Do you notice a mistake?
From his first piece, Die Aussicht [1985/rev. 2003], Stefano Gervasoni already displayed a highly personal expressive and musical outlook, perceptibly influenced by Webern. From its first notes, the work shows Gervasoni’s inclination toward intimate, delicate forms of expression, as well as a pure, contained, and fragile lyricism, which would go on to characterize his output. Its text, one of Hölderlin’s last poems (written under the name of Scardanelli) celebrates the luminosity of nature, which it holds in contrast to time’s obscurity, and in which its subject mourns his powerlessness to change the course of events (the verbs “glänzen” and “erglänzen” [to shine] are placed strategically in each of the poem’s two strophes). The link between writing and content, as well as the composer’s reflection on his own place in his time are present even in this early work. The choice of ensemble around the vocalist is itself original: two melodic instruments, a clarinet and a viola, anticipate and extend the vocal part in their solos at the beginning and the end of the piece, while the three percussionists create a harmonic space in which these sonorities play a predominant role. At times, this creates forms of musical symbolism, notably when the image of the sky gives rise to crystalline sounds. All of the details of the musical universe Gervasoni would rapidly build in the works that followed are already present here: the poetic atmosphere, at once highly private and driven by existential questioning, which Gervasoni uses to subject his compositional work to the powers of the imagination; and the creation of an extremely rich, subtle, refined, and expressive sonic world that is also highly organic and immediately grabs the listener’s attention. The two dimensions are linked: the poetry of Gervasoni’s music comes from the sonic magic woven in each one of his works, which is itself sparked by a poetic relationship to the world, where – echoing Hölderlin – the subject is torn between celebration and resignation.
Exploring the composer’s other vocal works, one notes a clear affinity for lapidary texts that reflect deeply on the essence of phenomena and of feelings. The writing is sensitive and thoughtful, both in the poems used and in the music itself – the work’s content and form cannot be separated from each other. Meaning flows even from the way things are said; Gervasoni’s music cannot be reduced to a combination of sounds any more than it can be subsumed under the ideas and images it conveys. This is one of the major difficulties of commenting on it. The introverted poetry of Emily Dickinson, Ungaretti, Rilke, Scialoja, Caproni, and Beckett; the unsettling sentences of Angelus Silesius; the everyday imagery in the double meanings in Philip Levine’s poetry; as well as the many references to Celan and the recent appearance of Gottfried Benn and Camões all form a constellation that lights up different aspects of Gervasoni’s music. All of these facets, however, can already be discerned in his first piece: an aspiration toward beauty, light, wonder, and ecstasy, shot through with bitterness, despair, rage, and an attraction to the abyss.
This internal contradiction, which may also be seen as an attempt to embrace the totality of feelings, gives rise to a series of paradoxes. The transparency of the writing, which may be noted as a dominant trait in Gervasoni’s work, is stripped down to its essentials in a way that bares him to the world, eliminating any artifice that might function to idealize anything. However, this transparency is constantly veiled by discreet, sometimes almost imperceptible processes. The initial sonic image often appears in a perfect form and balance, as if it were not the composition’s point of departure, but rather its conclusion. Gervasoni then proceeds, by varied repetitions, to slowly change that sonic image, making microscopic transformations that allow it to be seen from ever-so-slightly different perspectives: the context itself slowly transforms the way it is perceived. In the third movement of his Concerto for viola [1994-95], the soloist plays a series of short motives, complementary and contrasting, resembling a collection of highly individualized figures that never spill over into one another. These motives travel through the movement in different variations, and are constantly reinterpreted in the instrumental ensemble’s performance, giving them more weight and another form of presence (they reappear in the finale). This paradoxical play between repetition and difference, between like and unlike, appears in a different form in the first movement of the same work: fragments of scales played with short note values are deployed frantically, in a kind of wild movement; the source figure, the solo viola, is amplified and blurred by the other instruments, creating an almost alarmingly thick sound in which the different voices cannot be distinguished from one another (they form an amalgam, rather than a contrapuntal structure). This initial sonic image is propagated through the principle of repetition-transformation; its metamorphoses cannot by grasped merely by listening. In Animato [1992], the idea of ascending motion is evoked from the very beginning by the piccolo, and this remains the idée fixe of the piece, emerging in different ways throughout. At the same time, however, the initial figure is itself conceived in the form of a variation on the first measure (that can be reduced still further to the kernel of an ascending semitone), with, in simultaneous counterpoint, two figures played on the piano: a rapid group noted as leggerissimo played by the right hand and a slow, whole-tone ascension played by the left (which appears as a rhythmic and intervallic augmentation of the foundational motive, and which forms the work’s conclusion). The repetition of the same gesture over several measures, and their later reprises, are misleading: the figure’s identity is in fact subjected to ongoing synchronic and diachronic variations; playing styles change and certain secondary elements are added. When the clarinet plays a brief static figure that stands in opposition to the ascending movement that had until that moment been dominant, the strings play a variation on the initial idea in a quicker tempo.
In the above examples, musical time as it is perceived is both dynamic and static, linear and folded in on itself. This sort of contradiction might be described by saying that the music gives the illusion of movement, of a form of narrative, while in reality it is immobile, spinning on its own axis. Or, inversely, one might describe it as offering the illusion of stillness, the impression that it is not evolving, when in fact it is constantly transforming from the inside. This mix of movement and immobility evokes the image of a spiral, a form that simultaneously rises from and collapses into itself. It cannot ever become fully stable, cannot evolve into something that might be perceived as a conclusion or a finale, nor can it provoke catharsis. It remains suspended somewhere between exultant activity and a reduction to silence. These elements bring a depth to Gervasoni’s music that appears in contradiction to the clearness and lightness of its sounds. One hears this in the figures themselves: the initial phrase of Animato cannot be reduced to an irregular chromatic ascension, constantly beginning again – its unstable character is also marked by different playing techniques: rapid tremolos or mordents for certain notes, glissandi between certain semitones, and Flatterzunge: the musical phrasing is complex in its presentation and the sonority itself is composed. The tension of the chromaticism at the pitch level is merely one element of an overall writing style that seeks to imbue each note with movement and expressivity, to instill a kind of trembling in which the sound is not autonomous, but rather racked by pulsing, emotional, and physical shocks (in his pieces, Gervasoni often uses different forms of vibrato and sound colors to transform notes into immediately expressive sonorities).
As in many of his pieces, the beginning of Animato is polarized toward higher registers; it is a music “without feet”, to use Debussy’s expression, as if the sounds were floating in the sonic space. This absence of anchoring, in the sonority as in the understanding of the form, is not superficial in any way; on the contrary, it leads to a tragic expression, underlining the fragility of phenomena. The sonic space is striated by the fleeting nature of these lines; they can find no solid ground in which to take root. In the very ritualized finale of his viola concerto, the piece’s tragic nature is generated by the sounds of stones and dice rubbed together that give a spare accompaniment for the solo viola. The viola, in turn, reprises certain figures of the third movement, but distorts them. This conclusion is inexorable, and as it is sustained it pushes up against the limits of what is bearable; the music appears to be collapsing in on itself. The obsessive reiteration, in which time is frozen, produces a kind of fright. Elsewhere, in other works, this fright makes itself felt in the hearing of an unexpected sound, a sudden gesture, or a silence. In Poesie francesi [1994-96], the highly subtle sound structure literally absorbs both text and voice, folding them into the other instruments, progressing almost seamlessly. It is as if it were not the author deciding on the form’s fate, but some higher logic, an impersonal force. The music speaks for itself, beyond any direct subjectivity, achieving a form of emotion that transcends consciousness and understanding. What has been so meticulously crafted appears in the end to be a natural phenomenon, as if things were meant to be this way and no other. The work reveals reality as it is, rather than sketching out the contours of what ought to be. But this form of resignation, in which time’s violence scars the very body of the music, sometimes cruelly, cuttingly, as in the second movement of the viola concerto, creates a distance from the self, a taste of playfulness, a form of redemptive irony. It is by virtue of another paradox that one might interpret Gervasoni’s music as both natural processes and as mannerist; that is, as a form directly linked to the creative unconscious, while at the same time carefully thought-out, down to its innermost structures. The very techniques of composition evoke Stravinsky in his Russian period: a perfect placement of sound, in which musical ideas are embodied in the sounds themselves; the juxtaposition of individualized motives with tremendous gestural potential, related to autonomous roles, which then give rise to a sort of montage. The references, which burst forth from the texture create a distance that is at once poetic and sarcastic as it dialogues within the musical discourse.
Gervasoni’s work is indeed full of references, including references to his own work. By basing his work on expressive gestures – not so much archetypes, as was the case with Stravinsky, but as physically experienced and affective movements – bringing archaic figures back to life and setting in motion a play of associations in memory. In Godspell [2002], Philip Levine’s poetry of the concrete brings forth allusions to jazz; An [1989] is filled implicitly with Schubert, complete with quotes (from two youthful lieder for Laura). Gervasoni’s work also contains references to Schumann (in Atemseile [1997]), Monteverdi (Sonata Sopra Sancta Maria [1999-2000]), Chopin (in Fantasia for piano and orchestra [2005]), and Mozart (in Adagio für Glasorchester [1990/1992]). In the string quartet Six lettres sur l’obscurité (und zwei Nachrichten) [2005-06], a Frescobaldi ricercare suddenly appears. These moments, which escape the logic of what may strictly be considered to be composition, create a distance within their modes of listening, evoking processes comparable to those of Zimmermann or Lachenmann. Stefano Gervasoni also enjoys using modal structures (which he was already employing in Die Aussicht), consonant intervals, or triadic chord structures that open up an unexpected space within the composition. Notably, this technique is found in In Dir [2003-04], which recalls certain pieces in Heinz Holliger’s Scardanelli-Zyklus. These passages recur frequently in Gervasoni’s work, and are not merely dropped into the work as if they were foreign bodies. Instead, they are based in writing rooted in the non-homogeneity and the non-continuity of musical ideas. They act as signs from far off, shining and melancholy. They cannot be detached from a compositional process that seeks to shatter all forms of systematization and to hold open the entire field of possibility, awaiting an epiphany of unexpected figures. The composer’s affection for giving folk music traditions a place in his compositions should also be noted: in a work that was underway at the time of this essay’s writing, Gervasoni was exploring the world of fado in Lisbon, in connection to the poetry of Camões.
Space, for Gervasoni, brings into play an underlying hierarchy built not only on the twelve-note scale, but, at a deeper level, on the way of being for sounds and their affinities – something that is, in truth, a trait of all great composers. It creates a spectrum and reaches all the way to its extremes, from noise to the purest of sounds. At the same time, its harmonic tensions do not all come from the relationship between consonance and dissonance in the traditional sense of those terms. Rather, they are recovered from the inner nature of sounds and imagined sonic complexes. Sound, to Gervasoni, cannot be defined initially by its pitch, and secondarily by its timbral characteristics: it is a sonic whole, comprising all the elements that make it its own particular phenomenon. This is why Gervasoni’s scores demand a great variety of performance techniques, including ad hoc techniques and unusual materials. An entire catalogue could be made of these many unexpected sounds; they bear witness not only to an extremely rich and refined sonic imagination, but also to the depth of his musical thinking. While some sounds appear as more or less surprising material, others immediately evoke an expressive modality – Gervasoni’s language is full of spasms and impulses, cries, tender gestures, sobs; other pieces call on naturalistic references such as the seagull cries noted in Viola Concerto or the bee flight depicted in Least Bee [1991-92] and repeated in Animato. But beyond any representative form, to which his rich sonic vocabulary cannot be reduced, the main thing for the composer is to forge organic ties among different performance techniques and different materials; to lift them out of the realm of simple effect or mere gesture, and into musical structures that are part of a hierarchy. Here, the composer’s genius lies in his ability to harmonize highly individualized sounds, binding them together while marking their differences, all in the service of an articulate and coherent musical difference. This is the case even if – and this may be where Gervasoni’s music distinguishes itself most radically from that of his contemporaries – these singular sonorities are not meant to be only structural: they overflow with expressiveness, leading us back to the very source of our emotions. Often, these are born of an appearance, an unexpected encounter, an unusual sound.
The thrill of Gervasoni’s music, based in part on different breathing inflections, even when he is writing for strings or percussion, has inspired the composer to include events from his own life in his compositions, in a kind of cryptic autobiography. Certain indications are highly enigmatic, as in the aforementioned quartet: “I (…R)”, “R”, “E…”, which are inserted between an “Erste” and a “Zweite Nachricht” (first and second message). The anecdotal element in the context of a biography contains an existential and even metaphysical dimension. In In Dir, the music refracts maxims from Silesius, crafted from contradictory motions between faith and doubt: first, through the arrangement of the sound, and notably the play between pure intervals and aggregates, but also structurally, by using a twelve-tone row presented simultaneously as the prime and the inversion or retrograde. Here, the idea of the row is linked to a conjunction between Silesius and Webern already suggested by Castiglioni in his two Cantus planus (where pure intervals and triads also stand out strikingly). The twelve-tone row is used here as a historical technique that makes possible a range of intrinsic significations; it refracts relationships between high and low that also symbolize an alliance with or rejection of God, recalling the theological reflections of Silesius through the eyes of an agnostic. The choir is divided into two groups that move closer to or further away from each other, similar to the way that the different forms of the row symbolize congruence (or not) with the divine. But Gervasoni’s goal is rather to intensify the contradictions, so that the closer we get, the further we move away. Similarly, in the quartet Six lettres à l’obscurité, the chromatic movement of Frescobaldi whose name in the original is Ricercare chromatico post il Credo is reinterpreted here as a search (ricercare) that is as open as possible (chromatico) following the death of God (post il Credo). One of Gervasoni’s strengths is raising the question of spirituality, contrasting the question of the music’s “message” in a context marked by skepticism, rather than being limited to purely sonic play.
This string quartet, a somber, profound piece with a surprising trajectory, is coupled with a more heterogeneous quartet of two pianos and two percussions whose enigmatic title, Sviete tihi, Capriccio dopo la Fantasia (2005-06), recalls a story by the Italian writer Paolo Rumiz. Among other things, Rumiz tells of his being dazzled by a pure, intense light in a Serbian Orthodox monastery. Gervasoni seems to seek out other possibilities from this in the formal structure. The playful sequence in Sviete tihi is based on a dialectic of the sonic analogy between the instruments and unexpected twists and turns, which take the form of illuminations. In Six lettres it acquires a more introspective, nocturnal dimension, as if the work’s different sections were being tied into a kind of rite of passage, a wandering. The fact that at the end, the piece turns back in on itself, reminding us of the point of departure, gives the whole piece the appearance of a dream. Once again, the composer underlines the piercing and veiled evocation of the Frescobaldi ricercare. The melancholy chromaticism of this piece’s illustrious ancestor is like the primitive portrait of Gervasoni’s more agitated creations - of its almost trembling figures, its raw writing - just as the fullness one finds within the piece’s historical model highlights almost painfully its sonic universe, at the very edge of silence, traversed by fleeting rays of light emitted by certain intervals and certain chords. The string quartet Strada non presa [2001] thematizes this wandering in its attempt to open up new pathways into composition. In this and other contemporaneous works, Gervasoni appears to be hoping to escape from the logic of his own formal developments, in an almost dreamlike way, seeking to “get out of the habit” of his former strategies (one of his piano pieces is actually titled Studio di disabitudine [1998-99]). How can one create a temporal dynamic when the music tends to stop still at certain figures or gestures? How can one achieve this transcendence that, in some music in the past, was a part of the principle of development, but since Debussy has been required to include rupture, displacement, allusion, parentheses, and leaps into the abyss? If Gervasoni’s music requires that we step inside this play of figures and composition of textures, to inhabit the sound, in a way, his intent is to lose us in a labyrinth of infinite metamorphoses. Here, however, the form risks becoming lost in a succession of moments whose directionality we can no longer sense. Within this open, flexible, ramified time, the work appears to have begun before its first note, and to resonate beyond its last, as if its power of transformation were infinite. In a certain way, Gervasoni’s works form one great whole: it would be fairly easy to link them together, as a way of taking stock of that wholeness. But in some of his more recent pieces, the composer has sought out a more sweeping, more complex path, obliging the listener to surface from their immersion in this prodigiously composed sonic material and to measure the distance travelled. The play of repetition and difference, of near and far, is taken to a higher level.
All of the difficulty comes from the fact that the subject here is not concretely built up into the fate of the form; to the contrary, it is confined within the limits of its own disintegration. It shoulders its own fragility, its chaotic multiplicity, which bar it from accessing any of the old logics of development. Its moments of fullness are only ephemeral visions, tinged with melancholy. For the composer, the aspiration toward more lofty regions overlaps with an ethical desire for purity, transparency, and spirituality, as well as with a form of innocence, a certain image of childhood that lends his music its playful character. This may be linked more closely to a flight from rather than a poetic returning to reality. If it contains a measure of melancholy, that melancholy is evanescent, that of the ideal toward which we may only pursue, without ever attaining. But at the same time, Gervasoni’s music is also a hymn to beauty, a form of sonic and spiritual jubilation, a veritable illumination. As in many of his pieces that use ascending and descending scales as their motive (this is notably the case with a recent work, Irrene Stimme), he soars upward even as he is pulled back down. “Aufwärts oder hinab” – “They dwindle, they fall, / The suffering mortals / Blinding from one / Hour to another, / Like water from rock / To rock hurled down, / Year long into confusion below” (Hölderlin)1. These falls and shadows shatter the glittering surface of Gervasoni’s works: in Irrene Stimme, they absorb a fluent discourse that is itself threatened by the implacable and unsettling chords of the brass, similar to the silence that gnaws at the music in Six lettres à l’obscurité. Doubling the piano with a cimbalom, gives acidity to its sonority, displacing the intention of the concertante style, shifting it. When the wandering voices, which are inner voices (Innere Stimme), are heard, the space contracts and zeroes in, pushing us as far as we can go: to the point of no return. Through these abrupt developments, which appear as ruptures, unexpected spaces open up to us. In their inner folds, many-colored skies unfurl, imaginary firmaments that help us to see reality in sharper focus.
Do you notice a mistake?