Works
Stefano Taglietti
La battaglia dei centauri (2002)
Sinfonia Scenica - Testo e quadro scenico: Bizhan Bassiri
for Choir and Orchestra
"Confluence of the energies in full force
of men of vision" (Bizhan Bassiri)
The Scenic (or visual) Symphony (1999-2002) followed shortly after the three previous scenic concertos: 1) La Divina Devastazione (1994-95); 2) Il Pensiero Magmatico (1996); 3) Palingenesi (1999).
Each of these compositions was inspired by the visual and dramatic works of Bizhan Bassiri. Chronologically, Bassiri conceptualized first Il Pensiero Magmatico, in 1984, followed by the great triptych La Battaglia dei Centauri and solely in 1996 the relative poetic text on which the symphony is based.
My research on the application of music to the concepts and forms of visual art was carried out in the period of time stretching from 1994 to the present day. The music written for this project has a dramaturgical motivation linked to the representativity of the idea of seeing while listening. The sound is stratified on the word and on the image and has the function of reconstructing a scheme of integral operatic narrative. It makes the three modes of creating Art converge in one sole direction or poetic language; it makes each mode assume the role of co-star. Fundamentally, the music does not accompany anything, the poetry does not underline visual situations and the vision does not photograph reality. Everything is reworked into a single language that has, as final outcome, the symphony itself. The origins of all this have been: first, the visual mind that conjures up pictures of sound and secondly, the musical mind that conceives the visionariness of sound. The word is the undivided communicating vessel in the mesh of the worlds of imagination. All this offers, in addition, the extraordinary possibility of a real union between sound and feeling.
Structurally the symphony consists of five movements, with an introduction which presents a sonorous setting (almost of waiting); this is followed by the first movement "The Scene of Battle", a highly agitated and dramatic movement, telluric. The second movement, "Monologue of the Last Mortally Wounded Centaur" is full of pathos, extremely powerful, with orchestral chiaroscuros in a broad, solemn tempo which ends in a rhythmic abandon of great choral quality and mixture of sound. The third movement opens with blocks of tone alternation, culminating in a central part for choir only; it then reverts to an even tempo with a long highly-coloured alternating melody, where each instrument contributes by playing in a sort of passage and interchange of the notes (like a chamber music "Mexican wave"), and finally returns to a very lively tempo. The fourth movement, "The Funeral", is slow and expressive with a fervent and simple passage with choir, piano and strings, continuing with energetic and extensive use of percussion and full orchestra. Finally, the "Requiem" opens by playing with different orchestral colours, all on the same note, a B flat produced by each instrument in the same field of frequency; the musical discourse continues, articulating many forms and orchestral combinations with extremely strong, lyrical solutions and dense texture of the woods; here too there is a central part with the choir only at the moment of "
in gloria, in gloria
". In this passage the choral score has a particular interlocking technique, a treatment which gives the choir a dramatic, steady and luminous sound.