Gymnopédie, Tableaux, Silence comprises some of Simone Spagnolo’s most significant chamber works featuring the harp, an instrument celebrated as part of diverse and eclectic ensemble combinations. The compositions here included – Gimnopedia Rapsodica, Le Tavole del Peccato, Three Folk Songs after Berio, and Silenzio – capture different stages of Spagnolo’s creative production, offering a stimulating array of musical idiosyncrasies that range from the use of the prepared harp to graphic scores, from tetrachord-driven structures to re-imagined folkloristic songs.
Such a collection of works, composed across more than a decade, is brought together through a refined stylistic thread made of delicate yet vivid musical gestures, unapologetically rich melodies and counterpoints, evocative harmonic palettes, and a net of musical references that occasionally emerge, subtly, opening the music to wider horizons.
The voice – used as both a spoken and sung device – plays an important role, which does not principally reside in the meaning of the text, but rather in its structural and evocative usage. In Gimnopedia Rapsodica, for instance, a spoken voice emerges towards the end of the piece, as an ephemeral, indeterminate entity that enriches the music’s significance and enhances the listener’s imagination. In Le Tavole del Peccato, on the contrary, the voice is used as a ritualistic, declamatory element, providing narrative context to each tableau.
References to the past and other musical genres also have a prominent function, as for example in Three Folk Songs after Berio. This work, which re-imagines songs originating from different folklores, not only joins material drawn from the popular and the cultivated, but it also contributes to the idea that music – art in general – emerges from a re-elaboration of past models; a concept that was indeed dear to Luciano Berio, a composer whose ideas have influenced Spagnolo’s production in numerous ways.
This album was born from a network of splendid collaborations established with both exceptional young musicians and long-standing colleagues. A special mention goes to Gabriella Dall’Olio, superb musician and educator, who has generously supported the development of this album in many, precious ways.
Gimnopedia Rapsodica
Originally commissioned by the ensemble Les Muses de la Musique to complement a concert featuring Debussy’s Chansons de Bilitis, Gimnopedia Rapsodica is scored for a peculiar ensemble of off-stage piccolo, flute, two harps, celesta, and speaking voice.
Through a processional and sober pace, this composition evokes the ancient Greek dance of the gymnopedie. Though, its almost ceremonial composure is permeated by rhapsodic gestures, melodic echoes and musical memories. Towards the end of the piece, like an immaterial thought, a distant, off-stage speaking voice contributes with verses freely drawn from Paul Valery’s Dance and the Soul.
This piece features strong reminisces of fin-de-siècle, impressionist music, yet its harmonic language, constructed upon shifting tetrachords and octatonic patterns, offers a nearly timeless soundscape.
Le Tavole del Peccato
Le Tavole del Peccato was composed in 2013 for a concert that took place at Montefano’s Centre for Biblical Studies, in Italy, alongside a study conference dedicated to the concept of sin. Drawing inspiration from this theme, Le Tavole del Peccato articulates through seven picturesque graphic scores based on the first seven verses of the Third Chapter of Genesis; the well-known verses in which the snake tempts Eve into eating the forbidden fruit.
The seven tableaux present an inextricable blend of figurative drawings and unusual musical notation. Each graphic score features both images that graphically portray the biblical verses and musical lines that creatively proceed in unconventional, non-linear ways. Some staves follow the shapes of the drawings, some are fragmented, others are connected through arrows. The synchronicity between the players is freed from the rigidity of bar-lines, enabling rhythmic fluidity and indeterminateness. The harmonic material, similarly, aims to evoke an ethereal, somehow timeless soundscape, as if referencing the spiritual nature of the text.
Aside from being performed in concerts, Le Tavole del Peccato has also featured in graphic score exhibitions.
Three Folk Songs after Berio
I. Nebbi’a a la Valle, folk song from Abruzzo, Italy
II. El Vito, Spanish folk song
III. The Infant King, lullaby for a King
Drawing inspiration from Luciano Berio’s charming Folk Songs, this composition joins and gives new life to three songs originating from different folklores: a vernacular, working-class song from Italy’s Abruzzo region, a traditional Andalusian dancing song, and a lullaby of Basque origin with English words set by reverend Sabine Baring-Gould.
Three Folk Songs after Berio aims to continue Berio’s work and its compositional format, while at the same time offering a different stylistic approach. Spagnolo’s work uses the same instrumentation as Berio’s piece, yet he enables the ensemble to generate a rather different palette of textures that make use of seemingly rhapsodic and improvisational gestures. Similarly, Spagnolo’s Three Folk Songs proposes imaginative re-harmonisations that bring together traditional and quasi-jazz progressions. This composition, differently from Berio’s work, is characterised by a seemingly folk tune played by the viola, which travels through the piece and unites the three main songs in a cohesive whole, as a sort of postmodern thread.
As it unfolds, Three Folk Songs after Berio offers a wide array of folkloric and idiosyncratic moods, from the visceral and bittersweet to the inebriated, from the dancing and sensual to the celestially calm. The score is highly idiomatic for the instruments, and it allows all players to contribute with soloistic phrases. Most importantly, this composition continues and further emancipates the notion that music emerges from a re-elaboration of the past; or, as Berio theorised, from a morphogenesis of pre-existing models.
Silenzio
Written in 2012, Silenzio is a composition for prepared harp inspired by the aesthetics of American composer John Cage. It was originally commissioned by harpist Giulia Rettore, who premiered it during a performance of Musicircus at the English National Opera, London. Since then, the piece has received tens of performances internationally, in the UK, Italy, Spain, France, USA, Hong Kong, Chile and Australia.
Silenzio was featured in a dedicated documentary broadcast on Cultural Plaza, Jade Channel TVB, Hong Kong, and has been discussed in the dissertation Contemporary Harp Writing: Three Case Studies by Francesca Virgilio.
Silenzio’s preparation features foil paper wrapped around two strings and three small oriental bells hanging from the instrument’s frame. The bells, stimulated by pincé notes, bounce on the strings, while the foil paper creates a deep, drone-like buzzing effect. These objects play on some peculiarities of the instrument, whilst enhancing the musical possibilities of the performer.
Structurally, the composition articulates through varying repetitions and a slowly unfolding harmonic rhythm. Similarly, the piece’s tempo wishes to induce a lack of pulse-perception, evoking a sense of still time: a sonorous silence unable to articulate pulses and heartbeats.