David Toop celebrates the work of Italy's unsung visionary of interactive computer and telematic music.
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Pietro Grossi was a cellist and composer, born in Venice in 1917. From 1967 until his death last year he experimented with digital media: presenting computer music software at the Venice Biennale in 1970 and in the same year organising one of the first experiments in telematic performance through a telephone line between Rimini and Pisa. By invitation of lannis Xenakis, he presented another telematic concert between Pisa and Paris in 1974. Deeply opposed to entrenched ideas of musical virtuosity, copyright ownership and artisanship, he developed software that produced open, unfinished compositions, then distributed these around the world "to be used for various compositional purposes". As soundscape artist Albert Mayr writes in his sleevenotes to Battimenti: "Obviously his intentions were misunderstood and ridiculed (the golden age of plunderphonics was still far away)." His last works were electronically produced and individually unique books derived from his Homeport project of automated visual processes.
If we cast our minds back to the excitable 1990s, when Future Sound Of London were hailed as future sound of the universe for their telematic concert between London and New York, or when Koan, software was praised for its services to generative music Grossi comes to light as an unsung visionary. These two releases come too late for him to enjoy that recognition, yet they give a more realistic historical context to concepts that are not so new or radical after all.
The CD from Ants, a Rome based label, contains four versions of a composition called Battimenti, created in 1965 at Grossi's S 2F M studio in Florence. Each version is a different mathematical permutation of sinewave combinations - two, three, four and five frequencies - all of them producing beats that vary according to very slight pitch differences. Other composers were thinking along similar lines during the 1950s and 60s (La Monte Young and Steve Reich in the US, for example, or Toshiro Mayazumi in Japan), but I don't think anybody else was quite this systematic. Since each piece maintains the same basic pitch, the only variations coming from different wave lengths of beat frequencies, the effect is remarkably austere, its purity only alleviated by the poetic fluctuations that come more clearly into focus with concentrated listening. I suspect that Ryoji Ikeda and Pan Sonic will be buying this CD, if they don't know Grossi's work already.
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As to why Grossi should be such an obscure figure, despite his prophetic work, the answer may lie with the zeitgeist of the 196Os. Neither dressed up in Indian clothes nor bent on career building, Grossi just carried on quietly working away at his theories. Late in the day it may be, but I'm happy to discover him.

(David Toop - The Wire)

File this one under experimental music and emphasize the first word, because in the end it sounds much more like a scientific experiment than a music composition. Realized between 1964 and 1966 and circulated among peers (it had a strong influence on Italian composer Albert Mayr), Battimenti finally received a proper (partial) release in 2003. Pietro Grossi was very meticulous in his exploration of the possibilities of electronic music. For this piece, he set out to catalog the beats appearing when frequencies juxtapose. Systematically combining two to ten frequencies by increments of one Hz between 395 and 405 Hz (giving 11 frequencies), the piece progresses mathematically, 30 seconds at a time. Only the sets for two, three, four, and five frequencies have survived the long hibernation (for a total of 53 minutes of music), but they are enough to measure the seriousness in Grossi's approach and, one must admit, the understated charm of the piece. The temptation to put Grossi in the same bed as the American minimalists is strong, but in fact, on the count of this piece he was more of a methodologist. Every half-minute, a new set of frequencies rings, implacably, whether you are still listening or not. Of course, this acoustic phenomenon is a lot less impressive today than it was back in the mid-'60s, but if you haven't had a chance to be exposed to true analog beats, Battimenti is the best textbook you can find. 

(François Couture - All Music Guide)