Kassiopeia is the title chosen by Andrea Lorenzo Scartazzini for his new composition for the Collegium Novum Zurich. The five stars, which together form a “W” and one of the brightest constellations in the night sky, are a symbol for his five-movement ensemble piece.
A metamorphosis, which the composer likens to an alchemical process, is the starting point for Kassiopeia, Andrea Lorenzo Scartazzini’s new ensemble work. In the first and fifth movements, his earlier work scongiuro is transformed into another materiality. In the fifth movement, this is a process of accumulation, of the strengthening of inner connections, of tonal compression. The first movement reduces the material to a kind of black-and-white drawing. The piece begins with a soft whisper, a roll on the bass drum over double bass pizzicati, before a subdued sonority unfolds in piano, percussion, violin, cello and double bass. But an intensification occurs. A threefold new start to this mysterious beginning structures the course of the movement which, as Scartazzini says, only begins ”to shine or sparkle” at the end. ”With the percussion, I have avoided all tuned instruments, so that the overall sound is a dry, dull, bony one, similar to a skeleton, like an engraving or an etching.” In the fifth movement, the three-part intensificatied form is then clothed in an ecstatic-glassy sonority, fully scored with wind instruments and harps, as it were in a full range of colours. ”This procedure could be seen as parallel to methods in painting, where themes are worked in other materialities or materials are taken up over and over again.”
This composition is about archaic models of effect and sonorities: ”for some time the ritual aspect of music has fascinated me, forms of repetition. This interest is in contrast with my earlier musical language, which I would describe rather as growing organically: like a plant which develops and continues growing, or like a music of becoming, entirely rhapsodically conceived. In contrast with this, in the newer pieces, the aspect of repetition fascinates me. Schoenberg said that we only perceive form when a shape is repeated, that is, it can be recognised again. Thus the listener can find his place in the music.”
The title of the work refers solely to the constellation and not to the mythological figure of Kassiopeia. The point of reference is the constellation’s quasi-symmetrical appearance and the poetic sound effect of the name, whose vowels also form a symmetrical sequence (A – I – O – EI – A). ”The title shouldn’t only be poetic, rather at the same time it should express something of the formal shape of the piece; in this case, it involves five movements (stars), which come together as a whole. The closely related (or transformed) outer movements find their counterpart in the sequence of sounds of the title word (an A at the beginning and end), in the middle a circling texture without beginning or end, a point of repose, which is released from a temporality, matching the circling O. The second and fourth movements also exhibit affinities, but these are, however, in a hidden form. Harmonically, the middle movements find a greater mellowness of sounds, whilst the tonality of the outer movements is expressively honed.”
The fascination with the archaic unites Scartazzini’s early works. Thus, he composes a “spell” in scongiuro, to which Kassiopeia relates; or ”veiled” in Siegel for soprano and large orchestra is an Orphic sonnet by Rilke. His interest in music-theatre is also related to the longing for a particular ritual-cultic form of music, which exists per se in such cult-like character. ”What interests me is the narrative qualities in a dramatically-structured, form-like music, which should move the listener and take him along and is the opposite of polished and superficial. Siegel, for example, is a differentiated score with many layers and levels; despite that, the aim was not to bombard the ear with a work of great complexity, rather that the music is received as a sensuous experience.”
Marie Luise Maintz
from: takte 2/2008