An Italian composer with a long and prolific career, Stefano Taglietti stands as a prominent figure in contemporary music. His works have been performed all over the world, gracing prestigious stages such as the Berlin Philharmonie, the Nuremberg Opera, the Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto, and La MaMa Theatre in New York. The hallmark of his musical language lies in his extraordinary ability to fuse, within a highly personal style, genres that are broad and seemingly distant. In this conversation, we explore with Taglietti not only his compositional process, but also the crucial role he plays as a passionate advocate for new music.
Hello Stefano, and welcome to the pages of Obiettivo Contemporaneo.
In your work, both the classical and electric guitar appear frequently, either as solo instruments or in ensemble settings. Where does your particular interest in the instrument come from?
Thank you, Pier Paolo, for your questions, and congratulations on the “Obiettivo Contemporaneo” project.
My attention to the guitar stems from the fact that this instrument—unlike many others—has undergone, and continues to undergo, remarkable development both stylistically and technically, as well as expressively. From an acoustic standpoint, guitar techniques extend far beyond traditional practice, including direct interaction with the strings to produce harmonics and other extended sounds, the use of picks, fingertips, nails—whether natural or artificial—and even small beaters. Added to this is the use of the resonating body of the soundboard: this diverse sonic universe is incredibly fascinating, as it allows one to shape sound and notation with astonishing timbral variety.
Then there is the electric guitar. Being an electroacoustic instrument, it offers a far greater degree of sound customization than any other electrified instrument. Through the use of effect pedals and digital sound processors, it is possible to achieve a truly extraordinary range and quality of timbre.
This world has already contributed immensely to the evolution of music, yet there remains much to be explored. One need only think of the repertoires, performance practices, techniques, and sonorities developed over the past fifty years: from the classical and acoustic guitar to the electric, these instruments served as genuine generational manifestos up until the late 1970s. It cannot be ignored that the guitar was the symbol of socio-political communication for an entire generation; it was used to channel, through both instrumental and vocal-instrumental music, the visionary texts of psychedelic culture and social poetry—works imbued with a pacifist worldview that stood in opposition to a conformist and racist society (and it seems, unfortunately, we are now facing a grim relapse).
That historical and cultural context left a profound mark on the instrument itself and on today’s repertoire, to the point that—even though that world no longer exists in those forms—it has been absorbed, transformed, and reinterpreted through new languages and aesthetics. From that universe, we have inherited an immense sonic heritage: a multitude of styles and repertoires born in that era that remain musically relevant today. As composers, we have the opportunity to reflect on those worlds—past and present—and to rework them, opening up new pathways and aesthetics.
Your musical language seems to intertwine different worlds, both within and beyond the classical sphere. What is the thread that connects these experiences and allows you to harmonize them without losing your identity?
I’ve lived a life filled with incredibly varied experiences — an intertwining of circumstances both sought and accidental, all of which have been decisive in shaping my identity.
I spent the first thirty years of my life in Olevano Romano, where I went through adolescence studying piano and listening to all kinds of music — sometimes guided by older friends, and always with the classical radio playing in the background. Not long after, I began performing my own compositions, both solo and with a Progressive Rock group. I grew up immersed in the creative environment of the German artists who were grant-holders at Villa Massimo and the Berlin Academy of Arts (based in Olevano): composers, visual artists, writers, photographers, and architects. For several years I was part of the BussottiOperaBallet, and I explored a musical spectrum ranging from Monteverdi to John Cage.
It was during those years that I was invited by the legendary Ellen Stewart—after collaborating with her in Spoleto on a music-theatre production—to perform in New York at La MaMa Theatre, where I presented my music before an international audience (which included pianist Richard Beirach). I fondly remember a chance encounter with Philip Glass on the streets of New York, and evenings spent at the Knitting Factory, attending concerts by avant-garde groups of the New York scene.
Soon after, I performed in Switzerland with Dom Um Romão, the historic percussionist from the first five Weather Report albums, and in Berlin I had the opportunity to work with Reinhold Friedl and Mario Bertoncini.
I attended live concerts by Jaco Pastorius, Astor Piazzolla, and Keith Jarrett, and had the good fortune to perform with Evan Parker, Karl Potter, and others. For years I cultivated a deep and creative friendship with my mentor Hans Werner Henze, from whom I learned much and who also encouraged and praised my compositional work. I have written a great deal of music on commission from major institutions.
I also collaborated with the visual artist Bizhan Bassiri for nearly three decades — one of the most significant periods of my career. That collaboration allowed me to create staged concerts in France, Turkey, Bosnia (Sarajevo), and in theatres and festivals throughout Italy. Through Bassiri, I met artists such as Jannis Kounellis, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Carla Accardi, Alfredo Pirri, Nunzio and Marco Bagnoli, Emilio Prini, Ettore Spalletti, Alberto Garutti, and many others. Among the most moving experiences was performing twice in Srebrenica, in an international project held in a theatre still scarred by bomb damage — before young people who, until that moment, had never seen or heard a concert (many of them survivors of General Mladić’s massacres, or born just after the war).
I apologize for this somewhat tedious list (and even so, it’s abbreviated), but I feel it’s necessary to help explain certain meaningful aspects of what I write. Everything I am also derives from these experiences. For me, there is always a continuous thread between present memory and identity.
I perceive time as an uninterrupted flow, in which the past is constantly reformulated in the present; likewise, I conceive sound and composition as a set of unified presences that condense in an irrational way. My works often contain references to cultural contexts or symbolic environments, but never direct quotations. What emerges from my music is linked to concepts and cultural influences — you will never find explicit quotes, imitations, artifices, or crossover-style overlaps, nor purely academic solutions. I never engage in the self-satisfied display of technique or varied materials.
For me, every material I use must respond to an authentic necessity, one that serves the compositional idea. It must be integrated into a fluid texture, where each element finds its own organic connection with the others. I can’t imagine working in any other way.
I am a musician-man who lives immersed in the reality that surrounds me, listening to and interacting with sounds that merge with my inner experiences. I move between detachment from the practical sense of social life and the influence of social events themselves — while also reinventing a world of imagination. I consider myself an anti-academic, and I often say that academicism is based on the use of other people’s materials without much reworking, whereas the condition of the artwork is different: it employs imagination, transforming existing material into something else. Personally, I don’t identify with any particular models, but, like everyone, I have my own references. Over the years — and even before beginning my radio work — like many of us, I’ve listened to thousands of pieces. Despite having a rather broad musical knowledge, I can’t help but interpret it through a personal perspective.
To be authentic means maintaining a living connection with what one experiences: I firmly believe that lived experience is the primary component of any composer’s work. One is what one is, starting from what one lives. For this reason, I think it is essential to “harmonize” one’s experience with one’s writing.
I’d like to mention your Triple Concerto for electric guitar, piano, percussion, and orchestra: a straightforward score, free of mannerisms, where materials from different musical worlds interact with natural ease. What was the greatest challenge in writing it, and what was your main intent?
This concerto holds a unique value for me, representing one of the most significant pieces I’ve written in recent years. In fact, it is actually a quadruple concerto, since in addition to the three soloists there is also a concertante violin — although the title remained Triple Concerto.
The Solisti Aquilani ensemble and their artistic director Maurizio Cocciolito wanted a special piece to mark the group’s fiftieth anniversary. It was then that I proposed to the conductor the idea of a work with a particular instrumentation: electric guitar, piano, percussion, and the string orchestra of the Aquilani ensemble. The proposal was immediately accepted during a short phone call. A few days later, Cocciolito contacted me again to suggest involving their outstanding first violinist, Daniele Orlando, as a fourth soloist. I accepted with great enthusiasm, but by then the title Triple Concerto had already been announced for the world premiere. Following an old maritime tradition that says one should never change the name of a “boat,” we unanimously decided to keep the original title unchanged.
The most demanding challenge was to integrate the electric guitar while maintaining a convincing balance with traditional instruments. I didn’t want to fall into redundant sounds, overloaded with effects or predictable in their more conventional, stereotypical traits. My goal was to achieve a clear, pure sound that would still be incisive in phrasing, rhythmic interplay, and timbral interaction. This concerto is a universe built around strings: from the string orchestra to the piano, whose strings are struck, to the concertante violin and the electric guitar. Every element had to be woven into a fluid dialogue, supported by a musically persuasive writing.
I devoted great effort to creating a sort of disguise of sounds, blending piano with unison vibraphone passages and overlapping resonances between guitar and violin — later taken up and expanded by the string section. I worked on contrasting rhythmic interlacings and textures, with frequent allusions to imaginary ethnicisms and deliberately dissociated rhythmic pressures. During the writing process, my intention was clear: to give sound a distinct, physical, tactile dimension, as if it were a concrete presence.
The naturalness you mention corresponds precisely to the approach with which I try to use compositional technique: as a tool for revealing the essential, never allowing technical devices to weigh down or rigidify the final result. For me, musical “material” represents only the starting point — a raw state devoid of true artistic vitality. In practice, musical parameters must be lifted toward a different, transcendent expressive condition. Overcoming the material is the real challenge: giving it an emotional, sensitive tension capable of striking deeply and making one forget the origin and source of the materials themselves.
It’s a process similar to observing a successful painting: you don’t dwell on the pigments or the technical nuances, but what captures you is the essence of the work. Likewise, when you listen to a truly accomplished piece, you no longer think about numerical artifices or formal organization — you perceive a unique, enveloping flow, an emotional and coherent whole. Each time I compose, this is what I seek: to make musical events flow and interact naturally, as if unfolding sound after sound along a path of discovery.
You’ve written two distinct works for classical guitar: the Sonata and the Meditative Study on Gesualdo.
They are very different pieces, even in the way they “inhabit time.” Could you tell us about them?
A single piece can never fully represent the essence of a composer’s overall work. It takes a body of compositions to paint a more faithful picture — only the complete collection of one’s works can reassemble the full puzzle of the artist’s personality. Sometimes this totality includes very different things. In my case, these works often interact with a range of cultural aspects and influences. I am genuinely fascinated by multiple cultural contexts that affect me deeply — from Renaissance and Baroque music to the infinite nuances of contemporary expression. My conception of time is based on re-contextualization, without particular limitations or exclusions. Inhabiting time is an achievement that comes from experience, and it’s something I neither wish nor am able to renounce.
The Sonata was commissioned by Sante Tursi, to whom it is dedicated and who gave its premiere performance. It was also my first compositional experience for solo guitar, and a far from simple challenge. The piece is substantial — about fifteen minutes long — and structured in three movements, each characterized by distinct and combined technical and compositional intentions.
The first movement, Ian Curtis Voodoo, unfolds through a polymorphy of sound aspects and techniques; within it, there is a network of rhythms and playing modes that evoke an almost theatrical gesturality. This opening movement takes its title from Ian Curtis, the lead singer of Joy Division, an iconic post-punk band. Curtis, who suffered from epilepsy, performed with convulsive, tormented movements — almost as if enacting a ritual to exorcize his own condition. His fragility fascinated me because it conveyed something authentic, unique compared to other performers of his time. I wanted the music to reflect that mental state of deep agitation and torment.
The second movement, a lyrical adagio titled The Slow Young’s Prayer, contrasts with the intensity of the first, while the third, Final, presents considerable technical challenges related to the expressive control of sound and its reiterated chords.
The composition Meditative Study on Gesualdo is very different from the Sonata, distinguished by its compactness and clearly defined expressive coherence. It is closer to more traditional guitar practices, yet it simultaneously reaches toward a restless lyricism, echoing that chromatic Gesualdian style rich with expressive tension.
In general, I always strive for mixed techniques and, above all, for diversification in my compositional work. I don’t identify with those composers who continuously insist on the same material: such an approach risks becoming a repetitive and obsessive assertion rather than a true expression of artistic identity. On the contrary, I firmly believe in the narrative power of a multiform language.
For me, inhabiting time means engaging in dialogue with memory, creatively reconstructing amnesia and shaping it into a writing capable of evoking new perspectives.
A large-scale work like Memoirs of Elagabalus brings to the stage a complex and controversial historical figure. How did the project originate, and how did you translate both the libretto and the character into musical writing?
Memoirs of Elagabalus is an opera with an English libretto, written in a very short time — if I remember correctly, in just twenty-two days. It was a commission proposed by Michael Kerstan (who also directed it) for the summer music season of Audi, the car manufacturer based in Ingolstadt, Germany.
In that work as well, the guitar serves as a kind of temporal and stylistic stitching device, linking an imagined archaic past with the contemporary dimension. The piece was performed about ten times by the El Cimarron Ensemble, both in Europe and in the United States.
The figure of Elagabalus has been treated by various authors — musically, for instance, by Francesco Cavalli as early as 1667 (he added castrati, but the original opera was later withdrawn and reworked because it was considered scandalous and licentious for its time), and in the twentieth century by Hans Werner Henze and Sylvano Bussotti. In theatre and literature, he appears in the works of Antonin Artaud, Alberto Arbasino, and others.
Elagabalus’s personality offered a musical potential rich in the very qualities of mobility and fluidity that I strive for in my writing. The Roman emperor’s figure was ambiguous, existing outside both male and female categories; moreover, his religious and sexual components were united within a single vision — typical of many Eastern and archaic religions. All these aspects provided fertile ground for the music, enabling the score to become a polymorphic and, once again, syncretic language.
My Elagabalus is a madman, a poet with a mutable and eccentric temperament. From a musical standpoint, the role of the interpreter is assigned to a baritone, in a highly physical and demanding part, also because it encompasses the full range of a male voice, including falsetto (all performances were given by the brilliant and versatile Robert Koller).
Musically, there is great energy despite the economy of means: the ensemble consists of one flutist, one guitarist, and percussion — essentially the same instrumentation as Henze’s El Cimarron. While the flutes and percussion act in symbiosis with Elagabalus’s dramaturgical sequences, the guitar performs a role of stylistic and temporal stitching, linking all theatrical elements and creating the inner environment — in the psychological sense — in which the opera unfolds.
The libretto was written directly in English by Fabio Ciolli, a physicist and mathematician and a long-time friend of mine, with a parallel Italian translation to help me grasp fully the meaning of every phrase. Composing the opera in English allowed me to discover, within the language’s more concise syllabic structure (in the word-sense relationship), many musically immediate solutions with highly functional lyrical motives.
As we all know, Italian — because of its abundance of syllables, even within a single word — often compels us to use many notes, a practice that undoubtedly produced the masterpieces of opera and great music, but which in fact forces composers, especially contemporary ones, into true acrobatics in order to reach something that departs from the often irritating clichés (particularly when employed in a modernist key) of past operatic culture.
Since 2017 you have hosted a radio program on RadiostArt dedicated to New Music. In your view, what is the role of dissemination today, and how can it truly reach a wider audience?
The first essential step in disseminating contemporary music is to convey the emotional heritage of the music and of the artists themselves.
This means exploring and observing, trying to understand — with both sensitivity and analytical depth — the publications, videos, social media posts, concerts, literary texts, films, and the thousands of overlapping genres that emerge and proliferate daily across official and independent platforms worldwide.
To date, I have released 368 podcasts, featuring interviews with many important composers as well as presentations of both new and historically established music. I broadcast from Pescara, on RadiostArt, every Monday night. Each episode of my program Clocks and Clouds averages around 90,000 listeners.
The music I air is sometimes radical, sometimes less so — but always part of the vast landscape of contemporary musical exploration.
The success of these broadcasts lies precisely in the heterogeneity of the audience: not all listeners come from the classical world. If they did, the audience would be limited to a small circle of regular enthusiasts — as often happens here with specialized concerts and events. On the contrary, many people tune in from very different musical backgrounds: experimental techno, European jazz, the New York avant-garde, experimental rock, ambient, and even extreme metal.
Listeners of Clocks and Clouds rarely gravitate toward commercial music — not because of elitism, but because it simply doesn’t speak to their sensibility. They come from cultural environments where music is not reduced to mere entertainment but assumes a deep, personal role as an existential companion in time and space. This leads them, beyond their habitual musical universe, to take an interest in artists such as Karlheinz Stockhausen, Loscil, Luigi Nono, Alva Noto, Morton Feldman, Miles Davis, Georg Friedrich Haas, Sunn O))), Steve Reich, Robert Henke, Unsuk Chin, Jimi Hendrix, Arnold Schönberg, and many others. This has been the radio aesthetic I’ve cultivated for years.
I believe this cross-pollination benefits both “classical” listeners and those hearing Xenakis for the first time.
Based on your experience as both composer and curator, how would you describe today’s contemporary music scene?
This period represents one of the richest and most stimulating chapters in the history of music. Never before have we had access to such advanced and efficient technology, allowing us to remain constantly connected and to access an astonishing quantity and quality of music — something unimaginable just twenty years ago. We have witnessed the realization of what I like to call the “Indie miracle.”
At this moment, a bridge is being built between generations of listeners, coming from very different contexts. It’s a phenomenon that already emerged in the 1970s, when experimental and research-based music had wide dissemination and managed to penetrate the most subtle layers of society. Back then, experimental music evolved in parallel with other cultural languages — associated with experimental cinema, fashion, communication, poetry, literature, performance, and theatre.
Later, something changed. While other art forms maintained a certain dialogue, contemporary classical music entered a period of isolation.
It became increasingly hyper-specialized, addressing an ever more exclusive audience, until it reached a form of self-referential solitude.
Today, however, that isolation seems to have found various paths toward renewed openness, even for the most technically complex music.
Yet, as Luciano Berio noted in his famous television program C’è musica e musica (“There is music and music”), the current universal accessibility and the ability for anyone to publish content online require a vital process of selection.
What is troubling, however, is that institutions — especially in Italy — have chosen to ignore this historical moment, deliberately focusing their efforts on traditionalist programs (often based on a fake tradition that never truly existed, reinvented in a decorative, almost totalitarian style) or on populist-national content.
This cultural indifference toward the emancipation of contemporary languages is particularly serious at a time when high-level musical research has reached the peak of its expressive and communicative potential. Such cultural detachment, accompanied by growing provincialism and the tendency to identify only with those who share the same ideas, is above all ahistorical — a sign of intellectual, social, and political fragility.
It is yet another form of protectionism, defending a closed, simplified world — hostile to difference and resistant to the richness that comes from dialogue with the “other.” Such a world is destined to produce stagnation and decline in every aspect of society.
In Italy, despite some internationally active and resilient contexts, we are facing a real débâcle in contemporary music — both historical and current. Institutions, increasingly timid and fearful of losing subscribers or funding, are systematically dismantling everything that lies outside the national-popular domain. Perhaps they fail to realize that, in doing so, they are flattening the public’s taste and effectively destroying the necessary cultural diversity that sustains vitality in the arts.
The difference between a provincial and backward country and one that is open and emancipated lies precisely in its artistic programming.
To ignore new artistic poetics, the dynamism of the historical moment, cultural syncretism, and the value of linguistic diversity and its combinations, is a form of social and cultural suicide.
Worse still are those institutions that serve political propaganda, seeking only visibility through any means of communication, thus manipulating and undermining music, performances, concerts, and theatres — everything becomes permeated by partisan politics, leading to disastrous impoverishment.
Even contemporary music programming, unfortunately, reflects deep contradictions. What I continue to find embarrassing is the excessive focus on celebrating a handful of names, always the same — that kind of “heard-about” programming designed merely to feel part of something: “I’m programming that one too.”
Personally, I find it much more stimulating and essential to maintain a broad, multifaceted cultural vision, rather than reduce everything to the “sanctification” of a few key figures. For me, it is the cultural fabric as a whole that generates true quality — not the repetitive recycling of predictable programs with the same authors.
Even performers often gravitate around this narrow circuit, contributing further to the contraction of the cultural landscape.
By contrast, I have great admiration for intelligent and courageous performer-researchers, capable of rediscovering and promoting diverse composers, bringing to light repertoires and interpretations that enrich and renew the contemporary context.
The culture of the present, whether we like it or not, is a mosaic — rich and multifaceted. To exclude most of its components and focus only on a few fragments means creating a partial and incomplete vision that fails to reflect the real complexity and vitality of our time.
For the curious, I suggest visiting the website everynoise.com, which catalogs and provides listening examples of all existing genres. It updates weekly and includes tens of thousands of genres, subgenres, and derivatives, with composers, performers, and repertoires. The situation is incredibly rich — and ungraspable in its entirety.
In 2026, we will celebrate the centenary of Hans Werner Henze — your teacher and friend. Would you share a personal memory and tell us what you think remains his most vital legacy today?
The most important legacy of Hans Werner Henze undoubtedly lies in his music — in that uncompromising pursuit of beauty and in his distance from the dogmatic and coercive power of academic orthodoxy.
Another crucial part of his legacy is the birth of social pedagogy, embodied in the creation of the Cantiere Internazionale d’Arte in Montepulciano.
Henze remains a reference point for all composers who value freedom and a deep love for the music of the twentieth century and the past.
A personal memory of him is tied to the period just before I wrote my Sonata for solo guitar. I told him that I was planning to compose a long and demanding work for guitar but didn’t know how to begin, as I had never written for the instrument before. He told me:
“Think about the guitar, imagine the instrument, and write freely. The guitarist will tell you what can be done and what cannot.”
Shortly after, I began writing the Sonata without interruption. In the end, almost everything I had written turned out to be playable.
I have countless memories of Henze, but what persists most vividly in my mind is his strength and conviction in defending the composer’s work and role, his love for culture in general, and his freedom to draw inspiration from life in its totality — artistic and existential alike.
One of the questions he used to ask me — every time he heard one of my pieces — was:
“Why? Why did you write this passage?”
Each “why” became an inner journey and a reason for further commitment. These reasons, even the irrational ones, are the themes and “whys” on which I base my own creative research.
To conclude: what are you working on at the moment?
I’m currently working on several fronts. One involves chamber music projects with various ensembles and instrumentations.
Then there is a series of recordings that I produce personally — from performance to microphone capture. It’s a solipsistic approach that has already led me (quite successfully, I must say) to the release of several monographic concept albums.
I would like to continue with a completely self-recorded project, playing various instruments myself: percussion, some self-built string instruments, objects, piano, and of course, electronics.
Another project is a stage work dedicated to an artist who profoundly influenced the conceptual culture of the twentieth century.
I also intend to continue with the radio, because it represents a form of dissemination in which I deeply believe — and which many listeners urge me to keep alive. This radio space has become a true point of reference, one that can no longer be ignored.
Then there are two more fronts of activity: the promotion of my book, Il Codice del Silenzio (The Code of Silence), with several upcoming presentations at various Italian festivals and institutions; and the promotion of my latest monographic album, Forest, which has just been released.
The main goal behind all these endeavors remains the same: to capture through music — or through any other form of writing — the emotional heritage of the things I perceive within and around me.
If I may, I’ll quote one of the 64 exercises in awareness from the opening chapter of Il Codice del Silenzio:
“Not everything that matters in music is perceptible to the ear.
Music cannot be created solely to stimulate hearing as the only parameter of perception.
A composition must extend its mental action beyond sound.
To stop at a beautiful timbre, a beautiful chord, or a beautiful rhythm means remaining on the surface.
I fail to see what could be interesting in a composition if everything it contains is confined solely to neatly arranged physical parameters.”
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