The violin’s melody, always smooth and simple, undergoes an exact and meticulous unfolding of pitches against a more wandering, or vague, harmonic exploration in the piano music. In the music, a simple cycle of chords is treated to what could become an infinite process of repetition and change. He contemplates the idea of night, darkness, obscurity and depth, and talks of the simultaneous evocation of fear and pleasure that true infinity induces in those who contemplate it. In the music I created contrasting musical gestures for the violin held together by common intervallic materials whilst exploring different perceptions of motion and speed within the piano part.Ĭalvino contrasts the notion of ‘Exactitude’ against Vago – an Italian adjective meaning ‘attractive’ or ‘wandering’, as well as ‘vague’.

He talks of continuity of form, discoursing and the idea of festina lente, or ‘hurrying slowly’. In ‘Quickness’ Calvino describes how seemingly disparate narrative events can be connected through repetition, rhyme and rhythm. In the music, I have sought to find a driving rhythm in the piano, propelling itself ever forward as the violin floats above escaping the tonal force of gravity of the piano’s harmony as though it is a neutrino, wandering free since the beginning of time. He contrasts these images with heaviness and savage, brutal horror.

He contemplates grace, light, veils of particles and the fine balance of the physical forces holding matter together. In ‘Lightness’ Calvino discusses the concept of balancing an inner rhythm against a frantic spectacle. My ambition, to create musical responses to the artistic virtues Calvino held up as being of particular importance for writers, and artists, of the future. Lightness – Quickness – Exactitude – Visibility – Multiplicityĭescription I took Italo Calvino’s series of Charles Eliot Norton Lectures, Six Memos for the Next Millennium, as a starting point to create a five-movement work for violin and piano.

Italo calvino quickness