For glass harmonica and strings.
Duration: 15' — 2009
Three Lines, One Evening
Solitudo is built around a precise structural constraint: three sections corresponding to the three lines of Salvatore Quasimodo's poem Ed è subito sera (1930), each proportioned to the syllable count of the line:
Ognuno sta solo sul cuor della terra
trafitto da un raggio di sole:
ed è subito sera.
Each of us stands alone at the heart of the earth,
pierced by a ray of sunlight:
and suddenly it is evening.
The thematic material draws on Harold Arlen's Over the Rainbow — not as quotation or reference, but as a buried substrate, a tonal memory dissolved into the texture.
The spatial arrangement of the instruments was conceived as part of the composition itself: strings in mirrored pairs, glass harmonica at the centre. It was the first step in a research into spatialisation that has continued ever since.
The work received its premiere on 27 May 2011 at the Musica Contemporanea. Frontiere festival, organised by ASUT (Associazione Studenti Universitari Trento) at Fondazione Caritro, Trento, conducted by Mattia Culmona.
Technical details
Duration - 15'
Type - Chamber ensemble
Year - 2009
Ensemble — Glass harmonica, 2 I violins, 2 II violins, 2 viola, 2 cellos, double bass
World premiere - 27 May 2011, Musica Contemporanea. Frontiere, Fondazione Caritro, Trento
Conductor - Mattia Culmone Glass harmonica - Gianfranco Grisi