The Game Changers #8. A portrait of composer Vincenzo Gualtieri.
Vincenzo Gualtieri is a composer and performer of acoustic and electro-acoustic music.
1/ “Field” by Vincenzo Gualtieri(2003):
Field was conceived both for tape alone and for prepared piano and tape. The Cmask program allows to generate sound event scores operating at high level through an algorithmic approach. Vincenzo then followed several procedures:
1. segment functions (or break point functions): serves both as generators of event parameters and as control functions;
2. lists: they contain set of numbers selected by different methods;
3. tendency Mask.
CSound granulators – guided by the Cmask sound event scores – processed all the sounds: from the Piano samples to the Voice samples until the synthetic sounds.
2/ “Flowte”, for Bass, Tenor, Alt, Soprano recorders and electronics (speech from Becket’s Innommable excerpts) by Vincenzo Gualtieri(2002):
fluxus, flatus, flow, flute, “fl”…. Flowte comes from the idea of merging the human breath with the instrument blow. The human-machine ratio emerges through three listening plans fused together: the recorder sounds, the live speech (actor) and the tape. A further listening plan is offered by the tape (it evokes the “machine”) in which a dialog between the instrument and “the himself mirrored” (via samples) forms a sort of dialectic counterpoint.
• (BTF)-4, for Sax, larsen tones and live electronics, (2014);
• Improvisation, on Recorder samples, (2015);
• Hommage – improvisation for Harmonica and live-electronics, (2015);
all belong to the larger (BTF) project. It focuses the development of the interactions between analog and digital audio systems, which are at the same time adaptive, site-specific and auto-poietic (by feed-back loops with self-regulation behaviors).
3/ Item, for accordion, by Vincenzo Gualtieri (2003) represents his first exploration in the world of such an instrument. It was at the beginning conceived in three movements. Later, the first two movements were fused together. For them, Vincenzo chose two clearly dialectical compositional models. The repertoire (as cultural references) available at that time in his musical memory were limited to the Organ praxis: so, the compositional practices of the virtuoso Toccata-Prelude-Ricercare on one hand, and the most meditative practice of the Sarabande on the other. The second movement is inspired to a model which partly expresses the slowness and concentration of harmonic aspects, partly becomes an occasion to reflect on the mechanics and acoustics of the instrument (e.g. its bruitistic features such as breath, keys’s noise, etc.). Vincenzo’s electronic music studies had obviously triggered curiosity and ability to “compose with the sound”. The third movement (which later became the second), shows a third operating model, being a study on the “Ribattuti” (beating the keys as fast as possible) but also the most “polyphonic movement” of the three.
In all three movements prevails the use of an abstract syntax (abstract) on an extrapolated syntax (abstracted), namely the use of procedures related to constructive models not necessarily belonging to the nature of the organized sounds. Gestural and textural approaches, express the need to communicate the form (meaningful musical ideas), but also becomes a pre-text (an opportunity) to work in a more interactive and intuitive way. Item was the second experience of composition assisted by computer, where Vincenzo recalls some strategies already used in a previous work for piano and electronics: Field. As in Field, Cmask assisted for the generation of sound events scores. That time though, those sound events had to be transposed on another time scale in order to obtain notes to be transferred in a notational score.
4/ Agorá, by Vincenzo Gualtieri.
5/ Back to forward, for Klavier and live-electronics, by Vincenzo Gualtieri.
6/ Il Mirto e la Rosa, for synthesized and sampled sounds, by Vincenzo Gualtieri.
