The pandemic has brought isolation, loneliness and a sense of constraint to our daily life. Is it possible to find beauty in a cage? Some of my thoughts on this issue found their way into "Beauty Cage", a piece for spatialized ensemble (fl, cl, vn, vc) and electronics (fixed media and live processing). As a starting point, I chose precise boundaries in the timbral dimension, that features two winds, two strings and a compact modular synth I used to record all the audio for the electronic part. My working process was somehow aware of the experience of Scelsi and Vieri Tosatti, as I was improvising, editing, transcribing and instrumentating. At one moment, I intercepted and promptly distorted a cheerful radio song titled "Toda joia toda beleza". The clash between this lighthearted song and its grotesque processing seemed to be a perfect representation of the current situation. Even if the song was discarded early on, "Beauty Cage" took shape as an exploration of the contrasting connotations elicited by sound. Different kinds of audio feedback (the epitome of closed systems) are used, be it sweet ghost-like reverbs always on the verge of exploding, or razor-like tuned pitches detected by an electromagnetic pickup. The acoustic instruments bring organic variability to all spatialized sounds, playing a counterpoint of lines, timbres and movements which are allowed a certain amount of liberty.

Recording by Schallfeld Ensemble

Beauty Cage (2021) - for ensemble and electronics - BINAURAL

The title is a quotation from E. A. Poe’s tale "The Pit and the Pendulum", set in a dungeon of the Spanish Inquisition. The main character explores his dark prison, searching for a way out. In absence of the sense of sight, his perception of time and space is guided by hearing. Every single sound becomes an instrument of knowledge, which brings more definition to his mental map of the place… but perception can be illusory. "Then Silence, and Stillness, and Night" is a nocturne, literally “a piece set at night”: a dark space inhabited by sounds that shape different possible plots.

live performance by Nemø Ensemble

Then Silence, And Stillness, And Night (2017, rev. 2022) - for ensemble

"Uncluttered" was crafted as an object of Italian design—or like a carefully furnished room. It is based on transparent lines, accurate details, delicate nuances, and logically conceived cross-references between recurring sonic categories. My leading idea was to reject all unnecessary clutter. The range of compositional possibilities was thus significantly narrowed, starting with pitch classes. Anti-expressionistic in style, "Uncluttered" is nonetheless expressive: it has been strongly influenced by a little-known essay by Edgar Allan Poe, titled "The Philosophy of Furniture" (https://www.eapoe.org/works/essays/philfurn.htm). In this text, Poe criticises the «preposterous want of keeping», and describes his ideal room in great detail, as «a small and not ostentatious chamber with whose decorations no fault can be found». The profound influence of an essential and beautifully furnished space on the psyche is also highlighted: «What is ultimately haunting about the setting itemized by Poe as ideally conducive to relaxed and imaginative speculation is its ability to evoke, despite its rational organization, its luminous openness and its simplicity, a troubling sense of the unknown» (Dani Cavallaro).

live performance by Nemø Ensemble

Uncluttered (2020) - for ensemble

(Live recording in Darmstadt, 05/08/2016. Guitar: Ruben Mattia Santorsa)

Roderick Usher, the tormented protagonist of Poe’s tale The Fall of the House of Usher, is used to accompany his rhapsodic singing with a guitar. The narrator reports the words of one of these improvisations, in the form of a ballad titled The Haunted Palace. The palace of the title is a symbol of Roderick’s disturbed mind, and the whole plot of the tale, leading to corruption and dissolution, is reflected in the poem. My six short pieces of Haunted were inspired by the sixth stanzas of this poem. In the first stanza, Poe presents a valley inhabited by angels, where stands a radiant palace. In the second stanza, the poet describes the waving banners and the perfume that flows along the ramparts of the palace. In the third stanza, the point of view is that of some wanderers who can see, through the windows of the palace, spirits dancing to the sound of a lute. The fourth stanza is pervaded by the sparkling echoes coming out of the main door. A decisive change of mood occurs in the last two stanzas. In the fifth, the palace is assaulted by «evil things» that soon make its glorious past a «dim-remembered story». The last stanza evokes the apparition of forms that «move fantastically / to a discordant melody», while a burst of hideous laughter is heard.

I (00:00)
In the greenest of our valleys, / By good angels tenanted, / Once a fair and stately palace— / Radiant palace—reared its head. / In the monarch Thought’s dominion— / It stood there! / Never seraph spread a pinion / Over fabric half so fair. 

II (02:33)
 Banners yellow, glorious, golden, / On its roof did float and flow; / (This—all this—was in the olden / Time long ago); / And every gentle air that dallied, / In that sweet day, / Along the ramparts plumed and pallid, / A winged odor went away. 

III (04:42)
Wanderers in that happy valley / Through two luminous windows saw / Spirits moving musically / To a lute’s well-tunèd law; / Round about a throne, where sitting / (Porphyrogene!) / In state his glory well befitting, / The ruler of the realm was seen.

IV (06:50)
 And all with pearl and ruby glowing / Was the fair palace door, / Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing / And sparkling evermore, / A troop of Echoes whose sweet duty / Was but to sing, / In voices of surpassing beauty, / The wit and wisdom of their king.

V (09:36)
 But evil things, in robes of sorrow, / Assailed the monarch’s high estate; / (Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow / Shall dawn upon him, desolate!) / And, round about his home, the glory / That blushed and bloomed / Is but a dim-remembered story / Of the old time entombed. 

VI (12:01)
And travellers now within that valley, / Through the red-litten windows see / Vast forms that move fantastically / To a discordant melody; / While, like a rapid ghastly river, / Through the pale door, / A hideous throng rush out forever, / And laugh—but smile no more.

Haunted (2016) - 6 pieces for amplified guitar

This piece was inspired by two of Poe's tales: the incomplete The Light-House and The Fall of the House of Usher. Each tale was boiled down to its main dramatic moments, and the piece was structured as a continuous, cinematic juxtaposition of such moments, aiming to reveal the complementarity of the two tales. My sonic imagination has been driven by images such as the ripples on the surface of the sea, the echoing walls of the lighthouse, the fleeting appearances of the mysterious Madeline Usher, the meticulous exploration and measurement of the lighthouse, or the destruction of the Usher mansion. Nevertheless, each listener of Edgar’s Visions is invited to freely shape her own semantic associations between my sounds and Poe’s visions.

Edgar's Visions (2015) - for ensemble

Reading session - Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi, direttore Deun Lee, 29/03/2018

Et Tout Le Reste (2018, reading session) - for orchestra

Edgar’s Beats is an exploration of the concept of beat—a recurrent element in Poe's works. In this piece, two kinds of beats are found: those produced by the human body of a young woman, an incarnation of Poe’s fragile heroines, and those produced by objects such as clocks or bells. Although human beats are typically irregular, they can try to approach the regularity of a machine. Similarly, mechanisms can get out of control. Beats are seen as an ambiguous combination of two contrasting emotions: the reassuring tranquillity of the foreseeable, and the disturbing obsession of perpetual and unstoppable movement.

Edgar's Beats (2018) - acousmatic

Orquesta de la Universidad de Guanajuato, conductor Gaétan Kuchta, 21/09/2018, 40° Foro Internacional de Música Nueva Manuel Enríquez

Et tout le reste - hommage à Paul Verlaine (2018) - for orchestra

Pietro Dossena (M.A. Composition, Ph.D. Musicology) is a composer particularly interested in the exploration of inter-art relationships from a poetical and semiotical standpoint.

Pietro Dossena

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