971), this piece opens a gateway of references to Petrassi starting from its very title. The call of the past is thus very clear, in spite of a frenzied and agitated style, with recurring, obsessive returns of quick passages, interrupted by harmonics whose sweetness contrasts with the former ones. Dynamics are very clear and intense, with fortissimo and accents on every demisemiquaver of the scale, with irregular rhythms grouping the pitches always differently (in spite of the classical common time). These moments, prevailing in the piece, are juxtaposed to sweet and slow triplets; the constantly returning frenzy eventually surrenders to the quiet of slow soft sounds alternating with heavenly harmonics. by Alberto Mesirca
Filippo Perocco
Minuta is my first solo guitar work, written for and dedicated to Alberto Mesirca, and commissioned by the International Guitar Festival Nordhorn. When I start writing a new piece, I need to get myself acquainted with the instruments’ qualities, to highlight their peculiar “voices”. By embracing this instrument I began a playful and even childish exploration. The guitar can be both visceral and capable to make leftovers of sound evaporate. Minuta, my little game, moves between these two poles. by Filippo Perocco
Alessandro Solbiati
A simple and immediate piece, with an always recognizable style. The seeming return to a less sophisticated musical wolrd (as if inspired by Kurtag’s Jatekok) belies my will to downplay the exceedingly complex approach to contemporary music and to favour a gradual nearing to its many facets. By DV
Carlo Boccadoro
The second book of Libro dei volti was composed in 2014 and dedicated to the Milanese guitarist Elena Casoli. This short suite (completing another of the same year, dedicate to Lucia D’Errico) comprises (as did the former) five very contrasting movements, each employing a particular guitar technique. These are used as a pretext for transcending them and for composing interesting musical lines; in the first tableau there are nervous and agitated scales, in the second a complex and lyrical polyphony, in the third a jazz-doublebass-rhythm (with étouffé sounds), in the fourth tambora-like deep repeated chords, and in the fourth a complex rhythmical pattern: among frequent changes and accents, it is reminescent of the complex structures of some progressive sections à la King Crimson. by Alberto Mesirca
Nicola Campogrande
With my twelve Preludi a getto d’inchiostro (2003) I had the ambition of designing a world. A postmodern world, where details of architectures of the past are observed along with jerks of the present, where references to classical forms are heard with a disenchanted myrth. I tried to paint this world by allowing myself very long working times, in order to distill the result in works shivering with synthesis. Had I been a computer, these Preludes would have been my printer: lots of work behind them, a single quick gesture for filling the sheet. by Nicola Campogrande
Marco De Biasi
This piece belongs in a cycle of six Hearth Songs on the relationship of man and nature. The title, Kcor, is “rock” read backwards; this verbal game alludes to the fact that the thematic material is the inversion of a fifth (the typical rock music “power chord”), i.e. a fourth. This interval’s nature and the title’s sound evoke a time long past, where the earth’s deep beat was directly connected to man’s heartbeat. Through an ever-changing tribal rhythm, music describes an atmosphere connected to a primitive and visceral relationship with a hostile and savage world, where men had to constantly struggle for their survival. by Marco De Biasi
Giovanni Sollima
Free life on Earth is a multi-movement work for flute and guitar, written in 2003 and published in 2007. Made of four tableaux, this Suite includes a single movement for solo guitar (the fifth), which stands against the others for its character, along with its instrumentation. While the other movements have a rhythmical style, where the guitar counteracts the flute with quick and irregular chords or complex arpeggios, here the six-stringed instrument returns to its most intimate traits. The harmonics and the fixed-position sextuplets, à la Villa Lobos, capture its deepest and most idiomatic resonances. by Alberto Mesirca