Musica per Amici ("Music For Friends") (1997), for recorder quartet, also reworked for string quartet.
- 1. Corale I (Chorale I)
- 2. Invenzione (Invention)
- 3. Adagio
- 4. Corale II (Chorale II)
- 5. Capriccio (Caprice)
- 6. Canto di Ringraziamento (A Song To Say Thank You)

Recording data: Invenzione: live recording, Cogorno (Genoa, Italy), August 6th, 1998, recorder quartet "La Compagnia della Luna Nuova", Milan: Daniele Bragetti, Stefano Bragetti, Nicola Sansone, Seiko Tanaka.

Adagio and Canto di Ringraziamento: live recording, Monza (Milan, Italy), June 27th, 1999, Grandi Quartet (string quartet), Bologna. Cello solo: Paolo Grandi.

AUTHOR'S PRESENTATION
I originally composed this piece for some friends of mine who have a recorder quartet, named "La Compagnia della Luna Nuova" ("The Company of the New Moon"). I love very much to work with recorder players, because they are usually fond both of contemporary and modern classical music and of ancient music, just exactly like me. During my work I have been partly assisted also by them, and they gave me unvaluable suggestions about the technical features of the instruments. The result is that the recorder is treated as an instrument with a good dexterity, capable to play any note within its own range.
In a second time, I have then composed a new version of the piece, adapting it for string quartet.
This piece is a suite, or, better, a collection of movements the can be performed exactly in the order indicated if one chooses to perform all of them, or can be played changing their order if one chooses to play only some of them.
As anybody can see, the titles have a "baroque" flavour, to pay homage to the recorder tradition and to the usual repertoire of this instrument. The form of the piece is made of six contrasting movements, that, using a simple and expressive atonal language, recall various stylistic traits of the ancient and baroque music.
The composition begins with a Chorale: the chorales are the religious hymns typical of the tradition of German-speaking countries, and are usually made of a melody harmonized in a chordal style, that is giving the same rhythm to all the voices so that they form clearly perceivable chords. The Corale I ("Chorale I"), much alike the Corale II, is indeed a simple, plain melody, played at first without any harmonization, then harmonized. Its harmonization is very much calculated in all its details, and it tries to follow note by note all the inflections of the melody: these Chorales are therefore very important pieces also from a theoretical point of view, in my opinion. To sweeten the character of the Corale I, I have avoided in it all the chords containing semitones, major sevenths, minor ninths and also major seconds made by adjacent notes. The mood is austere, tender, melancholy, thoughtful, but it has also a touch of solemn soberness.
The Invenzione ("Invention") is probably the most difficult piece for the performers. Its musical character is rather witty, but also hypnotic and entrancing, an effect obtained by the association of relentless rhythms and static melodies. Each instrument, actually, plays always the same notes during the entire piece (of course continuously changing their order and rhythm), with patterns fixed by compasses that form a symmetrical configuration.
The piece uses methods drawn from the African music: polyrhythms (different rhythms performed at the same time), exclusive usage of note durations of one (sixteenth note) and two (a sixteenth note followed by a rest of the same duration), irregularly alternated, utterances of a soloist followed by the "answer" of all the others, as if it were a "leader" haranguing a crowd, motifs (distributed over the different instruments) that are repeated in ostinato, and so on.
Each instrument plays an originary sequence of notes, its retrogradation (that is the same sequence reversed backwards, from the last note to the first one), its inversion (that is the same sequence played as if in a mirror, proceeding upwards each time the original used to move downwards and vice-cersa), and the retrogradation of the inversion, thus forming a well balanced combination of symmetries. These are all traditional counterpoint devices, already used since the Middle Ages and much utilized until the Baroque Age: in the Baroque style, indeed, the term "Invention" used to indicate a counterpoint-based composition that could certainly use such methods, and also the modern composers that have discovered again the term "Invention" (like Bartòk or Hindemith) have always viewed it in this sense.
The Adagio is a piece that recalls in a certain way the slow movements of Bartòk's string quartets and it is completely based on a profound and deep-felt solo of the bass recorder (or of the cello, in the string quartet version), counterpointed by the notes of the soprano recorder (or the first violin). It has a sorrowful character and a "pathetic" mood, in the baroque meaning of this word, that is melancholy and thougthful.
In the end of this movement the section that had served as an initial introduction is exposed again and varied, thus being incorporated into the main body of the piece and forming its natural conclusion.
I am particularly satisfied with the Corale II (Chorale II), because it works well both in its harmonic aspect (like the Chorale I, it is built with a method for selecting the appropriate chords that I have been developing since fifteen years) and from a melodic point of view, that is if we consider the part of each instrument as an independent melody. This movement confirms and moreover deepens in its meaning the mood of Corale I. Here, too, the mood is austere, tender, melancholy, thoughtful, sober, but profounder.
Besides representing a personal interpretation of some styilistic procedures that were typical of ancient music, "Musica per Amici" revaluates also some features of many ethnic music: for example we have here the short solo at the beginning of the Capriccio, that appears in a similar way also later in the movement, that recalls some introductory preludes of the folk Sardinian tradition, or we have also the dialogue between the quick musical phrases of two instruments that play alternating in turns, in a style that recollects that of a particular way of singing (called can a discan) traditionally used in Brittany.
The Capriccio is a complex piece, and, as its title may suggest, has a continuously varying mood.
As the other movements, it uses compositional methods borrowed from ancient music, like the so-called cantus firmus, that is a pre-existent melody, played much more slowly than the originary version, the long notes of which serve as the basis of a polyphonic composition by the addition of contrapuntal voices made by the other instruments or voices. The cantus firmus is a device typical of polyphonic music since the early Middle Ages to the end of the Renaissance. It is actually used here, in the Capriccio, and the melody played in very long notes is the one of the following movement, the one named "A Song To Say Thank You".
This movement, Capriccio, also includes the possibility to improvise embellishments according to pre-arranged rules (a typical baroque habit), and presents some particular bouncing and lively rhythms, called hemioliae (that is ternary rhythms - made of three beats - and binary rhythms - made of two beats - that are arranged so that two ternary rhytms stand in the place of three binary rhythms, or vice-versa), similar to those that one can find in many quick Renaissance dances (I believe that not so much music has surpassed the sense of rhythm of certain Renaissance dances!). Such rhythms, sometimes, are even stressed by the performers' foot strokes (prescribed on the score), giving an effect of great energy, that is consciously borrowed also from the rhythms of the gangar, the dance melodies used for wedding processions in the folk Scandinavian tradition.
The Canto di Ringraziamento ("A Song To Say Thank You") is only a simple, merry and resolute tune, a short melody, repeated thrice, avoiding any intricacies, but also with a certain majestic and solemnity, like a joyful hymn. It also contains references to ethnic musical traditions, especially to the Lappish joik , improvised songs similar to those of the Native Americans. I dedicated it to the dear memory of my teacher, Niccolò Castiglioni, who was a real master in composing such lively melodies.