Istituto: Institute of Music

«What you will hear is the Messa domenicale per la missione di Nyondo [“Sunday Mass for the Nyondo Mission”]; Nyondo is a small village in the area of Ruanda-Urundi inhabited by the Watussi tribe, a peace-loving primitive people. I heard it one day, accompanied by the rhythm of seven drums, like a wild heart confessing the extremely ancient desire to speak to God.» These are the words recited in the Introito, before the Kyrie and Gloria of the Sanctus, of an Elevation for solo orchestra, of the Agnus Dei and of the Ite Missa est, in a “normal” (according to the composer) sung mass. Alberto Bruni Tedeschi composed this work on returning from a journey to Africa. The exotic colouring, except from the monumental role of the percussion, does not, however, weigh down Bruni Tedeschi’s work, which aspires to being an artistic and spiritual exercise going beyond the occasion and the anecdotal. The work explores the classical tradition of concertante masses by isolating the symphonic development from contact with Gregorian chant and Modalism, but pursues figures of primitivism. The world première was performed in the studios of Hamburg Radio in 1953, under the conduction of Hermann Scherchen. The work will be re-staged in an invitation concert conducted by Cyril Diederich, on the occasion of the donation by Marisa Bruni Tedeschi, the composer’s wife, of the Alberto Bruni Tedeschi Archive to the Giorgio Cini Foundation. The Archive contains papers, scores, correspondence and audio recordings of Bruni Tedeschi’s works.

Entrance upon invitation

The audio-video music series will continue at the Palazzo Cini at San Vio from October to December, when it will come to a close. The remaining two short series, entitled after the forward and stop buttons on video players, are intended to convey a powerful impression of the plurality of passions, of the “forward” and “stop” in artistic research, which may be represented by Virgil’s sprawling beech tree (sub tegmine fagi): an uncontrollable manifestation of the hypertrophy of the sense organs trained on beauty.

FORW as frenzy as ebb-&-flow

Autumn
3 October Hymn to the sacred mushroom – An expedition
into Cage’s semiosphere
10 October Glenn Gould videogame – Live genius
17 October Vespero
nocturne as project
24 October Vjesh/Canto – In search of the enclave song
31 October Fp & Pf –
(the) 2 (two) Orfei – Two metamorphoses of the Furies’ scene
7 November Ode to Napoleon
Bonaparte – A vision of Schoenberg’s anti-fascist poem

STOP as stop

Winter
12 December Helicopter String Quartet – The tale of an elevation

Rew as replay, return, memory,
5 explosive memories of invasive poetry: Karlheinz Stockhausen, John Lennon and Pierre Boulez

Venice, Palazzo Cini at San Vio
27 June 2009, 5.00pm

Fourth session: MOMENTE & MICROPHONY

Momente, 1961-1972
Momente 1961-1972 for solo soprano, 4 choral groups, 13 instruments
The members of each choir play tuned instruments in undefined keys

This is clearly an exquisitely, private autobiographical composition
with a highly symbolic significance, strongly influenced by the
aspiration to make a work built on the model of a
stream-of-consciousness novel. The opera is a suggestive synthesis of
various “moments” in Stockhausen’s compositional process: the mobile
form of the Piano Piece 11, the momentary form of Carré, the blend of
sound and noise in Gesang der Jünglinge and Kontakte, and the unstable
determination/indetermination of Zyklus. Momente is dedicated to Mary
Bauermeister, the composer’s second wife (1967).

A film by S. Gérard Patris
Rehearsals directed by the composer

with Martina Arroyo, the choir of the WDR and an ensemble of free-lance instrumentalists
with explanations about the compositional process by the composer
Paris 1965

A programme by Luc Ferrari in the series Les grandes répétitions

Mikrophonie I, 1964-1965
per tam-tam, 2 microfoni, 2 filtri e vari potenziometri, 6 esecutori

The work is built round the “microphonic” exploration of a large
tam-tam and its sound potential. This is a massive stereophonic
construction played by two teams of three performers. The potential of
the objective sound universe is multiplied by the variety of objects
that the performers bring into contact with the bronze mass of the huge
tam-tam, generating an incredible quantity of previously inaudible
sound qualities.
The material variations are guided by an instrumentalist who moves the
position of the microphone to various close distances to the tam-tam. A
third phase involves filtering the output produced by exciting the
tam-tam, while a fourth is the continuous modelling of the dynamics of
the sound produced by elaborating the output from the potentiometers.
Moreover, antiphonal devices create dialogue between the emissions from
left and right. The dialogue between the two stereo channels generates
the effect of an overall third voice corresponding to the greater
timbre densities from the convergence of different and similar sounds
suggesting a reception mystically marked by the effects of union,
reminiscent of the concept of Schlahtrio.

A film by Sylvain Dhomme 1966
studio recording with a brief introduction by the composer