A Baboni Schilingi world premiere at Santa Cecilia. Daniela Gangale · Il Giornale della Musica, no. 292, May 2012.
Milanese Jacopo Baboni Schilingi, born in 1972 [as printed in the source], is one of the brilliant Italian musicians whose talent has found recognition and support abroad. From the early 1990s he studied and worked intensively in France, and today continues composing, teaching and researching electronic music from Paris, where he lives.
A world premiere commissioned by the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, scheduled for 18 May, features his string quartet De la nature du sacre. “It is the third in a cycle of five quartets I have been working on since 1999. For a long time I have questioned the notion of ‘cycle’ in music, particularly in Mahler,” he explains. “I believe it should not be associated exclusively with twentieth-century music: its roots can already be traced in late Beethoven.
“Alongside symphonic works, the string quartet is the only traditional form to survive to today; I believe both still have much to say. Writing a quartet lets me place myself within a tradition I recognise and come from, combining it with electronic music and genuinely pursuing research. Contemporary music has always, fundamentally, been research music, seeking to portray its time and build the new from the achievements of the past.”
At Santa Cecilia, audiences will find a classical string quartet onstage, its instruments amplified and connected to a control position in the middle of the hall. The players perform the score, and the composer, responsible for sound direction, reworks their playing and returns it to the audience in real time.
“The score is rigorously written,” Schilingi stresses, “but contains passages so virtuosic as to be almost impossible to perform. At those moments performers play heuristically, attempting as much of the writing as possible and effectively producing a different piece each time. The sound director works on that gap between score and performance.”
The cello is De la nature du sacre’s protagonist. “I dedicated each quartet to one instrument, beginning with second violin, moving to viola and now cello, before eventually reaching first violin. When I began this compositional adventure I did not feel ready to tackle the quartet’s leading instrument, so chose a gradual approach. Here the cello guides a journey seeking the right balance: the spirit of the ‘sacre’, the ritual recalled by the title.”