by Giovanni Renzo
Why the mind
wonders, if universe is infinite,
as far as where it
would arrive with its eye, as far as
where the thought
would fly freely,
far from the walls
of this sky what there is.
Lucrezio – The
Nature
“Atlas Coelestis” is a collection of pieces written between 1997
and 2004, conceived as an exploration of the universe, a musical journey in
space and time that starts on the night of the 7th of January 1610, the date in
which Galileo Galilei points the new-born telescope
at the sky and discovers the four satellites that gravitate around Jupiter, upsetting
forever the geocentric conception of the Aristotelian universe. The journey,
starting from this concept and flying through the notes, leads to the deepest borders of space. After
the prelude, Incanto, describing the sense
of astonishment felt by Galileo in front of the heavenly vault; after Noctis Splendentia Signa, whose score is
a metamorphosis of the astral plan reproducing the appearance of the sky
observed by Galileo that historical night; with Lacteus Circulus our eye is captured by the intense twinkling of
the myriads of stars of our galaxy; and than we explore, in Orionis Nebula, the amazing gas spirals
and powders that hidden the young stars of Trapezium. Pleiades
is dedicated to the thick but delicate net of the Pleiades, jewels of the winter
nights; while with Pulsar we enter
more and more in the depth of archetype sounds, in the cosmos wonders, led by
the exact rhythmical beat of the first pulsar discovered in 1967 by Jocelyn
Bell. Finally we are irremediably attracted by the black hole of Cygnus X-1, source of X rays in the
Cygnus constellation, seized in one of the greatest mysteries of universe: what
could we find on the other side of the black hole? The absence of space and
time in a unique and multiple dimension? A way to a parallel universes? A space
- temporal tunnel? The big bang of a new-born universe in a stratified “multi-verse”?
Astrorum nexus closes the circle of
compositions with a melody that ploughs the spaces between the stars fading in
the depth of cosmos, in the infinity and even beyond…
www
Atlas Coelestis
Prelude:
·
Incanto
Atlas:
·
Noctis
splendentia signa
·
Lacteus
Circulus
·
Orionis
Nebula
·
Pleiades
·
Pulsar
·
Cygnus
X-1
·
Astrorum
nexus
www
In order to complete my report I add some notes
on the genesis of the two first compositions included in “Atlas Coelestis”.
Noctis
splendentia signa
For about a month Galileo was
spending that cold winter nights on the open air, renouncing to the warmth of
his room.
He has just improved a new telescope,
able to enlarge objects even thirty times, much more powerful than the Dutch
one, built in 1608, a plain toy to bring near the far-away objects. With
telescope, pen and drawing-instruments, the scholar has moved in the garden of
his house in
The cosmos was now deepest and more
unknown than how anybody had thought
till that moment.
But the most incredible and
unexpected discovery has still to arrive.
“Therefore,
Galileo finally found what he were looking for:
the proof that would invalidate forever the geocentric theory attacked by Tycho
Brahe at first, and later by Niccolò Copernico. If the existence of another
planet with even four satellites had been confirmed, the Earth would have lost
ever more its privileged position at the
centre of cosmos.
Aristotle had proposed a theory of
universe in which the Earth were in the centre of a system of spheres rotating around
it, but, in order to explain the apparently irregular orbit of the planets, he had
applied to a complex and involved system of spheres in other spheres. Tycho
Brahe on the contrary had theorized a cosmos in which the planets rotate around
the Sun and altogether around the Earth. Copernico, in the end, had formulated
his heliocentric theory that now, with Galileo, found its demonstration..
The universe, after that night, will
have nevermore been the same.
I had the idea of
composing Noctis Splendentia Signa while
I was reading the Sidereus Nuncius. I
imagined Galileo, his eye on the telescope, plunged in the sidereal night,
taking notes on his copybook from time to time (many years later, very moved, I
could see that copybook exposed in an art exhibition). The precision in his
notes caused in me the desire of seeing, on an astral plan, what he describes
little by little, with enthusiasm and wonder. So I re-create on my computer the
appearance of the sky seen from
For which concerns the length of sounds, I preferred not to establish rigorous
rules, and to leave complete freedom to pass from one note to the other as
when, watching the sky, we are free to look to a star, enjoying its sheen and
then pass to another. In this sense the performance too has not to be perfectly
linear, stave after stave, as a common score; it was possible to follow the
profile of a constellation, for instance, or to play the most important stars,
or simply to wander freely with the eye. The composition was ready, at last:
now it was the moment to put my hands on the piano and listen if all that had a
sense or if it was a mere joke, a funny graphic experiment.
I
still remember the emotion felt when I played Noctis Splendentia Signa, for the first time alone, in the twilight
of my studio. I can’t describe it: it’s impossible for me to write suggestions
created by this wonderful language without words that music is. I created a
score in which stars became sounds, an enchantment, a magic, a flight of fancy,
a personal variation on the theme of Music of Heavenly Spheres gazed by Pitagora
and Platone and theorized by Keplero. But my job has no scientific
pretence: astronomy is only a creative
starting point. Pitagora had found relations between the length of the chords,
the music intervals and the orbits of heavenly bodies; Keplero had even defined
the notes each planet play during the orbit. Now we know that the sound-waves
are vibrations through solid, liquid or gaseous bodies as water or air, and
then, as a consequence, no heavenly music can be heard in the boundless, empty
spaces around the stars. We only can look to the sky and imagine to listen at
that quiet and far sounds, crossing space and time to enchant us with their
stories never heard before …
Pleiades
The Pleiades are a mass
of very young, shining stars surrounded by a cloud of bright gas. They are
visible in the north-east of the winter nights, in the constellation of Taurus,
a small group of stars remembering in its shape the Ursa Major. The naked eye
can count only six or seven stars, (Alcione, Atlante, Elettra, Maia, Merope,
Pleione, Taigete), but when Galileo pointed his telescope on them he was astonished
in finding other forty stars or so. Nowadays we know that the Pleiades are
about 500, far from us 400 light years.
In
the Greek mythology the Pleiades were the seven daughters of Atlante and Pleione:
the hunter Orion, meeting them, fell in love and chased the sisters for seven
years, till the pity of Zeus changed them
in stars and put the Taurus in their defence. Orion still seems to pursue them
every night to the dawn.
For the composition of Pleiades I enlarged the astral map of the Pleiades, superposing on it, as in Noctis Splendentia Signa, a series of staves that let me to
attribute different heights to the various stars. This was however not enough to
emphasize the characteristic of this mass of star, the cloud of gas around
them. So I let the finger run on the
string
of my piano during all the composition, keeping the pedal pressed: this effect
reminded me the impression of a subtle veil of gas.
In order
to give the idea of light points holing this veil, I thought to use a technique
largely employed by John Cage, the “prepared piano”: this artifice consists in
inserting among the chords of the piano some pieces of metal, wood or gum so as to give more evidence to harmonic
sounds. So, after a long preparation of my instrument, I obtained a result that
completely satisfied my desire of changing into sounds the emotion given by
this extraordinary mass of stars.
GIOVANNI RENZO
Born in Messina in
1962, he got his diploma in piano at the “Corelli” Conservatoire of his town in
1986, later perfecting himself in Rome with Martin Joseph, at the Seminari
Nazionali di Musica Jazz of Siena with Enrico Pieranunzi and Bruno Tommaso,
at the Berklee Summer School of
Perugia with Bud Fredman in composition and orchestration and at the Accademia
Musicale Chigiana of Siena with Ennio Morricone in music for film.
He made his debut in 1979
as a jazz pianist.
In 1986 he creates, with
the bass player Pippo Mafali and the drummer Angelo Tripodo, a trio that collaborate,
among others artists, with Paolo Fresu, Gianluigi Trovesi, Giulio Capiozzo,
Bradley Wheeler, Faisal Taher.
In 1994 he founds and
directs the Messina Jazz Orchestra.
He regularly performs
in concerts and festivals in all
He writes music for
piano, for various cameristics and orchestral instruments, addressing with
particular attention to theatre.
His first record, "Eclisse", in 1989, collects
compositions for piano solo.
In 1996 he takes part
to the 50th Edimburgh Fringe Festival,
performing for three evenings at the Demarco European Art Foundation with the
show “Partitura per sangue e anima”.
In '96 he also
ultimated the composition of the opera "La
distanza della Luna", performed in January '97 at the Theatre V.
Emanuele of
With the composition “Le tempeste” he won in 1999 the third
edition of the National Piano Composition
Contest by the “Associazione
Culturale De Musica” of
In 2001 he publishes
the Cd “Il mare” played with Paolo Fresu and the Quintet “Suono e
Ritmo”.
In January of 2002 he performed
"Il gabinetto
In 2003 he composed
the soundtrack of the film “L’amore di
Màrja” by the italo-finnish director Anne Riitta Ciccone, whose edition is
previewed in 2004.
The balance between
improvisation and composition is the peculiarity of Giovanni Renzo’s style. The
element of improvisation is derived from his profound jazz experience, however supported
by solid classic studies. But the very original style of his compositions, in
which we found a melodic, often melancholic vein, prevents any univocal definition.
E-mail: giovannirenzo@tiscalinet.it
Web Site:
http://digilander.iol.it/giovannirenzo/
Report: M°
Giovanni Renzo
Contributions and
translation: Dr. Francesca Bonici
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