Sul far del giorno (At Daybreak) (2022)

Duration: 4:00 minutes

Instrumentation: solo piano

Premiere:

Notes:

      Le cosmicomiche (Cosmicomics) is set of musical responses Italo Calvino’s collection of stories by the same name. Each story takes as its starting point a scientific fact (some of them disproven by now) and proceeds to spin out a whimsical tale with bizarre characters, all narrated by a timeless, multiform character with the improbable name of Qfwfq. Though each story begins from a strange place, and though they are often very funny, these stories speak clearly to universal themes of loss, loneliness, and yearning. To me, the very absurdity of each story’s premise makes these underlying truths more vivid.

While there are many specific connections to each story, the approach in these pieces ranges widely, from character pieces, to impressionistic and atmospheric works, to much more abstract interpretations of the ideas in the stories. These pieces may be performed individually, or as a complete set, or in subsets of the performer’s choosing.

Sul far del giorno (At Daybreak)

This story is a fanciful interpretation of the moment when matter condenses into stars and light first bursts forth. This event is described in a truly cataclysmic and frightening way, though there is also beauty in the terrifying. So while musical depictions of a sunrise are a familiar trope, I found that this violent aspect suggested interesting musical choices. In the beginning, the undifferentiated matter is suggested by a quiet glissando across the full keyboard before meditative music emerges, suggesting a long period of relative stasis, slowly rotating on a formless nebula. The first “sunrise” begins with a low rumbling and grows to a bright explosion before settling back down to a sort of afterglow.