Evangelisti (review)

Franco Evangelisti: Evangelisti. Compact discs (2) Edition RZ 1011-12, 1998; available from Edition RZ, c/o Durand, Klausenerplatz 11, D-14059 Berlin, Germany; telephone (+49) 30-32-70-40-23; fax (+49) 30-312-82-66; electronic mail edition-rz@snafu.de; World Wide Web www.edition-rz.de.

In the mid-1950s, the Italian composer Franco Evangelisti (1926- 1980) adopted a most radical approach to music, and in a few years became part of the musical avant-garde of his time. His music, initially reflecting a thoroughly serialist attitude, soon opened itself to aleatoric processes, giving the interpreter(s) responsibility over the actual shape of large musical sections. His scores became more and more like "systems," or "programs," for possible compositions, based either on deterministic and/or indeterministic strategies. Of his Campi Integrati n.2, for example, Mr. Evangelisti said that it was "not a composition, but a field of possibilities by means of which a composition can be created." Gottfried Michael Koenig described the Italian composer as "a pioneer of electronic music." Indeed, many consider his Incontri di Fasce Sonore (1957) one of the most remarkable pieces ever produced in the Studio für Elektronische Music of WestDeutscher Rundfunk in Cologne, due to its outstanding musical quality and the innovative use of the technology then available. In the making of that short electronic piece (3 min 24 sec), Mr. Evangelisti focused on the automation of the compositional process. Working side by side with Mr. Koenig himself, and with Herbert Brün composing his Anephigraphe at the same time, Mr. Evangelisti was exploring the "computer-like" character of automated compositional processes in the analog studio, an approach that, in retrospect, foreshadowed later achievements in computer music.

By the mid-1960s, Mr. Evangelisti seemed to reach a point of no return: his overly critical view of Western social, political, and technological life, and his profound dissatisfaction with the musical mainstream (contemporary music included, with its shift toward new forms of academicism and conservatism), led him to silence. For some 15 years, he did not compose any new works. He broke his silence only in 1979, accepting a United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) invitation to contribute to a musical project for humanitarian aims. During the "fallow years," however, Mr. Evangelisti was not at all inactive. He started to become involved in acoustic ecology, and to research sound spatialization. In 1965 he became a member of the Gruppo di Improvvisazione di Nuova Consonanza (the original ensemble also included Larry Austin, Mario Bertoncini, Walter Branchi, John Heineman, Roland Kayn, Ennio Morricone and Ivan Vandor; they were later joined by Frederic Rzewski, Egisto Macchi, Giancarlo Schiaffini, Jesus Villa Rojo, and others). In 1980, a few weeks after the world premiere of Campi integrati n.2, Mr. Evangelisti died of a cerebral aneurysm. His utopian "new sonorous world," coming at the end of an age of silence, is the object of his book, Dal silenzio ad un nuovo mondo sonoro (Rome: Editore Semar, 1991).

Many of Mr. Evangelisti's compositions are aphoristic. Few exceed six minutes, and when they do, they are presented in short sections with more or less violent gestures isolated among them by silent pauses. The composer "refuted... the dream of the long work," his music rejected any narrative.

Of the ten scores written by Mr. Evangelisti, three are published by Universal Editions (Incontri di Fasce Sonore) and C. F. Peters (Die Schachtel and Random or not Random). The remaining were initially published by Tonos Verlag (Darmstadt) and are now available through Editore Semar (interested readers may contact semarpublishers@altavista.net). Prior to this new release, only a few works had been released on media available to the public (Incontri di Fasce Sonore on Wergo CD 9106, Die Schachtel on Deutsche Grammophon LP 2561 106). So it is with a particularly warm welcome that we hail this double disc from Edition RZ in Berlin, collecting the complete Evangelisti repertoire.

What is particularly notable in this release is that it offers a comprehensive view...