"Tre Corali", for piano (1997)

(Jump to AUTHOR'S PRESENTATION)

Recording data: January 6th, 1999, Vatican Radio, pianist Giovanni Grosskopf.

REVIEW
"Grosskopf's poetry and talent, together with deepness of language, unexpectedness, beauty tout court also includes the use of intense lyric melodic phrases, very tuneful ones, in an atonal melodic and harmonic context. This is exemplified by his Corali (Chorales), for piano, dated 1997. The simplicity of writing reminds of Erik Satie's Ogives, but the sonority of these Corali is absolutely original. Melodies are partly improvised, but the harmonisation is studied in the least details. The attention is in fact focused on the changes of tension of the melody, in the attempt to match them with identical changes of tension in the chords used in the accompaniment. Not an unnecessary note is to be found in these Corali, deep and simple at the same time. By graduating the tension, the Author allows the listener to perceive a sensation of logical consequence. Grosskopf has been studying for 15 years the chords on the basis of their dissonance and he has created a computer-based analysis technique for this. This simple melodies are presented twice each: the first time they are "naked" and the second time harmonized: the ear follows their path and measures the different weight and the new translucent and changing colour where the harmony occurs: musicality, poetry, talent and technique splendidly blend together."

- Enrico Raggi, musicologist, Vatican Radio, January 6th, 1999

AUTHOR'S PRESENTATION
These three Chorales, that, in their simplicity, deliberately recall works like Ogives or the First Sarabande by Erik Satie, the great French composer of the beginning of the 20th Century, are - though it may not be evident - the result of many years of pondering and researches. Two of them have also versions for recorder quartet (from my recorder quartet "Musica Per Amici") and for string quartet. They are simple melodies played two times each, the first one as they are, the second one harmonized, of course with atonal chords. The melodies are in a style that comes spontaneous to me, a sort of "full atonal lyricism", and are even partially improvised. On the other hand, my attention focused on the relationship between melody and harmonization, making an attempt to analyze in details the changes of tension in the atonal melodies and to match them with identical changes in the atonal chords chosen to harmonize them. I have followed this particular approach because I believe that graduating attentively the perception of dissonance and consonance (in a word: beatings) is the best way a composer of atonal music can choose to build passages, chord sequences, melodies and tone colours that sound as logical, natural and consequential as the tonality-based passages used to sound, so that the listener follows the music feeling that its developement is completely natural and consequential. I have built in this way an atonal harmony system and I have also written a software to help composers and teachers to obtain this. Its approach can be described as follows:
1) Given two atonal chords of any kind and of any number of notes the software helps to:
- find a method to decide which one is the most dissonant or the most consonant.
- find a method to decide which one has the richest and most complex sound.
- find a method to build among them a third chord to connect them without perceivable disparities.
2) Given three atonal chords of any kind and of any number of notes, it helps to find if the first of them is closer to the second one or to the third one in its sound and sonority.
Of course, it depends on the intervals they contain. The purpose of all this is to demonstrate that we can build sequences of atonal chords having a clearly perceivable directional logic, e.g. from the most consonant one to the most dissonant one, or from the one that has the poorest sound to the richest one, in order to achieve a feeling of consequent development in the music (so that a listener can follow it better), like the one that we can hear in tonality-based music, but this time doing so in a completely atonal piece. I think that these problems may be important in contemporary music, and I would rediscover the importance of a narrative thread and directionality in music and moreover in atonal music.These Chorales have been composed also with the aid of this software and are in a certain way a sort of demonstration piece on its application (nevertheless, the software has had of course only the role of technical aid and has had nothing to do with poetry, that must be in the composer's heart). I believe that, having been composed with precise criteria, they sound more expressive, because a well-conceived music can be followed more easily and can communicate better. I believe therefore that these Chorales have evident aesthetic aims and result in a music reduced to the indispensable elements: my idea was not to put in them even a single note that was not strictly necessary, to make them direct, meaningful, simple and profound at the same time. That is to say, just the exact contrary of a piece for ordinary composition or piano contests...