The tracks on this CD faithfully recount the project started some years ago by Marcello De Carolis, a young classical guitar virtuoso who followed a typical course of academic studies and has a brilliant start to his concert career. Attracted by the popular culture of his region of birth and residence, Lucania, he did not have far to go to discover the sound of the chitarra battente and become enthralled by it. An instrument reminiscent of the music of village festivals, both in song and dance, the chitarra battente music – no less Calabrian than Lucanian – goes far back in time to an era of interwoven history and myth. Even with certain documents that precisely reference certain luthiers who crafted it, such as the legendary masters of the De Bonis dynasty of Bisignano, the musical identity of the chitarra battente remains enveloped in legend. Completely devoid of a cultured repertoire, however, it was never merely an instrument of the common people; indeed, a few surviving examples dating back to the last century do boast very fine workmanship, but as for written music nothing is known.
Francesco Loccisano is the virtuoso who delved into the art of the chitarra battente, searching in the field for the songs and dances that still flourish in folk festivals today. In his art, he has embraced a legacy otherwise at risk of extinction and, as such, his recovery of this local instrument is a gesture that propagates cultural heritage, as well as a strictly musical venture. Recently, the Conservatory of Nocera Terinese (in the Province of Cosenza) established for him a course in chitarra battente, just like the Conservatory of Cordoba did by establishing a professorship for teaching the flamenco guitar. In this collection, De Carolis joins Loccisano in playing two pieces that enhance the value of the folk instrument, albeit with the latter artist not evoking the music commonly heard at country fairs, rather, he forces the boundaries of his music and instrument by proposing a version that is updated, yet reminiscent of their origins.
In resolutely moving towards a celebration of the chitarra battente as a concert instrument, admittedly with folk origins but with a broad development prospect in the cultured repertoire, in one of his versions of a piece by the famous jazz pianist Chick Corea, Marcello De Carolis projects the instrument into a completely new musical universe. The Iberian flavour of the piece is mediated by a refined musical intellect that fully acknowledges the Hispanic orientation of the French masters of the early twentieth century. Indeed, it would even be perfectly natural for De Carolis to foray into the genre of jazz. Perhaps it is just a matter of time.
Henceforth, the discussion must inevitably continue in the first person. When, in 2017, De Carolis commissioned me to compose a piece for the chitarra battente, I was faced with difficulties that seemed insurmountable. I could not imagine a work for the instrument that would only enjoy the mere recognition as the segment of an album sheet. The tuning of the five choruses (double strings) is, in fact, similar to one of the baroque “reentrant” guitar tunings, i.e. it places the lowest note (G) in the centre, while the fourth and fifth revert to the upper register. All this creates significant difficulty when attempting to compose a solid architecture: the lack of bass tonality thus becomes impossible to recover. At a loss, I proposed a solution to the young virtuoso from Potenza, besides filling the void in the bass register, we could vastly extend the richness the timbric range: the tone of the chitarra battente, that purveyor of heightened anxiety, alarming sensations, total sound bordering on chasms of silence, could be complemented and salvaged by the noble absorbed tones of the evocative and consoling classical guitar, mitigating the risk of rendering the instrument of Loccisano and De Carolis akin to an overexcited mandolin, an asphyxiated harpsichord, a sort of wild and furious bandurrias. De Carolis willingly agreed.
The idea of evoking, with the infinite nuanced timbres, the myriad colours of Lucania – which I knew well – found providential external support in the art of Maria Padula, a local painter who had succeeded in the same task I had set myself, i.e. a fusion between rural and pastoral elements and the cultured environment: her paintings served me as a valid model capable of exalting the mythological aspects of the world dear to Rocco Scotellaro and Leonardo Sinisgalli and the composure of Morandi’s reassuring pictorial poetry. This is why I worked on the piece entitled, Albero Solitario, like one of Padula’s Paintings. The first performances were given by De Carolis himself and Luca Fabrizio, his partner in the duo Cordaminazioni.
The following year (2018), the unstoppable Marcello jumped the gun and surpassed himself with a Concerto for chitarra battente and orchestra! Challenged by such folly, I stepped up to the mark and wrote the Concerto di Matera. Of course, I replaced the orchestra with a string quintet and a woodwind quintet. It is somewhat ironic, but the quantity and nature of the problems that arose during the construction of this piece were less treacherous than those encountered in composing “Albero Solitario”: the chitarra battente was sustained and “carried” by the double bass and the cello in the lower register, while the violins, flute and oboe assured coverage of the register that could not be reached by the solo instrument. The other instruments offered timbric variants to lift the tonality of the “struck” strings in a responsory dialogue, but also with overlapping events full of surprises. Exploration does not always lead to discovery, but in this case nothing, essentially nothing, minimally evoked deja entendu sensations. As we know from the times of Les demoiselles d’Avignon and the Sacre du Printemps – Primitivism goes magnificently hand in hand with the most sophisticated research in timbric evolution …
In conclusion, in this CD we are witnessing not the birth of a new instrument but its regeneration, the fusion of a remote past in the oral tradition with a present that is alive and recorded in writing. Who knows what the future holds for the guitar of the rural fairs and rustic bacchanalia of southern Italy…
Liner Notes Angelo Gilardino