richiami

for vla, vc, db
[2007] dur. 10′ ca.

Richiami was inspired by the world of Sicilian oral traditions and Alberto Favara’s Corpus di Musiche Popolari Siciliane (1957)—an anthology of over a thousand folk songs, transcribed into musical notation by Favara himself. I first encountered this repertoire through Matilde Politi, a singer and storyteller from Palermo, and through the work of Luciano Berio. It was through them that I discovered and fell in love with songs like Santaninafara/Vogghiu Cantari, Un mi ‘nni scantu, and Mommu Bruno, that appear in the piece in this very order. These chants emerge gradually, following an introduction built around a pivot note—A—and fleeting melodic gestures that anticipate and evade resolution. This thread weaves through the entire piece, connecting the different chants and leading seamlessly into the final Fragment from Favara’s collection. This last melody, presented without text and annotated simply as “heard from afar,” feels almost lost—carried by the wind.

Richiami is an homage between memory and reinvention echoing Constantin Brăiloiu’s observation that “One doesn’t gather a chant, but always and only its variant.”