Browse by Artist: BERTONCINI, MARIO

Artist:	BERTONCINI, MARIO
Title:	Arpe Eolie
Label:	DIE SCHACHTEL (ITALY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	DS 015CD

Deluxe silver CD box edition, silver-foil design, complete with a 64-page booklet in Italian and English. One of the most adventurous composers and performers of the Italian avant garde scene, member of the Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza, great performer of the music of John Cage, Mario Bertoncini started in the early '70s to design and build incredibly complex and visually fascinating "sound sculptures" based on the Aeolian sound principle. Amongst his more spectacular installations there were Vele, a massive Aeolian harp (more than 7 meters high); Venti (winds), for 20 Aeolian sound generators and 40 performers; and Chanson pour Instruments à Vent, an assemblage for Aeolian harps, Aeolian gongs, and one performer. His self-built harps and gongs are excited by blows of compressed air, or by the composer's own breath, and the resulting sound is amplified through contact microphones. If at superficial levels they may sound like electronic music (long drones and swooshes of otherwordly sounds), at a close listening they reveal the intensity of a pure and analogic sound of air, far removed from both any artificial or measurable principle as well as from any casual or chance method of composition. In fact, all the pieces are carefully composed and even notated. The CD presents the complete series of his works for Aeolian harps, from 1973 to more recent days.

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