Evoluzione Reversibile
Title Instrumentation Duration Year
Evoluzione Reversibile Spatialized orchestra 10′ circa 2010
Award: Winner of the Composition Competion “Musica e Spazi” organised by the Association Merkurio, the Turin Conservatory of Music and the Turin Polytechnic for an orchestral piece composed especially for the acoustics of the Conservatory hall.
First performance: 11.02.2011, Auditorium of the “G. Verdi” Conservatory, Turin (IT) – Orchestra of the Turin Conservatory; Giuseppe Ratti, conductor
The piece was conceived on the basis of the characteristics of the different instruments, which were disposed around the hall so as to obtain the best acoustic response. It is therefore for spatialised orchestra. The positions were chosen bearing in mind the problems and needs of each player, which proved quite complex because the various requirements had to be synthesised, and good perception of the sound was sought both for the players and the audience.
The work itself was based on canon 1 a 2 of J.S. Bach’s Musical Offering BWV 1079. The manuscript of this enigmatic canon shows a single pentagram, the beginning of which is connected to the end. At the end of the score, Bach drew an upside-down clef and key signature so that the players would turn the page upside-down and read the score from the last note back to the first. This space is topologically equivalent to a Moebius strip. The simultaneous performance of the two scores, forward and back, gives rise to two voices, the symmetry of which determines a “reversible evolution”.
The idea of using this canon as the basis for the piece arose from the desire to find correspondences between sound waves and music:
– return of the wave on itself, superimposing the same material;
– evolution of the sound reflections that continue to propagate until they fade to nothing;
– the conformation of certain sound paths that suggest the mathematical symbol for infinity ∞.
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