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Fanfare for the Velasca Tower

2017-09-28

The astounding view of Velasca Tower as a sort of score.

Composer: Francesco Bossi

Year of Composition: 2017
Instrumentation: electrocacustic + brass
Type of Electronics: Fixed

Number of Channels: 2
Duration: 02:56
Video Component: None

Score Resources
https://soundcloud.com/francesco-bossi-vernon-buckler/fanfare-for-the-velasca-tower

The Velasca Tower is one of the most characteristic buildings of the city of Milan.

I took some photos of the Velasca Tower and watched them.

I noticed, among the many other things, the intervals of the lights, that is to say how the modules of the voids and the windows in the facades of the building was given.

Perceiving them as intervals and rhythm, the idea was to consider the facades of Velasca Tower (or to be more precise the west side of the tower’s “head”) as a music score. The link between the architectural module of the Velasca Tower windows and the sound is simple: the full, that is the presence of a light / window, gives the sound, the vacuum, that is the absence of light / window, originates a silence. Some lights also do not occupy the module in its entirety, but extend only to the 3/4 or 2/4 of the module. This has created melodic rhythmic patterns that have given motion to the score. A six-voices fanfare came out (how many voices as the  floors of the”Velasca Tower” head).

The work is featured by the attempt to keep together two apparently discordant elements: the rhythm of architecture and the staticity of the building.

The idea of ​​music (or art in general) that mimics nature and its phenomena has ancient origins. In this case the Velasca Tower (considering it as “nature”, even if it is not) is a pretext, at least from two reasons.

On one hand, it is a pre-text, in the sense of a text that comes first and from which we move to create something new.

The second point is that the Velasca Tower becomes an excuse to make music by delineating a link with an architecture work, that is to say, the astounding view of Velasca Tower as a sort of score.

Last detail to not underestimate: the sound atmosphere that comes from this experiment, which starts and ends with an electronic rhythmic rug of “glitch” and “noises” on which an imperial six-piece fanfare (1st trumpet, 2nd trumpet, 1st and 2nd horn, 3rd and 4th horn, Trombone and Tuba), recalls a certain climax and some idea of ​​the urban development of the metropolis typical of the 1950s, when the tower was erected in Milan.

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