CHIARI, GIUSEPPE - IL METODO PER SUONARE (LP)

"Giuseppe Chiari's Il Metodo per suonare ("Methods for Playing") became known in artistic circles in the 1970s when the critic Gillo Dorfles published Il Metodo per suonare di Giuseppe Chiari, a book containing the scores of 11 methods for playing musical instruments (guitar, piano), objects or elements (water, crackling objects, stones, rattles, video-camera), places (room, city), actions (breaking) and even concepts (quantity). As Dorfles notes in his book, although these scores had been written in the 1960s, it was only ten years later that they attracted the attention of the art world, intrigued by the "minimalist, functional nature" of their visual content and their "basic, conceptual approach." In the early 1960s, Chiari still had no contact with the visual art world. He started composing independently in the 1950s, outside the academic circles of the well-known Schola Fiorentina. Later he came into contact with the work of John Cage and the world of international musical experimentation through his friendship with Sylvano Bussotti and Pietro Grossi. In addition to his compositional activity, Bussotti was active as a pianist and performed works of new music both in Italy and abroad. Grossi, a renowned cellist who later became well-known for his pioneering work in the field of computer music, organized contemporary music concerts with the association Vita Musicale Contemporanea, an activity that was virtually unparalleled in Italy at the time. After completing Intervalli (1950-56), an extended work for piano that explores combinatorial forms of composition, Chiari abandoned traditional music notation and embraced a highly distinctive form of writing combining graphic and verbal elements that was to become characteristic of his later work. This new form of notation reflected a shift in Chiari's research, which now focused on gestural strategies applied to sound production using both musical instruments and extra-musical objects. In composing the Methods for playing, Chiari associates the spontaneous expression and liberating effect of the gestures with logical, scientific and systemic procedures, no doubt informed by his earlier mathematical studies. The goal is to bring the performer into a state of intense concentration on the action and the sound it produces. Through his Methods, Chiari redefines the relationship between body and instrument/object, creating a shift away from "knowing how to play," in favor of the rediscovery of an intimate dimension of music-making that also redefines the way a piece of music is performed. This LP edition has been issued in a limited run of 200 copies only. Includes a four-page LP-sized insert with scores, photos and liner notes by performers Deborah Walker and Chiara Saccone." (label info)