Sandro Cappelletto
Ten composers under forty, born in ten different countries: the contemporary-music series at the Emerging Art Biennial confirms the universally accepted disappearance of a dominant language. Blessed were the days when one could ask a musician outright, “Tonal or twelve-tone? Neoclassical or uncompromising serialist?” They answered and the critic relaxed, knowing which box to put them in. Pure archaeology.
Eric Marinitsch, artistic representative of major international publisher Universal and curator of BIG Torino’s music section, recalls that “a fracture opened in art a century ago which now seems capable of closing: a work’s technical-structural and spiritual aspects need not conflict”.
The twenty-first century thus opens its doors to spirit, forgotten when technique’s altars were the preferred places of sacrifice. But was spirit absent from Berg’s Violin Concerto? Were soul and technique so opposed in Schoenberg’s Transfigured Night? Immediate verification is needed to refresh memory.
Yet it is true that many young composers contemplate sound and rediscover its ecstatic dimension, sometimes using archaic material. Wencheng Qin, Chinese and raised in Mongolia, combines modern techniques and folkloric inheritance. Estonian Helena Tulve claims a “wild musicality” and “even Gregorian impulses”. Austrian Johanna Doderer acknowledges a minimalist debt; Greek Theo Abazis reminds us of musical theatre and describes his music as “performance”. Italian Jacopo Baboni Schilingi promises to investigate a single note’s limits of persistence and duration.
Traditional instruments and new technology, ancient references and a gaze on today: the landscape could hardly be more chaotic or fertile. Three Master Releases meetings will reveal the protagonists’ origins, techniques, projects and awareness more closely.