Partita

«Partita» was written with interruptions between November 2021 and August 2022. Der path towards the formal conception wasn’t straightforward either. The pleasure to start working with very simple elements –an ascending arpeggio and a cell of three notes– and consequently to think formally, almost motive-wise, avoiding for a moment to start from sounds or gestures, or out of extramusical ideas –and during all those months was definitive no lack of them– made me realize the relationship to older forms –as reflected in the title– and to work in resonance with them. Consequently, «Partita» consists of seven different movements on their own right, with own tempo, character and formal features, but held together by shared elements and played without interruption. Affinities (II-VII, I-IV-Vb, I-VI) and subgroups (V, VI, VIII) emerged gradually. In this variation process, sound features and instrumental gestures –but no extramusical elements– came along with different degrees of structural freedom. So, is it pure art? Something like absolute music?

Fascinating about multi-part baroque forms such as Suites and Partitas is the diverse origin of their movements. Some of them go back to formal patterns or traditional meters, other are immediate expression, arias, songs; other, in turn, are hermetic or speculative research. Structurally they can be free –like a fantasia– or strictly composed. What their character concerns, they are distinct and heterogenous, the speed changes, lightness and earnestness alternate, all in all bearing witness of a fundamental musical playfulness, the pleasure of playing with forms and sounds, something that appears to be increasingly alien to our times and for me personally has been a source of astonishment and physical captivation. I perceive such an entangled heterogeneity, rich in similarities and contradictions, as very close related to our contemporary experience, but only if we had not irretrievably lost the innocence that the young baroque art so prodigally dispensed.

Half a way in the process, at the point where the formal conception of the piece consolidated, I wrote the following text:

«What is music, what is art, we ask those days. Expression, insight, accusation, world-wariness, worldly wisdom or amusement? What for? Malediction, reflection, mourning, comfort or resistance, maybe defiance, or maybe it is a game, foolhardy or thoughtful? Perhaps is it just music, serious, light, impish, dreamy, a bit lost, fighting the last stand, powerful and yet helpless, strong and yet fragile, promising and yet speechless, and, nevertheless, almost absolute and boundless? And why not an escape ahead, to other shores, overflowing, moving, hoping? In any case: don’t give up, don’t give in, forgive, yes, but don’t give away the chance.»

It contains two thoughts: on one hand a plea for the most fundamental gift of art, to show us and let us experience the world’s immeasurable diversity, also in the sense of pure, absolute art; on the other side the insight that although we cannot exist without art without giving up ourselves, it is not going to save us. We are stuck in a huge dilemma: we want to live but no longer know how it goes. Actually, we know that it cannot go further like this. We have to reinvent a way to live. Art can show that it can be different. What it cannot is to show us, how.