Voice, Vocality and Singing

concert SEASON

The title of the 2024 Dello Scompiglio musical season, Voice, Vocality and Singing is an example of a path that has the voice at its centre.

The chosen path does not pretend to exhaust such a vast and variegated theme, but aims to explore it through multiple facets; the voice, the sound-verse up to the word, monody and polyphony, the song of nature, voices in popular culture, and instrumental singing.

The first concert, featuring the ensemble “UT Insieme Vocale-Consonante “ directed by Lorenzo Donati, will be a journey through the history of vocality, from the enchantment of Renaissance polyphony of authors such as Monteverdi, De Victoria, Di Lasso, and Sisask, reimagined by Donati himself, to pieces by important modern composers such as Part, Riley, Glass and Cage.

In the second concert, "Il Canto Strumentale" (Instrumental Singing), Christian Schmitt’s refined and sensitive oboe, accompanied on the piano by Alessandra Gentile, will be the protagonist of a journey in which vocal calls permeate every note, revealing its affinity with the reverberations of the human voice. Similarly in Holliger’s virtuoso piece, in which a reference to the vocal technique of multiphonic singing can be heard.

"Dragon Fly" will transport us to a dimension of pure musical joy with Naomi Berril’s cello and Danusha Waskiewicz’s viola, instrumentalists and singers, who blend in a vortex of sounds and songs of different genres, celebrating the magic of making music together.

The final concert will be a real ode to nature. The pianist, Ciro Longobardi, presents a programme that includes, in addition to works by Robert Schumann and Claude Debussy, extracts from the Catalogue d'Oiseaux by Messiaen, inspired by the wonderful birdsong that the great French musician  considered to be the greatest musicians God had ever created on earth, capable of a wealth of articulation and expression often denied to human beings.

Concerts in autumn will continue this wonderful journey into the world of the voice and singing.

Antonio Caggiano

artistic  director of Dello Scompiglio musical events

SATURDAY 8 JUNE 2024  
AT 7.30PM

concert

Oiseaux exotiques

Places, Times, Songs

ProgrammE

Catalogue d'Oiseaux by Messiaen and live ornithological observation/listening in the spaces of the Tenuta Dello Scompiglio

Olivier Messiaen                
from Catalogue d'Oiseaux
L'Alouette Lulu | Le Traquet Stapazin | Le Merle Bleu

Robert Schumann              
Gesänge der Frühe op. 133

Claude Debussy                 
Estampes 

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Ciro Longobardi piano

Scientific introductions by ornithologist Davide Aldi

2024_I luoghi, le ore, il canto

The composition of the Catalogue d'Oiseaux began after a long period of study and transcriptions of birdsongs of France. A passionate ornithologist and fervent Catholic, Messiaen considered birds to be the greatest musicians God had ever created on earth, capable of a wealth of articulation and expression often denied to human beings. But the Catalogue is also an ode to places, to French nature: in the words of the composer, each "soloist" is represented in its habitat, surrounded by other birds linked to the same region. And so, in these songs, we find very effective representations, linked to a profound colouristic sensitivity, not only of the places of nature but also of the passage of time: through the description of the solar cycle, some of the songs describe temporal arcs that go from morning to evening, or from night to the following night.

More subjective is the Schumannian approach, which, in the Gesänge der Frühe (Songs of the Morning) intends to translate into sounds the sensations and feelings of the artist at the moment of awakening, also tying the idea of a metaphorical song to the passage of time.

And again, places and times are linked to the songs of Estampes, imaginary postcards of journeys never made. A very effective representation of oriental landscapes is followed by a "deconstructed" serenade (the song again) in which sound events alternate in a cross-fade into that of Granada, while in the last piece, echoes of children’s songs can be heard in the swirling of a storm over the gardens of Normandy.