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It's not every day that you come across a 45-minute uninterrupted piece like "Traiettoria" for piano and electronics. It's not an easy listen, not so much for the length of the piece but for the complexity of the musical language and the abolition of any narrative connection, of any cause-effect relationship.
Marco Stroppa, born in 1959, was very young when he composed this piece between 1982 and 1984: I like to consider it the equivalent of a thesis. And so, as in a research work, its author talks about the musical elements at the base of the piece: «isolated resonances, repeated chords, more or less complex rhythmic figures, sound fragments» and so on.
These elements are in certain relationships with each other: of proximity, distance, contrast, similarity, conflict. The relationships involve «elementary fusions» between the piano and the resonances generated by the computer, or «complex fusions» when the bond between the two sound sources becomes so tight that it becomes indistinguishable, giving rise to a hybrid instrument.
This is how the trajectory evoked in the title is realized: the evolution of the basic sound elements into something much more complex and continuously changing. It doesn't necessarily have to be liked, this music. But the conclusion of the piece is suggestive, when after exploring every sound aspect, the piano falls silent and leaves the scene to the electronic sounds alone for the misty finale.
The piece is divided into four parts (Traiettoria deviata / Dialoghi / Contrasti, the latter divided into two), which slightly aids the "structural" perception of the work. A live listening adds the visual dimension: one will thus see the piano amplified by two speakers positioned on the sides, while the electronic part is diffused by other speakers surrounding the audience, and an additional speaker placed under the piano directed upwards towards the soundboard.
The use of electronics is a constant in many pieces by Marco Stroppa, a digital native avant la lettre: it is also present in "Spirali" of 1987-88, the second work on the CD, for string quartet projected into space. If in "Traiettoria" the idea was that of the evolution of the musical material, in "Spirali" the movement of «musical objects» toward and away from the listeners is realized, according to relationships of distance or proximity. The electronic projection of the sound is realized in real-time by a fifth performer. A tangled and furious quartet.
Demanding music, sometimes rough: but it’s worth a try.
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