Night, darkness, the unknown. Besides the natural fear they evoke in a child’s mind, these elements always subtly fascinated me. In this sense, the tales by Poe and Lovecraft were the initiation texts of my adolescence, when my passion/obsession for the harp also emerged. Since I always considered as limiting the symbolic elements attributing to this instrument qualities such as sweetness, grace, femininity, I often thought that I would like to create a project where the harp’s expressive potential could be united to a nocturnal dimension. This is as close to my feeling as it is far from those clichés.
As I was always detached from banality and conformism, I grew increasingly interested in the aesthetic and mindset characterizing the Symbolist current: “Music is a nocturnal art, the art of dream; it rules in winter, at the time when the soul seeks refuge” (O. Redon). Thus, I favoured less obvious forms of the binomial music/night with respect to the form of the Nocturne as it was practised by Field and Chopin. “Music is by nature nocturnal; so much so, that even some ‘noon’ pieces are, under some aspects, ‘twilight’ pieces”, since “music catches that privileged movement when forms and images fall down into the indistinction of chaos”. Just as night, which “contributes to transforming every speculative problem into a lived drama” (V. Jankélévitch), music, of all arts, can represent the unconscious in the most efficacious fashion. The ineffability of musical language constitutes an ideal medium for evoking and elaborating the inner world. In this it is similar to dream which – just as daydreams – is moved by anguish and desires which are unsatisfied by reality. In the choice of the works to perform – a choice it took me ten years to perfect – I selected as my basis both the piece’s compositional qualities and their contrasting evocative features. I integrated them with elements typical for literature, visual art, psychodynamics: symbol, myth, archetype, dream, unconscious, silence, projection. The chosen works thus develop a narrative unfolding between darkness’ falling and deep night, in a dialogue between the listener’s inner dimension and the external dimension of nature and of the urban space. Music, as in general “artistic activity, if it is appreciated for its qualities of sublimation, becomes uninteresting if it expresses only the beautiful, and not enough the terrible” (J.-P. Chartier).
By twilight [Prologo verso la notte], one leaves daily life behind. Consciousness can eventually make room for the unconscious, at the moment when senses and perceptions are remodulated and, in the psychic landscape, all becomes less defined. Night announces itself with its distinctive symbols: darkness and the moon, perceived, in myth, in its ambivalence: as a waxing moon, a shining protective Muse [Loosin yelav], and as a waning moon, a lonely woman, crazy and with an icy gaze [The waning moon]. The interpretation of the moon’s disappearance and reappearance – as death and rebirth – thus stimulates man to reflect on his own existence [Introspection]. The moon becomes intuition, light on the interior world, a vision. To the moon’s light, a shadow is juxtaposed – another self – [After the moon-viewing], while seeing the homes’ lights evokes the other, the need for sharing [Distant lights]. Daydream [Rêve d’amour] cradles desire, between passions and contrasts. Man, wriggling between what invades and what surrounds him, projects over nature his emotions [Feuille d’automne]. However, in a regressogenic process, the exterior world’s noises evoke the memory of the bogeyman [Le grand Lustucru], the persecutor who devours us. Humor [Calembredaine] thus becomes a natural defense against anguish. Instead, the feeling of guilt is inexorable [Lamentation]: the revelation that one has destroyed, due to a lack of attention or a missing act, what was loved in ourselves, in the other.
Slumber, so long awaited, arrives, and, while offering the needed rest, it opens the doors over the unconscious through dream [Pour le tombeau d’Orphée]. Like death, it is the beginning of a new itinerary. Orpheus was able to accomplish his journey beyond death on the infernal paths, but he was dismembered by the Maenads because, having lost Euridice, he was no longer attracted by women. His head, throwed in to the Evros river together with his cithara, kept singing until it reached the island of Lesbos, becoming an oracle. Art is the symbol for immortality beyond earthly life.
Prologo verso la notte – Prologue towards the night – , dedicated to me, has been created for this very project. The element of repetition alludes to man’s unceasing activity, which, as evening comes by, gets slower and slower until it rarefies.
Loosin yelav is excerpted from a cycle of Folk songs arranged by Luciano Berio. Only recently did I discover that the lyrics are taken from the eponymous poem by Hakob Haghabab: “The moon rose from that mountain, from the top of that mountain, with a shiny face, a moon sea spread out on the ground. Cheers to the moon, cheers to you moon, cheers to your round fair face. The darkness did not fade away, and it didn’t fall to the ground either, haunted by moonlight, it remained in dark clouds.”
This new version of The waning moon is the fruit of my direct cooperation with its composer. In the poem, two lines by Shelley are cited: “The moon arose up in the murky east, a white and shapeless mass”. In the eponymous poem, moon is represented as a thin dying woman, pale, crazy.
Introspection, written a few years after the theorization of Freud’s first theories, represents, in my opinion, the psychoanalytic process. The quintuplets, almost always equal to another, are repeated in a kind of mental rumination. The theme develops in the inner voice as a narrating I which finds, time after time, some free associations. The bass’ low notes represent the containment by the therapist. In the finale, the two hands’ glissandos are indicated by the word Vision: an altered state of consciousness which allows the unconscious to surface.
The two Haiku are made of essential musical elements, but very deep ones, just as happens to the corresponding poetic form. “After the moon-viewing, my shadow walking home along with me” (Sodō). “Distant lights; there they live this autumn night” (Buson).
The two themes of Rêve d’amour – Love dream – stage the conflict between love desire’s sweetness and power, as well as its impossible realization. For some unexplainable reason, it is one of its composer’s less frequently performed pieces.
Vinogradov’s Variations, rich in virtuosity and expressivity, are realized on the ancient Russian folksong Nochenka – Little night – , of whose lyrics several versions exist. “Oh, you, little night, dark night, the dark night and the autumn night. Who am I with at night, with whom am I in the fall, with whom in the rain. Oh, I’ll go. Neither father nor mother. There is only one, one sweetheart. She lives with me, but not in love”.
Feuille d’automne – Autumn leaf – is inspired by the lines of Hugo’s La prière pour tous, which are cited on the score. “Let us pray, here comes the night! The grave and serene night! Everything suffers and everything complains. The weary nature needs sleep, prayer and love!”.
Le grand Lustucru is an ancient French folksong, which was represented at Nazism’s ascent by Weill for his opera Marie Galante. “What is, then, in the plain, that big noise which comes to us? Sounds like chains that we drag on stones. It’s the great Lustucru which passes. It’s the great Lustucru who will eat all the children who don’t sleep. What’s that loud noise that comes all the way here from the river? Sounds like a sound of stones that we throw in a well. The angelus rings on Ballanche, a pigeon falls from the steeple, what is this noise of branches that we drag on the floor? It’s the great Lustucru that passes, and it’s me he’s looking for, me because tonight I hardly sleep, me because tonight I don’t sleep”.
Calembredaine – foolishness, nonsense – with a tight game of rhythm and effects, is the attempt to flee fear, by exorcising it.
Lamentation’s fiery suffering comes out from a small mourning: the death of Baron Taraky, a bullfinch, to whom the piece is dedicated. One night, Salzedo left the bird’s cage over a seemingly inactive radiator. The following morning his pet bird had therefore lost its life.
In the finale of Pour le tombeau d’Orphée – For Orpheus’ Grave – the initial accompaniment is resumed, impressing circularity to the piece, and evoking the symbol of the uroboros: the snake biting its tail, representing eternity.
Eternal become
Motion immobile
Perpetual return
(Uroboros from Trasmutazioni, B. Grilli & G. Chiappani)
Giuliano Marco Mattioli © 2023
Translation: Chiara Bertoglio