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From Renzo Cresti's
liner notes: “Pernaiachi makes silence sacred: it is a
silence charged with all silences. It is a flaming silence." The cult
of silence (the composer describes himself as “cultivating
silence") spread out in avant-garde music at the turn of the century,
even though it had been present for much longer (John Cage's
“4'33" is the obvious reference to make). ORA runs for
exactly two hours (spread over two CDs). It consists of completely
silent passages, isolated sounds and stretches of sounds. Whenever
something is heard it appears just at the threshold of audibility.
Sounds that are featured for longer periods of time (like a crackling
bonfire in parts 1 and 6) tend to disappear into the normal background
noise of your home — despite all the efforts you make to
quiet things down. It is all intentional. Pernaiachi places sounds (all
nature-related, by the way) only to shed light on the role silence
plays in the piece. It becomes an exercise in meditation and
transcendence of one's expectations. The composer encourages the
listener to listen at low volume and has split the work into six parts
so that they can be rearranged at will. Poems by Pernaiachi and
diagrams of the piece give flesh to this music that is not there. ORA
is a unique experience that runs further down that road than anything
else this reviewer has heard (including the music of Bernhard
Günter, Taku Sugimoto and Radu Malfatti). |
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Gianfranco
Pernaiachi's "Ora", a "single flux" lasting two hours (though each of
the two CDs is subdivided into three distinct tracks) that "must be
listened to at low volume", comes with a graphic score that expresses
simply and poetically when - but not what - sounds occur. Once you've
figured out, for example, that there's nothing at all between 5'10" and
12'52" (CD 1, track 3), you can choose whether or not to wait patiently
for the next sound (both the above, incidentally, are the sound of
wings beating as a bird takes to the air) or go and make yourself a cup
of tea. That's not intended to sound flippant, either; "Ora" doesn't
impose itself upon you - it's like a slim volume of poetry lying face
down on the table, and it's up to you to turn it over and open it up.
With other composers of so-called lowercase music (Bernhard
Günter and Francisco López come to mind), the sheer
effort required to hear what's going on - and the uneasy feeling of
guilt that you're missing out on something if you don't give the piece
your undivided attention - is often quite exhausting; "Ora"'s gentle
organic sounds (fire, water, air (the bird) and I guess the low rumble
about half way though is derived from the earth) are beautiful in their
own right, but you can quite easily appreciate them and read
Pernaiachi's accompanying poetry at the same time. Maybe one of the
websites I visited to research his biography isn't all that far from
the truth by calling it New Age music. To discuss, perhaps.. |
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Pernaiachi
non è certo un
musicista di primo pelo, sia per quanto riguarda l'anagrafe
(è nato a Roma nel 1951) sia per quanto riguarda
l'attività che lo ha visto frequentare il conservatorio
prima come allievo e poi come docente. Autore non particolarmente
prolifico, ha solo altri tre dischi alle spalle, Pernaiachi porta a
compimento con "Ora" una ricerca nei meandri del silenzio interiore che
dura ormai da oltre vent'anni. Tale ricerca parte dall'opera musicale
di Morton Feldman e da quella pittorica di Mark Rothko - tanto per fare
due nomi, ma sarebbe lecito citarne anche altri come György
Ligeti… - per approdare a questa enigmatica
rappresentazione che si differenzia, a causa di una maggiore
introspezione, dalle più riuscite opere con cui potrebbe
essere tessuto un paragone: 4'33" di John Cage, Stones di Christian
Wolff, Silence del trio A. Braxton / L. Smith / L. Jenkins, Beinhaltung
del trio P. Durrant / T. Lehn / R. Malfatti e Un peu de neige salie di
Bernhard Günter. La reale difficoltà nell'approccio
ad "Ora" sta proprio in questa sua introspezione, una caratteristica
che da sempre richiede un tipo di particolare affinità fra
l'artista e il suo pubblico per essere penetrata. (...) |
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