Which definition do you prefer for your artistic activity? Are you a composer, choreographer, designer or what else?
If I must decide, I would say interpreter, as I don’t find it so important to belong to a particular artistic “category”: of course I am curious to discover and organise “musicality” into the most various and mysterious expressive means possible. In fact I enjoy trying to extend the concept of “musical material,” as in my opinion everything can be musical. That’s why it is inevitably difficult to either define or restrict the range of my production. I adore losing myself in the observation of the most various compositional mechanisms. So, I prefer considering myself to be an interpreter, not only in its artistic sense. Maybe I am a composer of forms, be they musical, choreographic or visual…
At least is there a basic line across which you recognise your poetics or aesthetics?
Some time ago I used to name my artistic projects as a “fight against the music”, an iconoclasm of the sound. I don’t want to talk about the causes of such iconoclasm, I am much more interested in the consequences. That’s why I invented the “Creative Cinetography”, a notation system of recording the body movements of a musician-performer, who produces soundless music through silent movements. Of course the fundamental (traditional) element of this compositional form is the dialectic relationship with the writing, my best interlocutor as a composer. And the interlocutor of the interpreters as well, in that the writing allows them, among other things, to renew continuously over time the tension of their performances through a subtle balance between levels of determinacy and indeterminacy, typical of any creative writing.
The role of the writing also in your “Body Transcriptions” is also quite important, isn’t it?
Absolutely. In this case the writing, the text of the Old Testament, is what I considered to be the Book of the origin of all the metaphors. “Body Transcriptions” are particular compositions, performances exclusively ideated starting from the interpretation of the linguistic structure of the biblical Hebrew. And then transferred or translated through my “Creative Cinetography”. In this case the Hebrew text (but it can be the same with other sacred texts) gives me indications and creative suggestions for the most diverse compositional parameters, such as the body parts, the sequences of steps, the muscular tensions, the speeds and quality of the body movements and even particular hints for costumes and set-lights. The literal or esoteric interpretations of the verses are precious inspirational sources for either composing or performance stages. The dancer is the only person responsible for the technical and expressive decisions he/she makes towards the text and the score. The performer converses the writing in all senses, externally transferring the dialectic tension with the score through a public performance or a solo. In this case a rabbi, for instance, could decide to express through a “silent” dance a psalm or a verse of the Torah!
How can a common performer, without specific physical training, approach your scores?
The majority of my choreographic compositions (or “musichoreographies”) are directed to performers (of any physical structure) who simply love expressing themselves using the body. It does not require reaching an ideal “model” codified by any given cultural tradition, though. Therefore no space for objective results, particular virtuosity or anyway external visible expressiveness. The performers of these art forms, starting from the recognition of their own psycho-physical identity, learn to approach the score, just by expressing themselves in it. In other words the performers enrich their potentials losing themselves in the relationship between the body and the writing, a relationship never normative, rather revealing both to themselves and others. In “Liturgia Defunctorum” (Funeral Rite) - trilogy composed of “Prelude” for three male singers and string quartet, “Solo” for vocalist-performer and “Phantom” for 87 musicians - I integrated two different codes, grammars, notation systems: the “Cinetography” (that enabled me to write the way of forming the body movements) with the “Music Notation with Incognitos”, another method of music composition that works like an equation or algorithm, whereby I determine “empty” formal sequences, structures, inside which the interpreters find the incognitos x or y, whose values or parameters depend on the sound materials or music vocabulary chosen by the interpreters themselves according to their own experiences, capabilities, aesthetic and stylistic choices as well as technical achievements. That’s why a child, an average instrumentalist, an established professional musician, a dancer, actor or performer can “play” such scores. By watching or hearing these performances played by such diverse kinds of interpreters one cannot easily recognise particular levels of technical skills. Likely “mistakes” or rather “interpretative weaknesses” of the performer depend on the degree of connection to the mechanism of “perdition” or receptivity towards both the body and the score rather than the choices of particular movements or sounds. There aren’t movements or sounds more beautiful than others. Rather it is either the organisation capability or the interpretative consciousness towards any kind of sound-gesture source that let the beauty and the truth of the performance come out.
Why are recordings or publications of your compositions not available?
Because basically the fruition of my work cannot take place, for technical and aesthetic reasons, through forms of mechanic reproduction like tapes or CDs. In other words, it is structurally misleading to listen to my music through any technological means. I don’t know any other and richer and more complete way of perception of a body performance than “live”: so always different and unpredictable... I am always interested in finding new ways of conceiving nowadays the necessity of the live-performance. Something which any form of recording cannot manage to bridle.
Can you briefly talk us about the “Objectual Opera” and the “Real Time Composition”?
The “Objectual Opera” is a theoretical challenge for a new form of theatre/performing art. It rigorously bans any hierarchy in the utilisation, both qualitative and quantitative, of the expressive means and compositional sources. It doesn’t show a plot even though each spectator can personally "read” or imagine a kind of narrative path. The Objectual Opera involves and treats equally sounds, lights, body movements, sets and even the shifting of objects throughout the stage space. All such means are part of a score which organises the form of all the compositional materials over time and through space. The “Real Time Composition” is instead a code, a grammar of gestures that allows a conductor-composer to invent and organise in real time compositive forms based on music improvisations.
Have you got a vague idea of where your research will lead you?
I don’t want to research anything. I rather wish to “lose” myself anywhere I perceive indications to deny my artistic and human personality, my tastes, habits. I am willing to live different lives. Forgetting about myself with my limitations. I wish to “die in life”, experiencing reincarnations in the most contradictory existences.
Your activity of musician and composer is represented by a path of discovery and experimentation far from academism or cultural restrictions of “euro centric” type…
Well, I would say mine has not been an orthodox path at all… I got a Piano Degree at the Conservatory but prior to that my education was already “spoilt” with readings and suggestions coming from the European literature and theatre, as well as dance and oriental cultures. Contrary to most teachers I have never thought that the composer is the result of certain fixed, unavoidable “music education” or specific training paths. In fact I tried from time to time to reinvent entirely on my own always new and creative composition methodologies. For instance the encounters with the composers Federico Incardona and Sylvano Bussotti, have been very important to me, such as the direct listening to the music of the Twentieth Century, often practised by instinct and amusement.
Your compositions drawn on some crucial problems of Twentieth Century music, such as for instance the relationship - definitely different from the past - between the composer and the interpreter. In many of your scores, in fact, the music restricts itself to prescribe the performer certain behaviours regardless of the sound result. Such mental habitus belongs to John Cage, as well as the relationship with the oriental cultures and Zen philosophy.
The approach to oriental cultures meant for me a way to extend the knowledge of “classical music,” incorporating in it the listening and analysis of Arab, Indian, Chinese and Japanese traditional music. Other than such knowledge which I really needed, I have been impressed by some western composers, real masters of musical thought: John Cage of course, but also Iannis Xenakis, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Mauricio Kagel, to name a few. Of Xenakis, I have always appreciated the objective and logical-mathematical approach to his music compositions. Stockhausen has represented for me a master of imagination and creativity, able to innovate his music language work after work. Kagel has directed attention to the theatrical and gestural element in his work and because of this has always been considered by myself a real heterodox composer of our time. Finally, Cage is one of my steady points of reference in my thoughts. What I like most in his work is that he has forced both composers and players to focus inevitably on the role of silence in music.
Sure, but we will talk later on about the role of the silence so important also in your compositions. The biggest and most personal feature in your artistic production is the invention of both musical and choreographic notation systems: “Creative Cinetography,” “Notation with Incognitos,” “Real Time Composition,” “Uniphony,” “Composition with Vertical Parameters,” “Body Transcriptions”.
Because of technology, I think that music written on paper must have necessarily a new role. Nowadays everything can be recorded and improved through the so called “post-production”. I personally think that acoustic/written music has still many things to say, that’s why it is so important for me to conceive new ways of writing the music which don’t need or shouldn’t need technology to manifest themselves. If composers take advantage of technology to improve their acoustic/written ideas, there’s no need to write music on paper like before… I personally try to approach the staff in order to receive back surprise, instability, variability, impermanence, typical elements of a music score. Such elements give me the necessary justification of writing or listening to acoustic music… In other words I felt the necessity to invent new musical grammars as after the revolution in music occurred the past century I have found it ridiculous to carry on as if nothing was happened…
Therefore focusing on the dissociation between sign and sound…
Definitely, but not only. I find it necessary to find out new ways of definition of the sound object. Also, I have been interested in leading a compositional challenge against the linearity of the music writing. And against the concept of time in music as well. In finding solutions to such problems I even “deviated” from the music environment more than once, other than not composing for long time…
You mean that your ideal time of fruition of the music shouldn’t be chronological but anarchic as occurs in the contemplation of the visual art?
Yes, exactly: I always think of listening to music as like watching a picture…
Is there any “onirical” element in such a spatial-temporal superimposition?
Music is very much linked to the world of the dream, whereby you can experience different narrative paths which have not the logic of what happens first or after, being much closer to the logic of the instinct.
What I find interesting in some of your music is the presence of both cried and whispered sounds, a sort of alternation of sound and not-sound…
Through the cry I practise to some extent the relationship of freedom between the interpreter and myself as composer. In some of my scores the singer or the instrumentalist is free to choose the “right” pitch or sound volume, which couldn’t be expressed by a particular symbol. Surely not all the interpreters are willing to push their own creativity to such a point, forcing them to actually go beyond themselves, to choose that dimension of ecstasy of which Kundera talks about, as you said before.
Cry and the silence, absence of sound and explosion of sound are sons of the same seed, aren’t they?
Yes, they are. If the cry is not-organisation of the sound, the silence is a necessary and physiological exigency of shelter from the world of sounds. But like Cage, I believe that in music the absolute silence never exists, although there are different ways of organising it. In Beethoven’s music, for instance rests and silences tell us so much about his world of sounds. My musical ideas are at the moment marked by the investigation on the methods of representation of the silence, which I am trying to flow into an opera.
Do you mean an opera of music theatre?
Yes, I do. I have been working on this project since 1998 along with the Sicilian writer Francesco Carapezza, the author of the libretto, from “Pompes Funèbres” (Funeral Rites) of Jean Genet, an artist whom I adore and that also inspired my Piano Concerto “Lustig-Traurig”.
Other plans for the future?
So many… I dream of an exhibition of my drawings where both visual and musical languages are mixed together. I also hope to continue to compose my long opera “Udana,” and the Second Objectual Opera for 7 dancers-performers.
Good luck, Angelo…