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“I have tried to highlight the scenes in this story that fascinated me most”
The entire suite is based on Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy. For the 700th anniversary of the poet’s death, the work is my personal transcription into music, for jazz quartet and string quartet, of the poet’s journey through the three worlds: Hell, Purgatory and Paradise.
In full respect of Dante’s numbering, the suite was conceived in three movements and an overture that accompanies Dante towards the mysterious door masterfully transformed into reality by Rodin, the door to hell. After a careful study of the construction of the famous poem, I extrapolated some basic concepts such as endecasyllables and chained rhymes and tried to apply these rules to the harmonic and melodic construction.
In a series of mini-videos on my social channels I describe this process in detail, which I will not go into in this booklet. Dante’s rules applied to music sometimes give rise to harmonic progressions and melodic lines with an atonal flavour that can sometimes be traced back to Schoenberg’s aesthetics. This aesthetic, although of great importance and historical importance, does not reflect my harmonic/melodic world, which is why I sometimes break the rules I have imposed on myself in favour of melody and the contemporary harmonic universe that is closer to my cultural background.
With the careful and sensitive work of writing and orchestration, I have tried to highlight the scenes in this story that fascinated me most, accompanying the listener just as the guides do: Virgil, Beatrice and Saint Bernard with Dante.
Yes, I am a jazz musician, but my course of study led me to complete not only the jazz conservatory but also the classical conservatory, which is why I tried to sew together intense sound textures to obtain a unique garment by combining a jazz quartet (tenor/soprano saxophone, piano, double bass, drums) and a string quartet. The resulting garment is a dress that I think is suitable for this journey, transporting the listener’s ear to these worlds, drawing strength from different musical roots, blues, jazz, classical counterpoint, madrigals. Roots with which the stem of the suite supports itself.
“I extrapolated some basic concepts such as endecasyllables and chained rhymes and tried to apply these rules to the harmonic and melodic construction”
In the process of composing a work such as DAS700, it was necessary to think about a very precise structure. The harmonic framework, the choice of tempos, forms, style and the number of main melodies in each world led to the creation of a true geometric plan where, just like in the divine comedy, each world comes into contact with the other through this journey of the poet.
The various geometric figures on the circle of fifths show the various tones and how they intersect. The six vertices of the two triangles represent the main tones of the DAS700. The circles represent the “undertones” in the world in question. Red, hell. Green, purgatory. Blue, heaven. The rectangles simply indicate the chosen time signature. Each world has been designed and constructed so that there are always three tonal centers between which the melody(s) travels.