In these days I would have had two premières. Today would’ve been the turn of “Le vrai vert de l’Espérance”, postponed indefinitely. Nevertheless, the date remains occupied for the same purpose, but with a different piece. Luca Giacobbe published, on his YouTube channel, an excerpt from my new piece for solo vibraphone Il sentimento del tutto, a small reflection on the feeling of tedium.
In literature, tedium is an emotion that has often been discussed. Leopardi, Flaubert, Pessoa, Moravia have written masterpieces around this feeling. Not everyone shared its positivity, but everyone agrees in describing it as the lack of something. The feeling of void – that has gripped us in these days locked in the house – has made many of us sink into existential boredom. In less suspicious times, the philologist Simone Gelmini, gave an exemplary definition of tedium:
“Thinking without thinking, with the tiredness of thinking; to feel without feeling, with the anguish of feeling; not wanting without wanting to, with the nausea of not wanting […]. It is like being possessed by a negative demon, being prey to witchcraft caused by nothing. ”
from https://imalpensanti.it/2017/03/soare…
As a composer, I have tried to express this thought that unites us, as human beings. Hence the title Il sentimento del tutto [eng., The feeling of everything]. Luca Giacobbe will plays in this video an excerpt from it. It is a quasi-corale episode enframed in a more rhythmic and contrapuntal piece. In addition to this, I believe that one of the characteristics of this moment of the piece is the recurrence of musical cells that never find a real development within the piece. Like embryos that will never reach the stage of life.
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