First of all i wanna ask you how is born the idea to release the box 'The Assent To Paradoxon', and maybe if there's a common tie, in musical explorations and concepts, in the choice of the seven chapters included. For example, in works like Sense Geometry,, Concert Industriel Pour Orgue or Symphony N.4, i've noticed the will to elaborate a structure of sound deeply cinematographic and ipnotic/theatrical, a sort of 'cosmic voyage' like in the German cosmic tradition of the 70es (i think to act like Popol Vuh or Amon Duul, like approach essentially)...
The idea of the box-set with 7 albums is the child of my publisher Mauro Casagrande. Because the majority of my main works has corresponding ideological concepts, it was not difficult to be inspired to formation of a relatively homogenous collection from this point of view. This concept is as an irritable proclamation of a seeming oxymoron expressed in their unitive name confessing the rejection of materialistic rationalism, regnant to the modern history of human. I waited for official release of my solo works very long time, therefore idiomatic compatibility of the collection components is not fully conceptual and represents rather the choice of works surveying particular periods of the evolution of my compositional style as well as the same process in sound creative principles of my music.
In all works are present similar approaches to sound construction, from strictly divided roles of particular means of expression in Sense Geometry to Exorcisms or Les scènes ardentes, where instrumental and non-instrumental sound sources are emancipated. That "cosmic" element you mention is expressed in various intensity in all work of mine, allegorically expressing some kind of philosophically antithesis in confrontation between spiritual and materialistic world, which struggle is substantial theme of my works. It is not a "idée fixe" but only an attribute, representing by its characteristics the space of our mind in opposition to the monodimensional limitation of our thinking by load of the matter.
Maybe I will disappoint you - however you can find some connotation between my works and traditions you mentioned - I was not influenced by them and my essential stimuli for using of that element arose naturally from the antagonism between my personal opinion "equipment" and the milieu of consumption idolatery.
I consider magistral your ability to arrange a clever cohesion between classical-avantgarde structures and the industrial-ambient futuristic ones. Expecially the ability to create, in your compositions, a contemporary translation of sacred and liturgical music, of its tension and lyricism. Can you tell me how is growth this kind of process in your compositions?
In advance, I have to appreciate your expression “cohesion”, because it is a crucial moment in understanding of my trying. Not accidental style mutation, not experimental mix, but the unity of means of expression, enabling to musical form to be a fully sufficient transcending vehicle of the idea - this is the basic goal of my musical concept.
My musical erudition is classical and my education catholic. I began composing quite early as organ and piano player and got acquainted with treasures of the baroque liturgical and sacral music of Monteverdi, Pergolesi, Zelenka or Bach. Later I went through a long period of jazz and rock inclinations from post-punk to martial-industrial to return back in a spiral to my classical roots. Not losing all love for these influences and inspired by them and modern (Janáček, Britten) or contemporary (Kabeláč, Ligeti) classics, I had gradually looked for my own expression. I am innerly akin to ideas of the neothomism, nevertheless full of skepticism to contemporary vulgarization of any idea. I also reject a mass import of infantile paganism and satanism into the dark-ambient sphere that step by step became the background for music dilettantism hiding behind first-signal catchy and effective yet purposefully artificial mysteries with zero content. I did not and don’t want to document invalidity of generally accepted thesis or rather prejudice of negative polarity in using the music language of contemporary postindustrial milieu in relation to Christian ideas. It never was my problem, I express my ideas in a way I consider natural and regarding the permanent fight between spirituality and despiritualized reality in my works this kind is an ideal language for me.
In extenso - from what was said - I realize, that my music is very hardly acceptable for conservative classical milieu as much as for various dark ambient, industrial and postindustrial scenes I don’t feel affinity with.
Regarding the dramatic/spiritual tension of your music research, which are the primary classical reference of you?...Personally, i think to the romantic tension of Wagner, Schubert and Berlioz, to the 'requiem fugues' of Bach, or the avantgarde expressionism painted by Schoenberg, Ligeti and Nitsch. Really, i consider your approach really innovative and singular respect the common way to face the avantgarde and electronic dimensions.
I know that the influence of classical music is apparent in my work. It is necessary to say that my aims are much more in the area of new contemporary forms of this kind of music, than in dark ambient or other industrial offsets, however I work with industrial, noise and ambient sounds and structures. I focus on contemporary classical musical form with an attempt to enhance its action potential by modern means of expression. I attempt to resume the tradition of rich central European musical history since baroque and above all 20th century Czech, other Slavic and Eastern and Central European modernism. I draw inspiration from at first Leoš Janáček, Igor Stravinsky, further also Miloslav Kabeláč, Györgyi Ligeti or Giacinto Scelsi. If there is any romantic influence, its origin can be seen rather in Dvořák choral works than in Wagner, Schubert and Berlioz that did not address me absolutely, however some martial or space attributes of my music can lead to the idea you described. Generally, my philosophical ideas are primarily inspired by classicism and romantic era, tonal principles stepwise by atonality, serialism and polymodality and compositional style of postindustrial era, pushing me to search for an order in chaos. I try to attain my own clear-cut position both in tone creative principles and in composition style, enhancing expressional agenses of orchestration by the work with sound where I want to show innovative role of not quite musical components. Unlikely the traditional "musique concrète", I want to reach an organic incorporation of seemingly distinct or irreconcilable elements into the living form. My aim is not simple synthesis, but in formal language another step of this formation on its way to natural integration of tonality into atonality, classical into postindustrial, etc. But this is only a music-theory description; it is a more matured transubstantiation of form into a morphologically purer structure. Once again the effort is more obviously aimed not at getting some chemical compound but an indecomposable element. This is a brief description of my formal attitudes to composing.
Descent From The Cross is a concept voyage inspired by the Dostoevsky's interpretation of the so called 'Christ in The Tomb' painting by Hans Holbein, a work that recover in itself (and for Dostoevsky too) the problem of evil in men and in the world: the death of resurrection, the absence of faith and hope caused by the strenght (its physic violence - the body of Christ - and panical side) of nature.
I've got two curiosity in my question:
1) The chapters are 7, an important number from the esoterical point of view, and suggest references to the plagues, the apocalypse and the seals. What kind of study have you faced for translate its in music?
2) Can we compare the tragical perception of the body of Christ after the Passion like the body/face of the today's Europe condition, expecially after the fall of the ideas that moved the 20th century... Can we read this tragic feeling in your compositions, beyond the music styles?
ad 1) I am aware of a subconscious working of this kind of symbolism, living inside by its own life. I am not too well-educated in numerology, therefore I must reject intentional translation of similar principles into music, nevertheless I cannot refuse some subliminal acceptation of those connotations originating in biblical numeric symbology. Therefore I would like to remind that number 7 represents not only apocalypse as the catastrophic end of the world but also the beginning of life of a new quality. Number 7 means also light, understanding and studious delivery. No doubt, I would not choose number six (lol).
ad 2) This opus is inspired originally by Dostoevsky's interpretation of Hans Holbein’s painting as a polemic with his questioning of the Christian faith in Christ's resurrection, since the level of cogency in portraying a truly dead body is strikingly exposed in the works of the German artist. I try to create a immersed and painful perception on the one hand, dominated by uncertainty and doubt, but through the belief in spiritual strength inclined to hope and strife for the fulfilling of the faith's thesis on the other hand, however only in contours, because tragic feeling, arose from contemporary destruction of values you keep in mind (not only European), is prevalent.
Exorcisms and Nonterra express the sides more archaic, abstract, gothic, martial and apocalyptic, of your musical speech. Can you tell me what kind of thematic face these chapters? Is right my perception of a 'liquid (or sidereal) subconscious emanation', like in a Lovecraft novel?;)
I understand that the name "Exorcisms" evokes some medieval connotations but I must anticipate that its genuine sense here embodies in its simple general interpretation – as a prayer, serving to exemption from maleficiencial tendencies. This album is another kind of my traditional theme of permanent struggle of two antagonistic forces in human, musically described as harmonic and sound thesis and antithesis in one, their cross-fades, changes, mutual interferences and emphasis on consciousness of necessity of their coexistence. Nevertheless – as you noticed – I don’t conceal my sympathy to archaic. It arose from generally false sight of the past and today. I cannot fight off conviction of the presence of spiritual brightness of "dark ages" and the darkness of absence of that quality in proclaimed "bright" modern period.
Nonterra works with similar problematics illustrated by musical issue of modern classical and ambient clash with periodically repeating elements of fashionable trends of pop music, which are attacking in their rhythmic structures and melodic motifs. They become their inner destructive agent and challenge of tattiness and degradation of human feeling, governing the conventional taste. It is obvious though that the tout ensemble is skeptical as the end states sadness from status quo, loneliness and weakness of the individual, e.g. disbelief in a practical possibility to overcome the overwhelming anthropocentrism of contemporary human. I think the title NONTERRA, thus NONEARTH, is more than explicit in this context.
Presenting my tendencies and symbolism in previous answers I also indirectly answered the question about presupposed connection with Lovecraft´s work that might be at hand but from the point of view of its philosophical concept embodies out of my radius. Besides – however diametrically different in its interpretation - is that abstract in itself so different that cannot be compared with Theilhard´s cosmological visions?
With Sense Geometry you've released a musical process considering some geometrical figures. Triangles, Circles, Pentagons, Tetragons, are symbols used historically from the traditional science, for release buildings too like symbols of the spiritual centre of the earth/world. Is there this will, musically, to translate the human need to research the origin of our being?
Sense Geometry is a conceptual album, based on fictive geometric symbolism of certain mechanisms of the human psyche. It is an attempt to detect or prove the existence of a certain order in illusory chaos. You can understand it as some kind of musical application of mathematical theory of fractals, a sort of "fractal musical geometry". To this purpose I use signals of intervals, rhythm, sound structuralization and instrumentation logic. Sound and instrumentation of the compositions plays the role of the chaotic and likewise irritating element, rhythm and intervals the role of order go-between, directing the attention to another levels of seeing things.
Stefano Morelli (Journalist of the paper mags Rumore & :Ritual:), June 12, 2008