(2002) three electroacoustic pieces from “Sopra i monti degli aromi” [6’ 32”]
“Sopra i monti degli aromi” is a journey into the Song of Songs through Gregorian Chants, Medieval polyphonies and electroacoustic compositions. It has been realized with the Ensemble Oktoechos conducted by Lanfranco Menga on a project by Emanuele Pappalardo, Paolo Pachini, Lanfranco Menga and Roberto Doati.
The guide lines for the compositions of my five pieces are suggested by unity and dualism concepts: the ille and the illa of the Song text, eroticism and sacred love, the human and the sacred. The vocal score is built on a few pitches, very often repeated to point out a sense of belonging to the earth. Nevertheless this kind of hochetus is sometimes broken by highest notes to mean the spiritual, the aim – not always achieved – to conquer the heaven, or it is broken by short speeches and non-singing vocal articulations. These articulations and recordings from everyday life of the two singers (Alessandra Vavasori and Antonio Bortolami) complement each other, so that each performer unfold oneself by means of the singing (the spiritual) and the speech (the corporeity). It is within the electronic part that I ideally accomplish the unity concept by using signal convolution technique. The frequency components of a male voice (or choir) are spectrally shaped by a female choir (or single voice), underlining both the physicality of the closely recorded voice and its fading into the reverberant space of a church. All the sound materials are coming from Ensemble Oktoechos performances of ancient music based on Song of Songs. From the five original pieces (d’yn, n’yn, b’yt, spyrty I and spyrty II, d’yl) I present here:
d’yn e n’yn are convolutions between men and women performances of “Jam hiems” and “Veni electa mea” antiphonies;
spyrty I is built upon “Tota pulchra es, anima mea” by Heinrich Isaac and is scored for electroacoustic tape with long static vocal resonances alternating lively sequences of voice grains.