guitar, piano, saxophone, viola and processing

Dialoghi con Paul Celan is the third of part of a trilogy (along with Nach Atemwende for bass flute, and Sprachgitter for string quartet) that I wrote about Paul Celan.

Luigi Nono once asked, “Why does one sound follow another sound?”. Through his examination of this question, Nono casts doubt on traditional answers in a powerful and profound way. He asks this question because a sound creates a complete unit, which emerges from silence and returns to silence immediately. There is a constant risk that everything could be complete at any moment and, therefore, could come to an end at any time. This piece continues my research into the relationship between sound and word. I work with the words of Celan, whose poetry also followed the same path back to silence, which is linked also to my reflections about the possibilities of composition.

[ii-15]