(continued from Part I)
Compositional Strategies
As in Verano de suerte, the writing of Dos Abismos suggests a rejection of calculation. Imagination is nourished by intuition and knowledge of the means of producing the material, taking into account its limitations while pushing them to the maximum. Palmieri seems to agree on this point when he states that the singularity of this work lies in its expansive and deep exploration of each of the available resources1. In this sense, he also observes that no other composition in the classical guitar repertoire explores harmonic sounds so thoroughly.
However, he adds, this is not a systematic creative research, where:
“Despite the technical difficulty, the piece is highly idiomatic, linked to the construction of the instrument […], to what the classical guitar is. Perhaps it is not tied to the history of the classical guitar, but musically, all the material derives from the way the instrument is built. In this sense, it is possible that the generation of the material is linked to the practice of improvisation with the object, carried out by someone who does not possess knowledge of the instrument from a historical standpoint.”2
Building on this reflection, the key question is to understand which strategies Scodanibbio employed to achieve a successful writing while simultaneously maintaining the idiomatic instrumental aspect.The first, and perhaps the most evident from the beginning, is that of the asymmetric and irregular ostinato already mentioned at the start of this analysis.
The first section of Dos Abismos is constructed based on this procedure, which allows breaking the regularity of the 4/4 time subdivision and maintaining the idea of a continuum according to a material logic of extension, stretching, contraction, and accumulation.
Figure 28: Dos Abismos, bars 9–10, left hand
The use of the ostinato as a centrifugal movement appears on several occasions in the second section of the work. However, it manifests as a regular component and a vector of stability on the rhythmic plane, allowing the emergence of sonic events that accumulate gradually:
Figure 29: Dos Abismos, page 7, bar 4
Later, in a more extended section of the work, the idea of the ostinato gradually dissolves into a continuous movement of mobile gravitational centers. That is, it involves a constant and convulsive alternation of contraction–expansion, segregation–grouping, movement–stability, while simultaneously varying density on the horizontal plane (groupings of one to three components [page 17]), including moments of pivot notes and register leaps. Indeed, the behavior of the material is so varied that it cannot be examined exhaustively. However, excluding moments of symbiosis, rhythmic groupings, and harmonic aspects, the following elementary operations can be distinguished:
1. Desegmentation and synthesis with the material produced by the right hand, generally articulated by rests (pages 5–7, page 8, bars 1–2; page 10, bar 4):
Figure 30: Dos Abismos, page 5, bar 1
2. Ascents and descents realized through intervallic leaps of major and minor 3rds (pages 7, bars 3–4; page 8, bars 3–4; page 10, bar 3; page 12, bar 2):
Figure 31: Dos Abismos, page 7, bar 3
3. Sections of greater or lesser stability around a central pitch (page 7, bar 4; page 9, bars 1–2; page 10, bars 1, 2, 4; page 11, bars 1–4; page 13, bars 1–2): see Figure 25.
4. An underlying melodic contour ascends to a culminating pitch (pages 5–6, bar 3; pages 6–7, bar 2; page 7, bar 3; and page 8, bar 2):
Figure 32: Dos Abismos, underlying melodic contour
5. Wave-like movements in three different registers of the guitar: low, middle, and high (page 7, bar 3; page 8, bars 3–4).
6.Register leaps: page 10, bar 2; page 13, bar 1.
A second strategy consists of gradually introducing harmonic material in the form of arpeggios, allowing resonance alone to generate chord-timbres, starting with a single pitch and progressively increasing its mass from 2 to 5 components. At the same time, the physical materiality of the sound is illustrated through a rhythmic group that favors offbeats, organized in contrasting rhythmic groupings. The chord-timbres constructed according to the logic of accumulation and reduction are as follows:
Figure 33: Dos Abismos, chord-timbres
In Palmieri’s testimony, reference is made to a delicate interplay between the material produced by the right hand and that generated by the left hand, whose fragility creates a specific sonic dimension3. From his experience, the performer considers this resource to be the core of technical mastery: “missing the harmonic by half a centimeter means completely losing that dimension.” This dimension, it should be noted, is created through agogics and the image of movement, components that define the lyricism of the section. The arpeggios that regulate the accumulation and dispersion of the material are rhythmically articulated through offbeats, pivot notes, and agogic repetitions, emphasizing asymmetric generators of movement. The following image presents the different configurations of this strategy as it appears in the first part—resonance, inertia, rhythmic articulation, displacement, accents, and dynamic indications that foster impulse and motion:
Figure 34: Dos Abismos, motivic development of the material in harmonic sounds
Conversely, in the second section, the strategies of accumulation–destructuring and contraction–expansion are reconsidered from a slightly different perspective compared to the previous section. If the goal of the piece is to illustrate the plasticity of sound, this is achieved through the modulating frequency of the events of contraction–expansion, stability–movement, and autonomy–causality. The form is configured between repetition, asymmetry, and uncontrolled development. On the other hand, the union of the staves allows us to observe the unification of the materials that in the previous section had been conceived as autonomous. In reality, a true symbiosis is never reached; rather, it is a quasi-dialectical relationship that underscores the metaphor of the materiality of sound. Abstracting for a moment from the characteristic symbiosis of the second section, it is worth noting another element related to the evolution of the materials that constitute it:
Almost at the end of page thirteen, a brief three-bar event begins, in which a strategy can be observed that further reinforces the idea of sonic materiality. A series of glissandi, ascending and descending, in different registers of the guitar, produced by the left hand, begins to stand out and to configure a kind of degraded continuous material. These glissandi gradually occupy a greater temporal span of the event as the piece moves into the ondeggiante section. This resource serves as a transition to the third part, but not only that: it also functions as an element of ephemeral trajectory, a sort of elastic that moves with energy toward a point, describing a physical displacement in acoustic space:
Figure 35: Dos Abismos, transitional material to the third section
In conclusion, the analysis of Dos Abismos presented here does not allow for the identification of direct links between double bass and guitar technique. In other words, there is insufficient evidence to claim that this is a direct transposition of a technique from one instrument to another. The use of harmonics during this period is not exclusive to the double bass, and composers such as Salvatore Sciarrino (1947–) systematically exploited this resource on other instruments as well. What becomes evident, however, is that the type of material treated and the listening aesthetics that circumscribe it play a fundamental role in understanding this repertoire, both in terms of composition and performance. The analysis highlights the strategic interplay of different, sometimes heterogeneous operations, which serve to shape a project focused on the materialization of sound through the metaphor of movement. The contribution of this repertoire concerns more the conception of instrumental sound and the auditory perception it invites than instrumental technique itself. The transformation occurs more on an aesthetic level than on an organological one. In this way, the journey that Scodanibbio proposes within the sound of the guitar allows us to question the paradigms that crystallized around the conventional idea of the instrument throughout the twentieth century, implicitly suggesting a reflection on our contemporary sound universe, the space occupied by machines and technology, and the role of the performer not only in the creative process but also in the ethical responsibility, as an artist, to respond to the demands of their time.
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