per voce, sax alto, elettronica

brano commissionato dall’ensemble L’Arsenale, voce Livia Rado, sax Ilario Morciano.
Dedicato a Livia Rado.

Si tratta di un lavoro quasi totalmente incentrato sulla voce di Livia Rado, cui ho dapprima chiesto di recitare e registrare integralmente due diversi testi di Samuel Beckett. Da queste registrazioni ho poi estratto dei frammenti che ho montato secondo una logica musicale. Rockaby, del 1980 e Not I, del 1972 sono due brevissime pièce teatrali forti e radicali, nella loro concentrazione drammatica, ma di impianto e nucleo narrativo quasi opposto. Il testo di Rockaby (Dondolo) è caratterizzato dalla lentezza cadenzata e dalla ripetitività quasi ritmico-ipnotica di una voce fuoricampo; mentre Not I (Non io) è il risultato di un flusso vocale incontrollato, rapido e sintatticamente frammentato. Vi sono però anche dei fondamentali punti in comune: due monologhi al femminile, scritti spezzettando il testo in brevissime frasi che delineano storie di due vite quasi non vissute e senza speranza. La prima (Rockaby) consumata alla finestra nella vana attesa di un incontro con l’Altro –appunto un’altra anima viva– che la strappi all’inesorabile ripetizione del destino materno; la seconda (Not I) segnata da un improvviso quanto tardivo lampo di autocoscienza, che rompe settan’anni di remissivo silenzio per esplodere in uno scroscio sconnesso di parole che tentano la descrizione autopercettiva di un’identità ormai dissociata.
Il brano è articolato in zone diverse, una per ciascun testo, alternate senza mediazioni, in blocchi contrastanti, ciascuno con la propria peculiare presenza della voce recitante preregistrata, con la quale la voce live intesse un molteplice gioco di specchi e richiami, alternando a sua volta il recitato sottovoce, quello in voce, il canto su corda di recita, il canto “fonetico” e il canto pieno. La voce live dialoga spesso in modo drammatico con il proprio alterego preregistrato, ma è un confronto che dobbiamo immaginare tutto interiore, chiuso nella mente della protagonista. Il sassofono interviene anch’esso in una duplice veste: come doppio del canto e, attraverso le sonorità alienate dei multifonici, come una sorta di commento astratto ma espressivo. L’elettronica, oltre che ospitare la parte vocale preregistrata e trattata, introduce delle idee di andamento ripetitivo e ciclico, una melodica, l’altra materica, che sono in qualche modo espressione della struttura circolare dei testi beckettiani, a sua volta espressione di un’alienazione esistenziale e psichica. Poi incisi sonori concreti e texture armoniche dense, di origine strumentale, avvolgono spesso, assorbendole, le linee della voce e del sax.
Dai due testi di Beckett ho estratto i seguenti frammenti (in neretto le frasi recitate/cantate dalla voce live):

(English translation) This work moves from the challenging will to merge together two short Samuel Beckett’s dramas: Rockaby (1980) and Not I (1972). These two tough and radical pièce display an opposite dramatic setting:  Rockaby features a slow-cadence voice-over, in a rhythmical quasi hypnotic iteration. Not I, on the contrary, results in a rapid uncontrolled rushing vocal flow, coming out from a mouth isolated on stage. Yet there are aspects shared by both the plays: two feminine monologues written shattering the text in very short phrases; the outline of two almost not-lived and hopeless lives. The first (Rockaby) is spent at the window in vane waiting of the meeting with somebody else –another living soul– who could push her away from the inescapable repetition of her mother’s destiny. The second (Not I) is marked by a sudden yet late self-conscious flash that brakes seventy years of compliant silence and rushes in an unhinged waterfall of words that try the self-perceptive description of a disoriented identity.
The work is almost completely focused on Livia’s voice, whom I first asked to readout and record the whole texts. Then from these recordings I took out some fragments that I mixed and edited according to a musical thought and architecture. The piece is articulated in different zones, according to the two texts, that alternate themself in contrasting blocks without mediation. Each block features its peculiar pre-recorded voice with which the live voice intertwins a multiple play made of mirrors and recalls. The live voice continuously changes her singing and speaking mode: words recited under the breath, one-note singing, “phonetic” or plain singing. We must figure the dramatic dialogue of the live voice with her pre-recorded alterego as totally interior, locked up in the protagonist’s mind. Also the saxophone displays two different ways of action, as double of the singing and –when using the alienate sonorities of multiphonics– as abstract, expressive commentary. The Electronics, a part from the elaborated pre-recorded voice, brings some ripetitive and cyclical ideas made with melodies or mechanical noises, that are expression of the circular structure of the beckettian texts, itself expression of a psychic and existential alienation. Moreover concrete sound interventions and dense harmonic textures often wrap and swallow the lines of the voice and sax.
From the two Beckett’s texts I have extracted the following fragments (in bold the words read/sung by the live voice):

da Rockaby:
till in the end the day came close of a long day when she said to herself whom else
time she stopped going to and fro all eyes all sides high and low for another another like herself another creature like herself a little like another living soul one other living soul More time she went and sat at her window quiet at her window facing other windows let up the blind only window gone back in all blinds down never one up hers alone up for a blind up one blind up no more never mind a face behind the pane famished eyes like hers to see be seen no more another creature there somewhere there behind the pane went down in the end went down down the steep stair let down the blind and down right down into the old rocker mother rocker where mother sat all the years all in black best black sat and rocked rocked till her end came off her head they said gone off her head but harmless no harm in her dead one day head fallen was her own other own other living soul rock her off stop her eyes.

da Not I :
out . . . into this world . . . this world . . . tiny little thing . . . before its time . . . in a godfor– . . . what? . . girl? . . yes . . . tiny little girl . . . into this . . . out into this . . . before her time . . . godforsaken hole called . . . called . . . no matter . . . parents unknown . . . unheard of . . . so no love . . . spared that. . . no love such as normally vented on the . . . speechless infant . . . in the home . . . no… no love of any kind coming up to sixty when– . . . what? . . seventy?. . good God! wandering in a field…. a few steps then stop…. then on . . . a few more . . . stop and stare again…what? . . who? . . no! . . she! . .found herself in the dark . . . and if not exactly . . . insentient . . . insentient . . . for she could stillhear the buzzing . . . so-called . . . in the ears…. sudden flash… for her sins… or the machine . . . more likely the machine. . . so disconnected . . . never got the message… couldn’t make the sound . . . not any sound . . . no sound of any kind . . . no screaming for help…. scream . . . then listen . . . scream again . . . then listen again …for on that April morning…. a distant bell…sudden flash . . . . . very foolish really but– . . . what? . . the buzzing? . . yes . . . all the time buzzing . . . so-called . . . in the ears . dull roar in the skull… dull roar like falls… and all the time this ray or beam . . . like moonbeam but … . and a ray of light came and went…. such as the moon when suddenly . . . gradually… she realized . . . words were…what? . . who?. . no! words were coming … imagine!  how she survived!   a voice… her voice alone…  and now this stream .. steady stream … nothing she could think .. nothing she could tell.. the mouth alone… mouth on fire … begging the mouth to stop . . and can’t stop.

© Sergio Lanza 2020-2021