The Oscillation of Things. A Composition Portfolio

Abstract

This portfolio dissertation brings together a selection of the musical work I produced over the course of five years (2018-2023). During this time I had the chance to compose for different instrumentations and contexts: from solo instrument, to opera, from chamber music to electronic music. The reflection and work on these pieces of music lead me to expand my interests and my aesthetics, approaching a new world of sonic possibilities. At the beginning of my doctoral research, in fact, I was mostly focused on the representation of the inner world, a very intimate approach to sound, vibrations, pulsations. In other words, I was interested in music composition as a tool to magnify the secluded sound world hidden inside my body. The world outside was, at this stage, just a mere representation of the inner world. During my Ph.D., the core of my research shifted gradually from the inside world to the outside world, questioning the role of the composer and of the reality in front of me along the way. During this five years period, in fact, my attention and interest focused more and more on the close observation and deep listening of natural and acoustic phenomena. Music composition became a tool to freeze time and magnify the reality in front of me, in order to understand it better, to learn its structure, and to see all the small details and differentiations on its surface. Following this process and thanks to this close observation (and “deep listening”) I started to look at things in a different way: they felt alive, pulsating and oscillating in front of my very eyes. The discovery of this instability hidden within every phenomenon reshaped my aesthetics and my approach to music composition. The eight scores included represent the range of approaches, the various steps within this gradual shift. They can be seen and analysed as part of a journey, various stops of a path. My approach to each new work of music, in fact, moves from the ruins of the previous one and carries on the reflection started there. In this way I can tackle the same topic, the same problem from different angles, offering multiple solutions or strategies to the same issue. Because of this approach most of my work is organized in cycles of pieces. Every cycle is then connected to the next one. In detail the scores included are the result of reflections on notation, form, of experimentation with instruments, electronics, space, lights and different performative settings. From L’abisso intorno (2019) to Studio sulla risacca (2022) passing through Chronicles of the after bomb (2019) and Haut (2021) took place many experimentations and failures alongside discussions with colleagues, musicians, performers and artists who helped me focusing more and more on my field of interest: the instability hidden within every object as an existential “ground zero” of the human experience.