terzapagina - Nr.2
(Sovera Editore)
October 2004 (page 34):
music and literature
A talk with Sergio Calligaris
Franco Campegiani talks with the brilliant
and internationally well-known musician

I reach Maestro Sergio Calligaris to Rocca di Mezzo, verdant site in the Abruzzi, where he is in the habit of spending the summer months in a sort of creative retreat in the mountains.
He joyfully welcomes me in the relaxing site Madonna Delle Rocche, where he dwells. Maestro Calligaris is a musician of international reputation, an original composer, a brilliant performer, known all over the world. This interview is for the readers of "Terza Pagina" on subjects of a great aesthetic, philosophical and musical interest.

Critics often talk of an intertwining between elegiac motifs and dytirambic motifs, with regard to your music works. Does this coexistence of great enthusiasm and sudden melancholy, of intense passion and glacial contemplation, have cathartic motives or is it the outcome of a pure and simple magmatic and explosive impulse based on the osmosis between being and nil, life and death, finity and infinity?

We could also talk of the osmosis between good and evil, or the encounter matter-spirit, that you care so much in your writings. They are harmonic, counterpoint meltings. The two elements arise simultaneously. There isn't any sublimation of a feeling, because the feeling arises already sublimated at the beginning. If I evoke a warlike sensation, a heroic sensation, an aggressive sensation, this doesn't mean that I'm changing a disposition into something superior or abstract while I create. Both functions (idealistic and sensitive) arise perfectly integrated each other. There isn't any hierarchical order, in the sense that the spiritual one is qualitatively superior to the other. For me, it comes already primordially organized and I don't worry about. I get it as it is.

Please correct me if I'm wrong. Yours is a poetics of energy. For this aspect, it is very different from the formalistic poetics of our time, nihilistic and anti-representative, but it is also very far from the idealistic styles of the past, of static contents, incompatible with the ineffable full-ability to evoke by your musical art. Is that so?

Exactly. Nevertheless I'd like to point out that the styles of the past are deeply-rooted in myself as a second nature, since I received a very rigorous academic training. The primordial (or "telluric", to use a term dear to you) strength arises self-chained by its own intellect in a technically and rationally conscious form. Here is the encounter between finity and infinity, rationality and unconscious thrust. The energy that I evoke is not chaos, but it arises self-organized in logical and coherent forms. The primordial energy is often confused with disorder and bad taste, but it isn't so. Rationality and passionality seems to be opposite each other, but they can melt together.

We got now to the philosophical concept of the harmony of opposites. Maybe it is because of this that, as I am fascinated by the arduous figure of Heraclitus, when I listen to your music, I feel to be at home. They are harmonies anything but static, rather dynamic and vital. They are glacial blazes, polar landscapes and atmospheres of fire.

I'll quote the last four verses of your poem Bursts The Sun: "To the solar flash/to the barbarous winged chant/majestic catches fire/the embrace of Goodness and Evil". Here you poetically gather what can also be found in my music: the perfect fusion of two mutually integrating opposite elements. Allow me to analyze again your poetry that I surprisingly find similar to my musical world. You write (in Tears me, this wind): "From my veins spatters my blood into the sky/ and like a wind-rider I run, radiant warrior unbridled toward me". Here also a sense of duality is destined to fuse. Let me read another fragment, from Exploding Brooms: "I have inside a wild cry/an unexploded bomb of life/a rolling thunder/from unknown regions". It is the magmatic power that you find in my music.

What do you think of dodecaphony? Musical world seems today split in two parts: on one side people trying to save the ancient principle of tonality; on the other side people drawing the most extreme consequences from the wagnerian reform. What about your own point of view? Can a dissonant poetic walking along a one-way tracks toward atonality? Don't you see in such approach a new form of fixed system?

Here we touch an extraordinarily interesting point. Wagner introduced a chromatic harmony which allows traditional harmony to unendingly change. This means that, while traditional tonality has a point of departure and a returning point, such ending point in Wagner's music doesn't exist. It departs again and again toward new cycles of harmonies, eventually giving rise to what is called endless music or endless melody.
Dodecaphony, on the other hand, is not anymore, a continous becoming harmony (like river waves), but is sometimes an autonomous musical note that produces in continuation itself. This provokes in the listener, even if musically prepared, a sense of disconcertment, because he loses the sense of direction and his bearings.

There is however who wants to preserve the ancient principle of the tonality. Doesn't it seem to you a bit too regressive ? Is there no way to reassume the contrast between tonality and atonality in just one single expressive fact? We are back to the embrace between finiteness and infiniteness, between life and death...

We could work to find a way to join the dissonance coming from atonality with the consonance coming from the overlapping of tonal traditional chords.
Here it is a perfect symbiosis of the two poles. It can be done, and it is fascinating since it evokes that latent ambiguity that I would define better as "mystery of life." As Debussy once said, the dissonance doesn't exist without the consonance, the forte without the piano, the lento without the presto.

Have you tried such way in your artistic production?

Sure. My music hinges on harmonic complexity. In many works of mine, certain moments are close to tonality, but I have written works like the "Prelude, choral, double fugue and finale for great organ, op.19" where the course is atonal. In my "Sonata opus 38" for piano and clarinet - dedicated to the great Vladimir Ashkenazy - the central part contains an atonal fugue in five voices. However when people listen to my atonal music say: "Well…it seems tonal!".
How does it happen? I use the atonal elements in such way that, when you hear the piece, you find them logically located, consequentially framed, not self-sustained at every note. Such skill is probably a gift, but surely relies on a strong technical mastery. My music, and after all your poetry as well, is also the fruit of a severe mind, mercilessly logic and rational, that allows to tie and to harmonize the oppositions among them.
I adopt such approach not only as composer, but also as performer of other people's music. These two extremes don't occur in all the interpreters, perhaps when they are not sufficiently creative. In particular, certain late-romantic musicians, like Rachmaninoff or Mahler, require this complexity. The latter, in his great symphonies, alternates moments of a highly sophisticated harmonic and melodic reformulation to moments when purely popular themes come up.

Please, say something on your musical training, and how it is related to your creativeness.

My training as composer started already at nine. I was a little boy and I have always had the fortune of having dogmatic teachers brutally imposing themselves on me. In that situation, one could either succumb, or make himself free, but this chance could only occur if you learn how to master the solid technique that only the dogmatic people have. My technical training grew on this formal rigor, mercilessly logical, that however had to front an insuppressible wild and primordial nature.
Every creativeness sustains on this ability to balance the opposites. I also find this quality in your poetry, where I note a very rhythmic use of the word. "Burst the sun", for instance, seems a piano sonata, or a symphony for large orchestra. The rhythm, the most-rigorous form, the crescendo and the diminuendo, are all there.
Elsewhere you have written that nothing is more creative than earth, continuously denying what affirms, killing and regenerating with immense vitality. You have also written that in nature there is an immense sense of harmony, even in its more violent demonstrations as earthquakes and floods. Haven't you said that the earth is not a stone thrown in the space but a cosmic intelligence, a bursting and endless energy? I feel perfectly in tune with those statements.

You make yours the so-called strength piano playing principle. What is it?

I belong to the Argentinian school. There actually exist two great schools in Argentina: the Neapolitan one of late nineteenth century, with its sparling digit technique, and the one I met through my first teacher Jorge Fanelli, that in his turn coming from the great Polish school, whose main characteristic is the wrist fixity and a great digital strength. Later on, there has been for me the American experience: in the US the great Russian school of late nineteenth century had promoted the firm belief that the pianist is in a certain sense an athlete.
Following this perspective, the pianist doesn't play with the weight of his fingers, but relying upon the speed of the lowering keys. It is a slow-motion movement, until the key is completely pushed down, as you stab someone to the quick. To pierce slowly, you need more control and more muscular strength. Imagine the stealthily moves of a panther or a tigress. Muscles are in tension. Slower it walks, more energy uses. Then, the release is obviously faster. To reach this aim, there are exercises like those for a trained athlete.
Have you ever seen the Rubinstein's hands? Do not they seem to belong to a hoer? Like the Emil Gilels's ones: they could belong to a peasant from the deepest Russian countryside. However, what a beautiful sound! The sound coming from the controlled strength! Weak hands could instead risk to be sometimes overpowered by the sonority of an orchestra having ninety or more teachers in it. This could reasonably happen playing concertos of solid structure technique as those by Ciajkowskij, Brahms, or Rachmaninoff.
You have not necessarily to agree with what I have said, but I think that, while the weak pianism limits, since it cannot comfortably perform the authors requiring an heavy technique, like Prokofiev or Bartok, the strength pianist have no limitations: he also succeeds in managing authors of more transparent character, like Mozart or Scarlatti.

Which are your artistic ancestries, and the music you love most to play in the concerts you perform all over the world?

The author I prefer is by far Schumann. He spoke of himself as Florestan and Eusebius. Here are the two extremes: Florestan represents the impetuousness, the masculine rush, that is confident of himself; Eusebius represents the contemplative part, meditative and even mysterious. Now I understand why Schumann has always been my preferred author. He also added: "There is a third soul inside me: the rare teacher", that is the mind wisdom.

Or perhaps the muse, the genius, the spirit, the arcane one, the cosmic intelligence of which it spoke before?

In few words, what allows to fit the Florestan's violent energy with the Eusebius' calm thoughtfulness. I love a lot to play Schumann. It is suitable to me like one finger ring. I also like a lot Haydn, Chopin and Brahms. And Rachmaninoff as well. Like me, he was a devoted interpreter of other people's music. His interpretations were so personal that a great New York critic had to say: "I don't go to concerts to listen to Rachmaninoff playing Beethoven, but I go to hear how Rachmaninoff re-creates Beethoven".
Let me also mention two authors of French impressionism, Debussy and Ravel, that I don't love to consider, as it usually happen, a magma of indefinite solos, but like a picture of Pissarro with that great panoramic sense and that chromatic touch. As soon as we approach to the painting, we see an endless quantity of small touches of brush. It is pure state of color, and the chromatism comes from the panoramic fusion of these autonomous elements. Also Gauguin used well-separated colors, never integrated or dirty. This corresponds, in music, to the fusion between tonality and atonality.
Let me say that I don't feel comfortable with the so-called avant-garde, or experimental music. I love the consolidated things. My nature is somewhat soldierlike. It doesn't love disorder, what is unpredictable, the anarchic utopia. I have respect for such things, but there will never be for me. I love rational things, providing that they fulfill the criteria exposed above: the magmatic, the explosive, the dragging, the primitive.

You have made reference to some painters. Do you particularly love any other painter?

Yes, certainly. I could make other examples, from the world of abstract art. Say…Kandinsky and Mondrian. Of the latter I like the structural logicality, the pitilessness of the geometric line. At the same time I feel attracted by the continuous sense of movement, by the color in fantastic evolution in Kandinsky. I try to join the two languages in a single artistic expression. Musical, of course.

Franco Campegiani (translation by Maurizio Brunetti)

Franco Campegiani lives in Marino, in the Castelli Romani, where he was born in September 1946. He published in Mario Dell'Arco's Collection two books of poems: "L'ala e la gruccia" (Rome 1975) and "Punto e a capo" (Rome 1976). Always in Rome, with the Publisher Rossi e Spera, he published in 1986 the poem "Selvaggio pallido", including drawings by Maestro Umberto Mastroianni. Moreover, in 1989, he published with the Publisher Ibiskos in Florence, in a collection inaugurated by Domenico Rea, "Cielo amico", collection of poems of a cosmic background. In 2000 there was the anthology "Canti tellurici", published by Sovera Multimedia (Rome).
In the field of visual arts, in particular for the sculpture, he planned and directed two editions of the International Biennial of the Stone "Città di Marino", staged in this locality in 1977/78 and in 1980/81. Jury member in literature prizes, Campegiani organised festivals of poetry and introduced from critisicm point of view writers, philosophers and eminent personages of the artistic world (Elio Filippo Accrocca, Dario Bellezza, Antonio Bolettieri, Aldo Calò, Mario dell'Arco, Bruno Fabi, Salvatore Fiume, Lorenzo Guerrini, Umberto Mastroianni, Aldo Onorati, Fortunato Pasqualino, Sergio Quinzio, Dario Rezza, Vito Riviello, Giorgio Romano, and others).
In the journalistic field, Campegiani developed a deep activity at broadcasting companies and newspapers of local influence. Moreover some articles of him of various humanistic interests appeared in the specialized press: "Rinnovamento", "Fermenti", "La cultura nel mondo", "Next", "L'inventario", "Castelli Romani", "Terza pagina". Ecological initiatives and congresses promotions refer to him relating to feeding, environment and agriculture, as well as the foundation of cultural manifestos and circles, such as the Cultural Movement "Chiaro Scuro", with the aim to spur on revival of the self-criticism conscience.
In 2003 he organised the International Prize of Culture "Città di Marino" for the unpublished essay and other works of ingenuity, sponsored by the Banca di Credito Cooperativo "San Barnaba" in Marino. He directs the collection "Labirinti e tracciati" at Sovera Multimedia Editrice. In the strict philosophical field he published with the Publisher "Armando" in spring 2001, an essay titled "La teoria autocentrica, analisi del potere creativo" with purposes diametrically opposed to the egocentricity. With the preface of Bruno Fabi, founder of the systematic irrationalism, this essay has been considered "a revolutionary work, highly innovative in the field of the contemporary philosophy" (as Giorgio Romano judged).
Numerous awards: Poetry Prize "Castelli Romani" 1974; Prime Minister Prize 1976; Prize "Lions Club" 1982; Literature Prize "Gotto d'Oro" 1987; Literature Prize "Gabriele D'Annunzio" 1988; Prize "Lucus Feroniae" 1990; International Prize "Emily Dickinson" 2001; Prize CAPIT 2001; Prize "Padus Amoenus" 2003; Prize "Eschilo a Gela" 2003; Prize "San Valentino" 2004.
About his poetry, favourable opinions were expressed, among others: Giorgio Barberi Squarotti, Fortunato Bellonzi, Carmelo Cappuccio, Mario dell'Arco, Mario Lunetta, Leo Magnino, Giuliano Manacorda, Aldo Onorati, Mario Petrucciani, Vito Riviello, Rosalma Salina Borello, Cesare Vivaldi, Luigi Volpicelli.