A composition portfolio beyond communication : an islander’s perspective

Abstract

The portfolio presents four highly contrasted works written in the following order along the years 2010-16: Roma Lavrentio, Entrückung, Nidi nel Campanile and Garigue. These four works display a mosaic of intuitions and worldviews emerging from and fused in the same consciousness. The acknowledgement of the roots as an island composer to which I have been exposed throughout my musical career, are part of my compositional DNA. Rhapsodic materials recur with varying degrees of abstraction that are specifically topographical especially in Garigue, a ‘rapsodia concertante’ for violoncello and orchestra depicting the austere garigue insular habitat throughout the year. The other composition Nidi nel Campanile is a work that experiments with acoustic and electronic media, where the music is nested through the motifs that resemble largely dissipative structures, but which are in fact compound re-structurings that spell the exact etymology of the Latin transitive verb ‘componere’ – to put together, to compile, to organise. This work for flute is counterpointed against the manipulated sound of the big bell in the Maltese harbour city of Cospicua. It explores also the idea of migratory patterns that characterise an island status. The other composition Entrückung, a ‘Handlung’ (transaction) for big orchestra flirts with the potentialities of colourful rhythmic outbursts designed to induce the listener into a euphoric state of an ever-increasing spiral of unexpected chromatic twists. The transactional treatment of compositional material with flashes of heart-throbbing rhythmic punches so typical of the Mediterranean passionate character, strikes an emotionally saturated attribute that is provocatively rapturous. On the other end is Roma Lavrentio, a work designed to fit local consumption and thus cast in a very accessible idiom. This extended work employs a purposeful use of ‘traditional tonality’ that can also serve as an efficacious compositional tool within a template of pragmatic strategies. This has been my reaction to localised models of receptiveness, schematically gearing an almost film-music model to help the audience visualise the text. It is music for the sake of itself, untouched by fashions or isms, happy to take its chances, re-consummating the language of tonality, harmony and modulations, earthy more than universal. The score evokes the grandness of mighty Rome and portrays episodes from the life of the archdeacon of Rome Laurence, martyred under the reign of Emperor Valerian in 258 AD. Roma Lavrentio possesses pages of suave moods and spiritual tranquillity that subsequently switch with others of sheer brassy power and above all, one that seeks to transmit the terrors of Roman persecution. It is a work that essentially circumscribes my spiritual convictions, whilst revealing at the same time an intriguing collaboration between a small island composer and the upper echelons of a highly influential ecclesiastical institution bent on propagating heroic models of the Catholic faith. This work evolves in a delicate balance that reconciles my musical language and its idiomatic features with the conservative musical expectations of its envisaged patrons as the consumers of the work, without compromising artistic utterance. All the components of this portfolio have one basic ingredient: musical communication, where the composer’s consciousness is relayed directly to the performers through the physical realization of the vigorously subjective blueprints of his music. This becomes the functional and metaphorical medium through which the ultimate recipients, the listeners, are provided with sensory experiences that in some way or other partake of the composer’s states of mind that helped shape his creative output as an islander. After all a composer is a communicator by aspiration. Leaving communication out of the sketch of the composer’s intention would spell indifference resulting in the dismantling of the musical experience and the socio-cultural processes that generate such communication.