La forma dello spazio (The Form of Space) (2022)

Duration: 4:30 minutes

Instrumentation: solo piano

Premiere:

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.

La forma dello spazio (The Form of Space)

This story is one of the more mind-bending in the collection. Beginning with the fact of the curvature of space, Calvino creates a bizarre love-triangle. Falling through empty space, Qfwfq is in perfect parallel with Ursula H’x, whose attention he is always trying to capture, and Lieutenant Fenimore, his rival for Ursula’s attention. They never seem to get any closer or farther away, though Qfwfq is perpetually worried that Fenimore may have the advantage, and the story eventually arrives at a truly remarkable passage: Qfwfq and Fenimore chase each other, shooting pistols, following the curves of space which are described as shaped like the letters of the words of the story itself. My piece is divided into two main sections, following the main sections of the story. The first depicts the endless fall of the three characters, with flashes of music to represent each of them. Throughout the flashes of music, there is an inexorable fall from the top of the keyboard to the bottom. The second section involves the pianist speaking and playing the words of the final paragraph of the story, the text becoming the structure of the music, much like the text becoming the structure of space in the story.