Tutto in un punto (All at One Point) (2022)

Duration: 4:00 minutes

Instrumentation: solo piano

Premiere: June 30, 2023 by Edward Neeman at Wesley Music Centre in Canberra, Australia

Notes:

      Le cosmicomiche (Cosmicomics) is set of musical responses Italo Calvino’s collection of stories by the same name. Each story takes as its starting point a scientific fact (some of them disproven by now) and proceeds to spin out a whimsical tale with bizarre characters, all narrated by a timeless, multiform character with the improbable name of Qfwfq. Though each story begins from a strange place, and though they are often very funny, these stories speak clearly to universal themes of loss, loneliness, and yearning. To me, the very absurdity of each story’s premise makes these underlying truths more vivid.

While there are many specific connections to each story, the approach in these pieces ranges widely, from character pieces, to impressionistic and atmospheric works, to much more abstract interpretations of the ideas in the stories. These pieces may be performed individually, or as a complete set, or in subsets of the performer’s choosing.

Tutto in un punto (All at One Point)

This story takes as a starting point the fact that all matter in the universe was once compressed into a single point. While the story Calvino creates is quite funny, with a range of memorable characters, it also ends on a bittersweet note, as Qfwfq reminisces about those earlier times when they were all “packed in there like sardines.” In my music, short phrases expand gradually from a middle point, the pianist’s hands spreading farther apart like the expanding universe. At the high point, the music crashes back to the middle of the keyboard and proceeds to an extended cadenza on a single pitch, representing that single point where everything began.