Roberto Cacciapaglia
Sonanze

In 1975, the legendary OHR (distributed in Italy by PDU), the historical label of the Krautrock scene guru Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser, surprisingly released Sonanze, an album by the Italian electronic musician Roberto Cacciapaglia (Milan, 1953). It was proof that even in Italy, the cosmic German music had taken root. Just consider that, besides the aforementioned Cacciapaglia, there were also the great Baffo Banfi (keyboardist of the prog band Un Biglietto per l'Inferno who even released an album for IC by Klaus Schulze), Francesco Buccheri, Antonio Sangiuliano, Franco Leprino, and Luciano Basso who demonstrated their devotion to this type of electronic sounds. Cacciapaglia had collaborated with Franco Battiato on Pollution and this experience would be useful to him. However, in Sonanze, compared to the classic cosmic German music of the period, there is a more refined touch and an urgency to make avant-garde music communicative. I believe this is a commendable approach: too often the flaw of so-called research music has been to distance itself from the audience through difficult-to-understand sounds for the average listener.

From the first movement, we are projected into a sonic universe close to Kosmische Musik that, at the same time, does not forget the lesson from contemporary music composers like Luciano Berio and Bruno Maderna. The great ability of the Milanese musician is to make a sonic matter (that of the avant-garde) seemingly accessible. The second movement is introduced by a vocal incipit and continues through cosmic-inspired sounds that may recall Phaedra by the Tangerine Dream. The third movement, on the other hand, moves with an impressionist pianism that certainly owes something to Debussy. After the fourth movement (a short vocal interlude not far from some of Ligeti's solutions), with the fifth, the music approaches (although always in a personal and non-clichéd way) what was the sound "zeitgeist" of the period in Germany represented by artists like Klaus Schulze and Popol Vuh.

The second side, introduced by the sixth movement, begins with hypnotic and circular evolutions of minimalistic origin (Terry Riley), while the seventh does not forget the experience gained with the early Franco Battiato. With the eighth, it seems that Cacciapaglia once again connects to the avant-garde music of Luciano Berio. With the subsequent ninth movement, the sound of the wind creates a cosmic atmosphere not far from the Tangerine Dream of Zeit, then the environments become impressionistic, close to much subsequent ambient music, while the finale reconnects to the initial sidereal settings. With the tenth and last movement, the music moves into unprecedented and minimalistic territories, opening up surprising scenarios.

Sonanze is a small masterpiece of electronic music that, over time, has lost none of its freshness and still sounds current today. It is an original album that, with the cosmic music of the period, has only some possible connections. With the subsequent Sei note in logica, the musical direction will change and become less immediate and more cerebral.