Mauro Lanza - "Discorso di Gagarin attorno alla terra" (2017)

for recordings of satellites, string quartet and electronics

Paris, Centre Pompidou April 18th 2021
Quatuor Diotima

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Achille Judica-Cordiglia and his brother Giovanni Battista are well-known amateur radio operators who claimed in the late fifties and early sixties to have heard radio communications taken from secret Soviet Union space missions, including SOS signals, telemetry, and the dying sounds (heartbeats and breathing) of a suffocating "lost cosmonaut.” Even though their claims have been thoroughly debunked, the stories of these sensational intercepts are part of the mythology of the Space Age and stand at the origin of a durable conspiracy theory.
In the 1960s, the idea of a “lost cosmonaut” spoke to acute fears. Despite the optimism of space exploration tales, the reality of space travel—from sending a dog into orbit to putting a man on the moon—had a striking effect on the public and raised more life-altering questions than it provided answers. A cosmonaut lost in space served as a poignant metaphor for individuals’ anxieties about the future in an era of nuclear tension and uncertainty. This helps to explain the diffusion and the longevity of a hoax that identified the stain of some kind of original sin on the shiny surface of the triumphs of the early space age. Now that the cosmos has switched in our imaginations from being the route toward a radiant future for humanity to a place of accumulation for space capitalism or a post-doomsday shelter for the extremely rich, these stories of dead astronauts are more sinister and haunting than ever.

The title "Memories of the Space Age" is borrowed from the collection of stories of the same name by J.G. Ballard (1988), a set of writings thematically linked around rotting launch gantries at Cape Canaveral, the failure of the US space program, dead astronauts eternally orbiting in space, deserted hotels lining the Florida coast, and the lonely, disturbed individuals who linger at the fringes of this lost dream of the Space Age.

The piece uses more than 100 historical radio recordings of human-made objects gravitating in Low Earth Orbit, for example, the beacon beeps of satellites, telemetries, and the voices of cosmonauts, along with the ill-famed Judica-Cordiglia tapes. This material—shifted and transposed to match the harmonic structure of the piece—is the starting point for an imitation game that involves the string quartet and that grows into a complex three-layered polyphony.

In addition to these archival materials, the electronic material features digital processing of the string instruments with the modulation techniques that were, and still are, commonly used for radio and television transmission. The fragile, inharmonic sonorities of the prepared strings are mirrored by electronic phenomena like feedbacks or physically-modeled chaotic circuits that behave in similarly erratic ways, in a laborious attempt to tame the untamable while at the same time pursuing serendipitous glitches.

"Memories of the Space Age" deals with the aesthetics of ground noise, white noise, and lost radio waves, with the misuse and malfunctions of technology, and with the misinterpretation of a chaotic signal as pareidolia. It is also, somehow, a nostalgic homage to obsolete or soon-to-be-obsolete technologies and to the visions of the future these technologies carried. That future now seems irretrievably lost, but its ghost, like Ballard’s dead astronauts, still haunts us.

Mauro Lanza - "Memories of the Space Age" (2020)

for amplified string trio and electromechanical devices

Repertorio Zero
Milano, Piccolo Teatro
04/11/2013

Two references are at the base of Regnum animale. The first is the Medieval tradition of bestiaria, intended as multi-faceted catalogues of miscellaneous beings, among which different relations can be defined. The variety and heterogeneity of the bestiaria i strikingly evident in early examples, that are topsy turvy lists of fantastic creatures, existing animals, stones and plants. A second reference for the work is taxonomy, that is, the systematic description of living organisms that dates back to Linnaeus’ Systema Naturae as the Rationalistic possibility of ordering the polymorphous (and many times teratomorphic) appearance of nature. One of the foundational aspects of taxonomy in the so-called “binomial nomenclature”, that provides for each organism a name specifying its place in relation to other organisms by means of the couple genus et species.
The heterogeneity of bestiaria is at the origin of both the setup and the organization devised for Regnum animale. Th former includes traditional acoustic instruments (string trio, but played with a variety of special techniques), surrounded by an amass of computer-driven, electro-mechanical devices built from discarded and scavenged every- day objects. For what concerns the organisation, indeed the general model is the catalog: Regnum animale is thus a sequence of 28 short pieces, each one dedicated to an imaginary animal. Here the sec- ond model –taxonomy– enters into play: all the pieces have the same duration, and each one has received a name following the binomial nomenclature. Hence, Regnum animale is also a systematic report about the creatures found in a terra incognita.


Mauro Lanza / Andrea Valle - "Regnum Animale" (2013)

per orchestra 

Diego Matheuz 
Orchestra del Teatro la Fenice di Venezia
07/06/2014

L'anatra digeritrice (in francese Le Canard Digérateur) era un automa con sembianze d'anatra progettato da Jacques de Vaucanson nel 1739.
Questo prodigio della meccanica, che impressionò Voltaire e i contemporanei, riproduceva con minuzia iperrealista i movimenti dell'animale. La sua peculiarità più sorprendente, la capacità di ingerire, digerire e defecare cibo, era però soltanto apparente. Nessun reale processo digestivo avveniva all'interno dell'automa, ma un semplice scambio di cibo con feci (dovranno passare quasi tre secoli prima che un vero sistema digestivo meccanico, la Cloaca Machine di Wim Delvoye, veda il giorno). Al pari del celebre "turco" di von Kempelen (l'automa che giocava a scacchi, in realtà azionato da un nano), ci troviamo di fronte ad una frode. Non si tratta però del gioco delle tre carte. Il fatto che i più geniali inventori del tempo ricorsero alla truffa non è nient'altro che l'espressione dell'impasse del riduzionismo meccanicista di fronte alla simulazione dell'intelligenza logico-associativa (nel caso del "turco") o delle parti molli (il cosiddetto "wetware") della fisiologia animale. È la netta presa di coscienza di un limite.
Parlare di automi e di ozio è quasi una tautologia. A differenza di Golem e Robot, infaticabili lavoratori subordinati all'uomo (almeno finché non sopraggiunge l'ammutinamento), l'automa non ha alcun lavoro da portare a compimento. Vive una vita tranquilla, esibendo i suoi meccanismi e anelando ad un irraggiungibile modello organico. È sostanzialmente inutile.

"Anatra digeritrice" vuole essere una piccole collezione di questi meccanismi che girano a vuoto.

Il pezzo, commissionato nell’ambito del progetto «Nuova musica alla Fenice», è dedicato a Giovanni Morelli.

Mauro Lanza - "Anatra digeritrice (piccola Wunderkammer di automi oziosi)" (2014)

for sextet and electromechanical devices

Ensemble Mosaik
Berlin, Berghain
04/09/2014

Regnum vegetabile follows the model of our previous work Regnum animale, and thus it can be said that it is a sort of second chapter in a reflexion about nature and its conceptualisation.

As in Regnum animale, two references are at the base of Regnum vegetabile. The first is the Medieval tradition of herbaria, intended as multi-faceted catalogues of miscellaneous plants, among which different relations can be defined. A second reference for the work is taxonomy, that is, the systematic description of living organisms that dates back to Linnaeus' Systema Naturae as the Rationalistic possibility of ordering the polymorphous (and many times teratomorphic) appearance of nature. In Regnum vegetabile the main refer- ence from the plant regnum are cacti, green plants with wooden-like structures and animal-like claws that are not by chance native of the New World.
One of the foundational aspects of taxonomy in the so-called “binomial nomenclature”, that provides for each organism a name specifying its place in relation to other organisms by means of the couple genus et species. This way of “giving name” to beings is at the origin of the titles of the piece.
The heterogeneity of herbaria and cacti is at the origin of both the setup and the organisation devised for Regnum vegetabile. The for- mer includes traditional acoustic instruments (string and wind trio), surrounded by an amass of computer-driven, electro-mechanical devices that focus on air production (i.e. wind instruments) by means of modified hair dryers.
For what concerns the organisation, indeed the general model is the catalog: Regnum vegetabile is thus a sequence of short pieces, each one dedicated to an imaginary plant. Here the second model –taxonomy– enters into play: each of the pieces has received a name following the binomial nomenclature. Hence, Regnum vegetabile is also the second chapter (after Regnum animale) of a systematic report about the strange creatures found in a terra incognita.

Mauro Lanza / Andrea Valle - "Regnum Vegetabile" (2014)

"Disiecta Membra" (2014)
for six voices

Live Recording 
February 5th 2015 
Festival ECLAT Theaterhaus Stuttgart
Neue Vocalsolisten

Disiecta Membra, latin for “scattered fragments” is an expression used to refer to surviving fragments of ancient poetry, manuscripts and other literary or cultural objects, but can also literally means "scattered limbs" or "scattered members". 
The membra this piece is dealing with are the different cuts of Grunnius Cocotta, the imaginary pig whose last wills are summoned in the Testamentum Porcelli, a parodic middle-age text. The short excerpt of this text that I decided to use is an inventory of twelve body parts that the pig, right before being slaughtered, bequeaths to twelve categories of will beneficiaries.

Et de meis visceribus dabo donabo sutoribus saetas, 
rixoribus capitinas, 
surdis auriculas, 
causidicis et verbosis linguam, 
bubulariis intestina, 
isiciariis femora, 
mulieribus lumbulos, 
pueris vesicam, 
puellis caudam, 
cinaedis musculos, 
cursoribus et venatoribus talos, 
latronibus ungulas

[And from my body I shall give and contribute to the cobblers my bristles, to quarrelers my head-parts, to the deaf my ears, to lawyers and the wordy my tongue, to sausage-makers my intestines, to makers of meat products my thighs, to women my little loins, to boys my bladder, to girls my tail, to poofters my muscles, to runners and hunters my ankles, to brigands my hooves]
	
One can easily draw a comparison between this parodic list and the amass of dismembered bodies of saints that (still) populate catholic churches all around Europe. 
Mikhail Bakhtin in his “Rabelais and his time” elaborated the concept of grotesque body and wrote extensively about these holy remains: 

"At the time of Rabelais ridicule relics were quite common, especially, of course, in the Protestant satire […]
Dismembered body of the saint in medieval literature has repeatedly given rise to grotesque images, and transfers. In one of the best medieval parody travesties - in "Treatise Garcia" (1099), the hero, a wealthy Simonist archbishop of Toledo, brings to Rome as a gift the miraculous relics of holy martyrs Rufus and Albina […] "… from the kidneys Albina, from the innards Rufina, from the stomach, from the back, from the backside, from the edges of chest from the legs, the hands, from the neck. What else? - From all the members of both bodies of the martyrs. " We see that already in the XI century relics gave rise to a purely grotesque anatomy of the dismembered body"

While the catalog of pig cuts of the Testamentum has a direct influence on the form of the piece - which is indeed a catalog of short pieces, each related to a different body part -, this reference to relics is suggested by the use of several musical quotations issued from Membra Jesu Nostri, the famous set of seven cantatas by Dietrich Buxtehude, which is also a catalog of limbs: feet, knees, hands, side, breast, heart, and head. Curiously enough, what is considered to be the first Lutheran oratorio has the form of a massive immaterial reliquary for a body that left no material remains. 

The contrast between this longing for the absent flesh and the carnavalesque exuberance of the Testamentum was the basic source of inspiration for the composition of Disiecta Membra. 


Mauro Lanza - "Disiecta Membra" (2014)

“Le nubi non scoppiano per il peso” 
for 9 musicians, soprano, computer-controlled water drops and electronics

Ensemble Court-Circuit, Omo Bello, Jean Deroyer 
Oslo Ultima Contemporary Music Festival 11/09/2011


The text :

"Who cuts a channel for the torrents of rain, and a path for the thunderstorm, to water a land where no one lives, an uninhabited desert, to satisfy a desolate wasteland and make it sprout with grass? Does the rain have a father? Who fathers the drops of dew?"
The Book of Job, chapter 38

To the eyes of the unknown authors of the Book of Job, the creation appears as an indecipherable enigma. The only one who knows its laws is the engineer who establishes the weight of the wind, who counts the clouds in the sky and apportions the water by measure. And these laws seem to have no consideration for man; there is no punishment or compensation for his behaviour. Rain falls in the desert too, on a land that nobody harvests. Disgrace befalls on the righteous and the unrighteous alike.
The long, scoffing reply that God gives to Job’s relentless existential questions (a short excerpt is sung in the piece) is itself composed of questions, almost suggesting that, as Wittgenstein wrote: “when the answer cannot be put into words, neither can the question.”
“Le nubi non scoppiano per il peso” deals with heaviness and fall, and with measuring what seems to have no measure.

The piece is dedicated to my parents.

“An altar begins where the sense of measure ends. Being a saint means losing control, giving up weight, and weight is organizing one's own dimension”
Carmelo Bene, Our Lady of the Turks

Work commissioned by Ensemble Court-Circuit and by “Integra - Fusing music and technology” a EU-funded project led by Birmingham Conservatoire (UK).

The dripping device is inspired by the installation Dripper01 by Arno Fabre (who has kindly shared his know-how) and has been built by Simon Cacheux. A special acknowledgment to Thierry Coduys who supervised the early stages of its construction.


Mauro Lanza - "Le Nubi non Scoppiano per il Peso" (2011)

Mauro Lanza - "104bpm" (2006)

for ensemble, toy instruments and electronics
Ensemble musikFabrik
Paris, Maison de la Radio, Festival Agora 09/06/2007

Mauro Lanza - "Vesperbild" (2007)

for 18 musicians 

Klangforum Wien, Sylvain Cambreling

Mauro Lanza - "Number Nine" (2010)

"Tutto ciò che è solido si dissolve nell'aria" (2015)
for 6 musicians

Live Recording 
October 12th 2016 
Biennale Musica Venezia
Ensemble Accroche Note

Biennale 2016  12 ottobre ore 20

Mauro Lanza - "Tutto ciò che è solido si dissolve nell'aria" (2015)

"Regnum Lapideum" (2016)

for seven musicians and electromechanical devices

Live Recording
Paris, Auditorium Marcel Landowki
April 29th 2016

Ensemble 2e2m
Pierre Roullier

Mauro Lanza / Andrea Valle - "Regnum Lapideum" (2016)

for voice and electronics

(Donatienne Michel-Dansac : voice)

Mauro Lanza - "Erba Nera Che Cresci Segno Nero Tu Vivi" (2001)

for ensemble

Divertimento Ensemble, Sandro Gorli

Mauro Lanza - "Sol" (2007)

per organo
(Francesco Filidei : organo della chiesa di St Eustache, Paris)


Mauro Lanza - "Predella" (2003)

for string quartet and electronics

Paris, Centre Pompidou June 7th 2017
Quatuor Diotima

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As a kid we had a television set with an antenna that rotated (you could rotate it from inside of your house). When the major channels would go off-air you could rotate it and pick up strange other channels from smaller cities around - from across the border, Buffalo and so on - and you would see strange things, that were kind of hard to see (there was a lot of static) and it was very intriguing to watch that kind of things. That was really the core, the crystal at the centre of this movie: my experience with that thinking “what if the images that you pulled up were really quite extreme, disturbing, possibly illegal, and what would you think then, would you keep seeking out those channels or would you call the police or what would you do, how would you respond to them?”

David Cronenberg on his movie Videodrome (commentary track of the Criterion Collection BlueRay)

The Max Headroom broadcast signal intrusion was a television signal hijacking (probably the most famous and certainly the longest signal hijacking ever) that occurred in Chicago, Illinois, United States on the evening of November 22, 1987. The signal pirates, whose identities were never found, succeeded in getting their broadcast intruded onto WTTW (a local Public Broadcasting Service television station).
The pirate broadcast, which lasted 90 endless seconds, featured an individual disguised as Max Headroom (a sci-fi computer-generated television character quite popular in the 80s, coming from dystopian near-future dominated by television and large corporations).
Around 11:15 p.m. an episode of the British TV-Series Doctor Who was suddenly interrupted by television static, after which an unidentified man wearing a Max Headroom mask and sunglasses appeared. The man started to moan, scream and laugh, uttering various random phrases (the audio was distorted and crackling), including New Coke's advertising slogan "Catch the Wave" while holding a Pepsi can (Max Headroom was a Coca-Cola spokesperson at the time). He then tossed the can out of sight, presented his middle finger wearing a rubber extension, sang an excerpt of “I’m losing you” (a 1966 Motown hit recorded by the Temptations), hummed the theme song of Clutch Cargo (a clumsily-animated television series of the 60s), moaned painfully complaining about his piles, farted, put on and off a giant glove (similar to the one worn by Michael Jackson at the time). He then partially exposed his buttocks, howling: "They're coming to get me!”, while an unidentified female accomplice wearing a French maid outfit started to spank him with a flyswatter. The transmission then blacked out for a few seconds before resuming the Doctor Who episode in progress.

“The 1987 Max Headroom Broadcast Incident” features a string quartet “enhanced” with transducers and preparations. 
The digital processing of the instruments is largely inspired by the same modulation techniques that were - and still are - commonly used for radio and television transmission. 
The piece, an hommage to obsolete or soon-to-be deprecated technologies and to the media-dominated, dark future that the “cyberpunk” sci-fi of 80s foretold, is dedicated to the memory of Fausto Romitelli.

Mauro Lanza - "The 1987 Max Headroom broadcast incident" (2017)

for 9 musicians 
Ensemble Court-Circuit, Pierre-André Valade

Mauro Lanza - "Aschenblume" (2001-2002)

Mauro Lanza - Variazione su Beethoven/Diabelli #6

An excerpt of the original music I composed for the show "How to proceed" (by Thomas Hauert and his company ZOO)

Mauro Lanza - JSB bleibet meine Freude

for Cello and Piano
Séverine Ballon, Mark Knoop


Mauro Lanza - "La bataille de Caresme et de Charnage" for cello and piano (2012)

Per Trio con Pianoforte

sabato 3 febbraio 2018
Torino, Teatro Vittoria
Trio Kanon

"Sans doute ce chant insignifiant, entendu cent fois, ne m’intéressait nullement. Je ne pouvais faire plaisir à personne ni à moi-même en l’écoutant aussi religieusement jusqu’au bout. Enfin aucun des motifs, connues d’avance par moi, de cette vulgaire romance ne pouvait me fournir la résolution dont j’avais besoin; bien plus, chacune de ces phrases, quand elle passait à son tour, devenait un obstacle à prendre efficacement cette résolution, ou plutôt elle m’obligeait à la résolution contraire de ne pas partir, car elle me faisait passer l’heure. Par là cette occupation sans plaisir en elle-même d’écouter « ‘o sole mio » se chargeait d’une tristesse profonde, presque désespérée.”

Marcel Proust, Albertine disparue  


Augusto Salvatori fut conseiller municipale à Venise. Il vécut un moment de célébrité en 1986 lorsque il invita les gondolier à ne plus chanter “O sole mio” et d’autres mélodies napolitaines, et à leur préférer des chansons autochtones. Une strafexpedition de douze musiciens parthénopéens arriva en lagune peu après pour protester contre cet oukase. Guitares, tambourins et mandolines gagnèrent, et la paix entre les deux villes fut signée devant un risotto au poisson. Les gondoliers continuèrent (et continuent) à chanter à gorge déployée la célèbre chanson d’Eduardo di Capua dans les canaux de Venise.

John Horton Conway est un mathématicien britannique. Il est connu auprès du grand public surtout pour avoir inventé le “the game of life”, le plus celèbre de tous les automates cellulaires. Ce “jeu” se déroule sur une grille à deux dimensions, dont les cases — qu’on appelle des « cellules » — peuvent prendre deux états distincts : « vivantes » ou « mortes ». Chaque état de la grille conduit mécaniquement à l’état suivant à partir de règles pré-établies. Des groupes de cellules peuvent ainsi osciller de manière cyclique, se figer dans de configurations statiques, se déplacer à l’infini en laissant derrière elles une traînée de débris.

Si on met en relation les deux dimensions de la grille avec des paramètres musicaux, ces règles peuvent être un moyen inédit d’engendrer des variations sur un thème. Dans ce court trio les atomes qui composent célèbre melodie qui hantait Proust lors de son séjour en lagune prolifèrent, se décomposent, se figent, semblablement aux cellules binaires du jeu de la vie et d’autres automates cellulaires.

Mauro Lanza - John Conway In Gondola -in compagnia di Marcel Proust e Augusto Salvadori- (2016)

for 8 strings

Arditti Quartet & Jack Quartet 
Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik 
April 28th 2012

Mauro Lanza - "Der Kampf zwischen Karneval und Fasten" (2012)

for solo piano
(Andrea Corazziari : piano)

Mauro Lanza - "Predellino" (2005)

for solo piano

(Andrea Corazziari : piano)

Mauro Lanza - "Mess" (2008)

Electronic music for the silent movie Häxan (1922) by Benjamin Christensen 

Mauro Lanza - Excerpt from "Häxan" (2008)

for 3 percussionists playing glass sculptures and electronics

Musique pour Jean-Michel Othoniel (2011)

per organo 
(Francesco Filidei : organo della chiesa di St Eustache, Paris)

Mauro Lanza - "Negativo" (2006)

Mauro Lanza - "La bataille de Caresme et de Charnage" for cello and electronics (2012)

Electronic music made entirely by means of physical-modelling synthesis. Originally for tuba and 8channel electronics (2001), electronic-only stereo version was made in 2008. The piece is an hommage to the world of arcade video games of the early 80s, and quotes the soundtracks of -among others- Dig Dug, Bombjack, PacMan and of course BurgerTime

Burger Time ou les tentations de St Antoine (2001/2008)

for 28 singers and electronics

Les Cris de Paris - Geoffroy Jourdain 
Festival Manifeste, Ircam, June 8th 2013

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