Lucio Battisti
Il Gabbianone

LA RECENSIONE

Can an absolute masterpiece of Italian music remain unpublished? Well, yes: "Gabbianone" or "Il Gabbiamone", depending on how you want to call it, is a masterpiece by Battisti never released on record.

To clear up any doubts, "Il Gabbianone", the version I prefer, is a single song, probably written during the sessions for the album 'Don Giovanni', although some journalists claim it as Battisti's last studio recording. Whatever its origin, the song was discarded for some bizarre reason and now it is available online.

It is not known whether there exists a master of the piece or an unofficial recording; it is only known that some good soul, probably Battisti himself, released it from the record label, perhaps already in mp3 format. "Il Gabbianone" is a small musical work that unfolds through changing melodies and rhythms, achieving in many of its passages a formidable synthesis between pop and progressive music. Despite the sound quality not being the best (it is likely that the mixing phase was almost entirely skipped), it is still possible to fully appreciate the intensity of the melodic line, supported by a successful interplay between piano, keyboards, and guitars. The atmosphere of the piece clearly evokes a landscape, perhaps the one in which the "gabbianone" of the title moves, mentioned in the sparse lyrics only at the end. And in this landscape, the few thoughts expressed by the singer unfold, intimate and dreamy.

The entire composition seems to be nothing more than a dream turned into a song, or at least the expression of the desire to dream oneself from another perspective. Like a dream, the song itself retains the apparent detachment of a person from their thoughts and the space-time incongruity of events. The authorship of the text is attributed to Pasquale Panella, whose typical stylistic solutions are easily recognizable. However, since the latter never claimed to be the author, one cannot completely exclude an origin linked to Battisti's last period, who, in light of the already concluded divorce from Panella, might also be its sole author. And in the writer's thoughts, this remains a living, albeit improbable, hypothesis, which would affirm, if there were still any need for it, once and for all, the immense compositional art of the great Battisti.

"To break into myself by day in a dream and see how it is that I move, that I cook an egg and browse dear schedules of mine not to touch her I run alone and I would dare to flow to secret banks and ensnare myself curious in the good use of the lookalike curious and yearning of my sweetness robbing myself The tear stands like an orange in the orchard of cheeks parading unravels like a model in the evening dress of my wax. With marine irony brooding and nocturnal and moored dream a human sweep of mine like a 'gabbianone'."