Federico Incardona and Giovanni Damiani
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Date
2012
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Katedra Muzykologii, Wydawnictwo Naukowe PTPN, Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM
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Abstract
Together with Sciarrino and Casale, Incardona and Damiani are the most important
composers trained at Palermo University’s Musicological Institute.
Federico Incardona (Palermo, 1958–2006) reconciles the social commitment of Berg and the political
tension of Nono with the sublimated eroticism of Szymanowski. If Nono’s works, like those of Evangelisti
in a different way, blend dodecaphonic dialectic with the corporeity of the sound of Varèse, Incardona
blends Evangelisti’s sonorous cosmogony with the erotic immediateness of Bussotti. But his principal
reference point is Mahler. His music is rich in meaning and strong emotional intensity, concentrated
and sublimated: it is like “processes of denuding of the melody, carnal embraces between the parts,
dodecaphonic series modelled on the body of the loved one” (Spagnolo). Its “new linearity and temporal
tension”, is wedded to the “absolute primacy of expression and emotion”, in full awareness of the “deep
unity of emotion and knowledge” (Lombardi Vallauri). Indeed, in the intense expressionism of his music,
dodecaphonic construction is always at the service of a dialectical discourse which is dense and deep,
but – in his last works – clear and fl uid like a melody by Bellini. “Infi nite melos”, Marco Crescimanno
defi nes it: harmonic richness and dense heterophonic complexities are blended; the counterpoint is
based “on the superimposition of manifold variations on the same fi gure, with precise control of the
vertical encounters on its melodic-harmonic hinges”.
Born into a dynasty of engineers and architects, Giovanni Damiani (Palermo, 1966) is himself an
engineer and architect, but in sound space. Rather than music, his works are organized Sound:
“embodiment of the intelligence inherent in sounds themselves”, in the manner of Varèse, and specifi
cally “sound vegetation”, in the manner of Bartók. His most important work, Salve follie precise
(1998–2004: on a libretto in verse by Francesco Carapezza, based on Semmelweis et l’infection
puerpérale that Louis-Ferdinand Céline wrote between 1924 and 1929), represents precisely the
germination of life (of algae from water, of grass from rock, of man from woman, of sounds from
Sound) and the threats of death that surround it, that is to say of regression of the animal and
vegetable kingdoms to the mineral kingdom. In it Damiani exclusively uses, as previously in the
great symphony Matrice/Organon (1995), natural harmonic sounds. We thus assist at harmonic
germination; Sound generates sounds, the Note generates notes. If Damiani as a musicologist
follows on from Réti, as a composer he follows on from Schenker. For him the note, seen as pure
Sound internally structured a priori, is everything: the universe of artistic creation in sound space
is only unfolding of the tension internal to the note itself. Everything (melody, tonality, polyphony,
harmony), as Cesare Brandi wrote, “comes from the very nature of the note, which is, in the stratifi
cation of harmonics, tonic, isolated note (of a melody), vertical chord and horizontal encounter
of polyphonic lines”.
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Federico Incardona, Giovanni Damiani, University of Palermo, post-serial dodecaphony, heterophony, natural harmonic sounds, abstract expressionism, sound vegetation, thought in sounds, sound architecture
Citation
Interdisciplinary Studies in Musicology 12, 2012, pp. 41-56.