The Apeiron Armonies

Tags: Marialuisaveneziano

  • The process to the impossible voice

    In the Music Court, being new can become the most serious of suspicion.

    by Marialuisa Veneziano

    ************

    🎧 MUSIC FOR LETTURE
    To accompany The process to the impossible voice, we recommend listening to Concerto in mi bemolle major per sassofono contralto e orchestra d’archi, op. 109 by Aleksandr Glazunov, in the execution of Valentine Michaud with the Danish National Symphony Orchestra, direct from Vasily Petrenko.
    Approximately fourteen minutes in which the saxophone no longer has to justify its existence or demonstrate by those who have received its voice: simply simply speak. The stamp passes from the most intimate cantability to the virtuosity, dialogues with the bows, transforms itself and remains always recognizable. It is almost the musical answer to the process of our fairy tale: what we have inherited can go through without preventing us from becoming something that previously did not exist.
    Click on the arrow of the logo "cuffie", press play and start reading.

    In Paris, in a shop where it was impossible to find a screwdriver because Adolphe Sax claimed that he had «put in a safe place», a tool was born that immediately provoked a problem.

    Not a sound problem.

    Sound was great.

    The problem was to figure out where he came from.

    Adolphe had built it with a shiny metal body, many keys and a small tip on the mouthpiece.

    He put it on the counter.

    He observed it.

    Then he breathed him in.

    The workshop filled with a warm and deep voice, capable of being strong without shouting and sweet without apologizing.

    The Celestine Clarinet lifted the keys.

    — Interesting.

    The Baron Trombone denounced the pavilion.

    — Audace.

    Mademoiselle Oboe shook his eyes.

    — Suspect.

    The new instrument slowly opened its eyes.

    — I was born?

    Adolphe smiled.

    — I think so.

    — Who are they?

    — Saxophone.

    The little one repeated the name.

    — Sas-so-fo-no.

    He liked him.

    He had just started smiling when Celestine approached.

    He looked at the mouthpiece.

    Then the tip.

    Then again the mouthpiece.

    — Wait a minute.

    The Saxon was worried.

    — What?

    Celestine pointed the tip.

    — I know that one.

    Baron Trombone approached.

    — Even this metal seems strangely familiar to me.

    Mademoiselle Oboe examined the keys.

    — And these?

    Quiet.

    Adolphe, who knew very well the moment when the tools were about to turn a curiosity into a process, took the coat.

    — Good night.

    — Where are you going? — asked the Saxon.

    — To sleep.

    — What about us?

    Sax opened the door.

    — Try not to establish a court before tomorrow.

    The door closed.

    The instruments looked.

    Celestine.

    — Of course we won't merge a court.

    At eight and twelve o'clock in the morning the Court had already been founded.

    His name was:

    OTHER COURT OF AUTHORIES

    He presided over Professor Purissimo, an old silver diapason so right that even his shadow seemed to stand on the watch.

    Purissimo had dedicated his whole life to a conviction:

    Everything really original must come only from itself.

    No one had ever noticed that even he was built by someone.

    He wouldn't have been careful.

    On the wall behind the judge was a huge writing:

    I'm sorry.

    The Saxon was sitting in the middle of the hall.

    Next to him was Annetta, the small aunt of the mouthpiece.

    Annetta had no legal qualifications, but he had not prevented her from declaring herself a defence lawyer.

    — Do you know anything right? — He asked her for the Saxon.

    — No.

    — Then why are you defending me?

    — Because I'm small and aggressive. It is practically a vocational training.

    Professor Purissimo beat the hammer.

    TAC!

    — Open the process against the instrument called... how?

    — Saxophone.

    Purely unleashed a register.

    — Recent name.

    — I was born yesterday.

    — Worse again.

    A Mormon crossed the hall.

    Purissimo continued:

    — The defendant is accused of possessing a voice built with elements already belonging to other instruments.

    The Saxon opened his eyes.

    — But I didn't steal anything!

    — We will.

    — I was born yesterday!

    — Youth is not a musical attenuation.

    Annetta got up.

    — Objection.

    Purely looked at her.

    — On what base?

    — It seemed like the right time.

    — Rejected.

    — Good. I just wanted to try.

    The first witness was the Celestine Clarinet.

    He entered with elegant step.

    — Do you recognize anything from the defendant? — He asked Purissimo.

    Celestino observed the Saxon.

    — The simple tip.

    The room bit.

    Purely dirty.

    — So do you confirm that the defendant has something that already belonged to your family?

    Celestine settled.

    — I'd rather say he had great taste.

    Annetta jumped up.

    — The tip was not invented by you.

    Celestine is offended.

    — I never said that.

    — You were thinking it with an unbearable accent.

    Pure beat the hammer.

    — Silence!

    Second witness: the old Oficleide.

    He looked at the metal body of the Saxon.

    — I know that principle.

    Third witness: Mademoiselle Oboe.

    — Those keys weren't born yesterday.

    Fourth witness: the Flute.

    — Not even the holes.

    Fifth witness: Baron Trombone.

    — I don't know exactly why they called me, but I want to report that metal has been present in my family for generations.

    Purely closed the file.

    The Saxon suddenly felt very small.

    He looked at his body.

    Your tip.

    The keys.

    Until then, he was part of him.

    Now it looked like evidence.

    — So... — whisper — Is there nothing really mine?

    Purely felt it.

    — That is precisely what the Court intends to establish.

    Provisional judgment was terrible.

    — You have seven days — He declared Purissimo.

    — To do what?

    — To find at least one part of your voice that owes nothing to anyone.

    — What if I can't?

    The judge pointed out a big eraser on the table.

    Annetta paleed.

    — You won't want...

    — The name "Sassophone" will be deleted from the logs.

    — What about him?

    Purely looked at the instrument.

    — It will be classified as Composite Musical Copy number 47.

    The Saxon felt a thrill.

    — I won't have a name anymore?

    — Copies don't need it.

    Annetta jumped on the counter.

    — This is barbarity!

    It was pure.

    — The barbarism is not the responsibility of this Court.

    — Too bad. You'd be very qualified.

    That same evening the Saxon decided to leave.

    He had to find the First Sound.

    An absolutely original voice.

    Something that was not born from anything earlier.

    Annetta came with him.

    Celestino showed up in front of the door with a suitcase.

    — I come too.

    The Saxon looked at him.

    — You testified against me.

    — I said you got a tip.

    — It seemed pretty serious.

    — I didn't know they wanted to erase your name.

    Behind him, Baron Trombone appeared with a cloak.

    — I will come too.

    — Why?

    — For the spirit of justice.

    Celestino looked at him.

    — What about that basket?

    The Trombone hid it.

    — Come on.

    — For seven days?

    — We don't know how long justice will last.

    Annetta peeked in.

    — You brought six croissants.

    — Justice consumes energy.

    They left.

    The first stage was the Museum of Antique Instruments.

    The keeper was such an old harpsichord that every time he told a memory someone had to check whether it was still History or had already become Archaeology.

    — We are looking for the most original tool in the world — said the Saxon.

    The harpsichord enlighted himself.

    — Finally.

    — Is that you?

    — Of course.

    A voice came from a theca.

    — Um.

    It was a psalm.

    The harpsichord stiffened.

    — Don't start.

    The Salterio smiled.

    — I didn't say anything.

    — You were thinking it historically.

    They tried the Piano.

    — You were born from something?

    Piano looked at the harpsichord.

    Then the Clavicordo.

    Then Christophers portrayed in a painting.

    — I'd rather not answer without my litter.

    They tried the Violin.

    — Was there anything like this before you?

    The Violin contemplated the ceiling.

    — Genealogy is a bourgeois concept.

    Annetta sighed.

    — ♪

    In the evening they had questioned twenty-three instruments.

    Everyone had ancestors.

    Everyone got something.

    No one came out of nowhere.

    The Sassofono was discouraged.

    — If nobody is completely original, why are they processing me?

    Baron Trombone ate the third croissant.

    — Because you are the last one.

    — So?

    Celestine answered slowly:

    — It is always easier to see the debts of those who come after us than remember ours.

    The Saxon remained silent.

    It was the first thought he brought with him from the road.

    The next day they arrived at Room of the Ancestors.

    It was hidden under the museum.

    There lived instruments that the world had almost stopped playing.

    Ancient cornets.

    Bombarde.

    Serpentoni.

    Viole d’amore.

    Chalumeaux.

    One of them, an old Chalumeau, recognized Celestine.

    — Ah.

    The Clarinet stopped.

    — Do we know each other?

    — Not personally.

    The old tool smiled.

    — But part of me has come to you.

    Celestine said nothing.

    For the first time the Saxon saw it without the elegant air.

    He just seemed excited.

    — Does it bother you? — asked the Saxon.

    — What?

    — That something of you ended up in a tool that came after.

    Chalumeau laughs.

    — Finished?

    — Yes.

    — Boy, if anything of me came to him, then it didn't end at all.

    The Saxon approached.

    — But he doesn't sound like you.

    — Good.

    — Why?

    The old Chalumeau turned him a good look.

    — What a terrible legacy would be that which obliges children to become copies of grandparents?

    Later they met Madame Viola of love.

    The Saxon told her about the process.

    She listened.

    — Do they want to know if there's anything in you that doesn't come to anyone?

    — Yes.

    — And you want to find her?

    — I have to.

    — Why?

    The question irritated him.

    — Because otherwise I won't be original.

    Viola smiled.

    — And why do you have to be original?

    — To be entitled to my name.

    She stopped smiling.

    — This is dangerous.

    — What?

    — Confuse the value with the absence of debts.

    The Saxon did not understand.

    The Viola directed Celestine.

    — Who did you learn to speak so well?

    Celestino directed his masters.

    He pointed out his story.

    — What about you? — He asked the Trombone.

    The Baron began a family speech so long that Annetta had to stop him.

    — We understand: you are practically related to the Roman Empire.

    The Viola returned to the Saxon.

    — See?

    — What?

    — We all bring something in.

    — Then no one is original.

    Viola shakes her head.

    — You're still looking at the parts.

    — Where am I supposed to look?

    — To what happens when those parts become you.

    That night the Saxon did not sleep.

    She looked at Annetta.

    — You're from before me.

    — Yes.

    He looked at Celestino.

    — Your stuffing, too.

    — Yes.

    He looked at the Baron.

    — Metal.

    — Not personally, but I accept the tribute.

    The Saxon sighed.

    — Then I'm old.

    Annetta gave him a hit on the mouthpiece.

    — We are all made of the past.

    — What about the future?

    She smiled.

    — That depends on what you're doing.

    On the sixth day something unexpected happened.

    The Saxon saw a shadow moving behind a column.

    — Who is it?

    Nobody.

    Baron Trombone left.

    The mantle hanged him.

    Falls.

    — An ambush!

    Celestine looked at him on the ground.

    — You're tripped.

    — A pavement.

    Behind the column is Professor Purissimo.

    The Saxon backed.

    — Did you follow us?

    — I had to make sure you didn't fake the evidence.

    Annetta shook her eyes.

    — For six days?

    Pure water.

    Celestine approached.

    — Why are you really here?

    The old diapason looked down.

    It was the first time it seemed less straight.

    The Saxon noticed something.

    On the side of Purissimo there was a small engraving.

    A date.

    And the name of a builder.

    — You were built too.

    Pure stiffened.

    — Of course.

    — With a metal that existed before you.

    Quiet.

    — And the principle you vibrate with?

    Pure did not answer.

    — That was also known.

    Annetta opened her eyes.

    — Professor Purissimo...

    The diapason shouted:

    — I know!

    The Hall of the Antenates was silent.

    Pure tremble.

    — I've always known.

    The Saxon looked at him.

    — Then why did you create the Court?

    Pure remained a long time without talking.

    Then his voice changed.

    He wasn't the judge anymore.

    — Because I was scared.

    — About what?

    — That if everything comes from something, then nothing really belongs to anyone.

    The Saxon approached.

    Purissimo continued:

    — I spent my life looking for a completely pure voice. A note without ancestors. An idea that should not thank anything.

    — Did you find it?

    The diapason closed his eyes.

    — No.

    — So?

    Purely looked at him.

    — I started judging others.

    Annetta, for once, said nothing.

    On the seventh day they returned to the Court.

    The room was raw.

    Instruments of each family occupied the docks.

    On the table of Professor Purissimo was ready the big rubber.

    The Saxon left.

    Purissimo again assumed the strict face of the judge.

    — Did you find a part of your voice coming from nothing earlier?

    The Saxon inspired.

    — No.

    A caterpillar walked the hall.

    Mademoiselle Oboe whispered:

    — It's over.

    Purely looked at the gum.

    — So you admit the charge?

    — No.

    — You just declared...

    — I found something more important.

    Pure lifted his eyes.

    The Saxon turned to the public.

    — I looked for the First Sound.

    — And?

    — No way.

    Someone protested.

    The Saxon continued.

    — The piano has a story. The clarinet has a story. The violin has a story. The trombone...

    The Baron stood up.

    — A particularly prestigious story.

    — Sit down.

    — Of course.

    The Saxon looked at Purissimo.

    — Even you have a story.

    The judge did not answer.

    — So yes: in me there are things that came from others.

    He directed Celestine.

    — A principle I know thanks to instruments like him.

    He pointed out the old ancestors.

    — Ideas built over the centuries.

    Then he touched his body.

    — I wasn't born from nothing.

    Pure took the hammer.

    — So what?

    The Saxon smiled.

    — So I don't have to prove that nobody gave me anything. I have to prove that what I have received does not stop in me the same way he has arrived.

    Quiet.

    Pure remained still.

    Then he said,

    — Words.

    The Saxon nodded.

    — You're right.

    The room held its breath.

    — Music should respond with music.

    The Saxon took place in the center.

    Celestino looked at him.

    The Oficleide.

    Mademoiselle Oboe.

    Ancient tools.

    Everyone who somehow had something to do with it.

    He took a breath.

    Suonò.

    The first sentence had something that Celestine recognized.

    — The tip — He whispered.

    Then came a color that the Ophileid recognized.

    — Metal.

    A figure crossed the keys.

    Mademoiselle Oboe just smiled.

    — I know that, too.

    Professor Purissimo listened.

    He seemed almost satisfied.

    Here's the evidence, thought.

    It is made of pieces of others.

    But the sentence continued.

    The Saxon let everything he received pass through him.

    He didn't hide it.

    He didn't imitate her.

    He turned it.

    The sound became warmer.

    Then deeper.

    Then suddenly brilliant.

    A voice that could smile and, a moment later, confess something.

    Celestine couldn't say:

    This is from me.

    The Oficleid could no longer say:

    This is mine.

    Mademoiselle Oboe stopped looking for similarities.

    Because at some point all those tracks had stopped being separate pieces.

    They became a single voice.

    The voice of the Saxon.

    When he finished, no one spoke.

    Annetta dried a corner.

    — Powder.

    Celestino smiled.

    — Of course.

    — Don't comment.

    Professor Purissimo looked at the big gum.

    Then the Register of Authentic Voices.

    He opened it on the first page.

    It was written:

    It's ORIGINAL.

    Purissimo stayed long to stare at her.

    Then he pulled it off.

    The room moved.

    — Professor...

    He took the pen.

    He wrote slowly:

    Tell us you've got it.

    The Saxon looked at him.

    — Am I absolute?

    It was pure.

    — Technically, the Court does not yet have a procedure for such cases.

    Annetta wobbed.

    — Of course.

    The judge lowered his voice.

    — But you will preserve your name.

    The Saxon smiled.

    — Thank you.

    Purissimo stopped him.

    — Don't thank me.

    — Who?

    The old diapason looked at all the tools present.

    — Those who preceded you.

    Then he added:

    — And those who will leave you someday.

    Before the session ended, Annetta raised an imaginary paw.

    — A question.

    Pure sighed.

    — What?

    — Now you'll still call yourself Professor Purissimo?

    A fun buzz went through the hall.

    Pure lightning.

    — Of course.

    — I would recommend Professor Almost-Purissimo.

    Somebody laugh.

    — Rejected.

    — Professor Pretty Authentic?

    They were stronger.

    — Reject!

    — Professor Debitore-Riconoscente?

    Even Madamoiselle Oboe laughed.

    Pure tried to resist.

    Then something happened that no one had ever heard.

    The old diapason laughed.

    A little laugh.

    Argentea.

    Perfectly plastered.

    — Take off! — shouted.

    Some time later Adolphe Sax built other instruments of the same family.

    Smaller.

    Larger.

    More sharp.

    Deeper.

    One of them, just born, approached the first Saxon.

    — Can I ask you something?

    — Sure.

    — Is it true you copied the other tools?

    The shop stopped.

    Celestine turned his head.

    Annetta smiled.

    The Saxon looked at the little one.

    — I have received a lot from others.

    — So is it true?

    — No.

    — I don't understand.

    The Saxon indicated a staircase.

    — If someone teaches you the first step, are you forced to stop there?

    — No.

    — What if you get in?

    — I'll be right there.

    — And then?

    — Third.

    The Saxon smiled.

    — Here.

    The little reflecté.

    — So receiving does not mean copying.

    — No.

    — What does that mean?

    The Saxon looked out of the window.

    Paris kept making noise as if it had something urgent to say.

    Then he answered,

    — It means someone gave you a point to go. The rest of the road, however, you have to follow it.

    Annetta got dirty from the mouthpiece.

    — Possibly plastered.

    And everybody laughed in the shop.

    Then the Saxon took breath.

    And he played.

    Within that voice there were centuries of instruments.

    Inventions.

    Tentatives.

    Errors.

    Find out.

    But the sound that came out no longer belonged to any of them.

    It was through a story.

    And he found a new way to continue.

    No one really creates from nothing. Within what we are living words received, examples, errors, teachings, gestures, ideas and people who preceded us. Being original doesn't mean pretending nothing to anyone. It means knowing what we have received and having enough freedom to transform it. Copying means stopping where someone has already stopped. Hereditating means leaving from there. Because the true identity is not born by erasing the traces of others. It was born when those tracks crossed us and, without disappearing, became something that did not exist before.

    🎭 IN FAVOLA CAST
    Each character has a voice. And every voice hides an idea. (click on the arrow and find out more!)

    🎷 The Saxon — (Identity)
    Just born and already charged. He doesn't know who he is yet, but everyone seems to know what he should be. He will find that becoming oneself does not mean starting from zero, but do something new with what we received.

    ⚖️ Professor Purissimo — (The illusion of purity)
    Diapason, judge and personal enemy of everything that does not fit perfectly into a definition. He predicts uncontaminated origins from others because he is afraid to find that he also owes something to someone. Very strict with the debts of others, less with their own.

    🌾 Annetta — (The Ironic Consciousness)
    It is a tiny tip with the self-esteem of a symphonic orchestra. He interrupts, stings, corrects and says loudly what everyone thinks slowly. Remember the truth does not become less true only because it makes laugh.

    🎶 Celestine, the Clarinet — (The inheritance)
    Elegant, refined and initially very happy to recognize something in the Saxon. Then he understands that transmitting does not mean possessing. A good ancestor leaves traces; a bad ancestor claims copyright on descendants.

    🎼 Mademoiselle Oboe — (The elegant prejudice)
    Refined, impeccable and convinced that good taste always needs its permission. He immediately recognizes in the Sassofono something already seen and for this he looks with suspicion: it represents who confuses familiarity with value and novelty with a fault. However, when he stops looking for similarities and really begins to listen, he discovers that even elegance can learn something from the unexpected.

    🎺 Baron Trombone — (The tradition)
    Bring your own family tree even when you go to buy bread. He is convinced that being ancient is already a quality, but it will end up understanding that tradition is only true when offers a starting point, not a place to stop.

    🎼 Madame Viola d’Amore — (The memory that lets go)
    He saw modes born, triumph and disappear, so he doesn't impress easily. He knows that being overcome does not mean being erased. The true memory does not hold: delivery.

    🎩 Adolphe Sax — (Invention)
    He puts existing things together and has the audacity to call the result "new". This is precisely how much creativity works. The inventor does not create from nothing: he sees possibilities where others only see scattered pieces.

    BOX HISTORY

    Leave a comment

  • The heart that cannot stand still

    Today’s listening: Franz Schubert – Gretchen am SpinnradeD 118

    by Marialuisa Veneziano

    30 August 2026

    Before you start music

    There are educated thoughts.

    They come, they get recognized and then, with some common sense, they leave.

    And then there are others.

    The ones coming back.

    Let's get them out and get back. We change room and follow. Let’s try to take care of each other and they, with a tenacity that deserves best cause, begin exactly from where we left them.

    Schubert was just seventeen years old when he turned one of these thoughts into music.

    A girl sits at the archer.

    Hands work.

    The wheel turns.

    But she's not there anymore.

    It is entirely within the memory of a man.

    🎧 Open listening. Then keep reading.

    This page is designed to be read with music next door.

    SCHUBERT – GRETCHEN AM SPINNRADE, D 118 (click on the black arrow to make the listening appear)

    Inside the score

    Before Margherita gave us a word, the piano already told us everything.

    The right hand constantly draws circular figures of semichrome.

    It is wheel of the archer.

    On the other hand, the left scans a regular, almost mechanical movement: the pedal, the foot gesture that keeps the wheel moving.

    Schubert does something extraordinarily modern: he does not simply describe an object.

    It transforms an external gesture into psychology.

    The wheel turns because the archer turns.

    But after a few jokes we understand that Gretchen's thinking is also turning.

    Meine Ruh ist hin.

    My peace is lost.

    All the Lied was born of this impossibility to stop.

    The piano continues to grind time while the voice recalls the passage of Faust, his face, smile, the sound of his words.

    The more she thinks about him, the more the music turns on.

    We are not looking at a girl at the archaeologist.

    We're listening an obsession from within.

    🎧 Listen to this.

    Follow the piano.

    At first the wheel seems almost regular, domestic.

    Then listen to what happens when Gretchen begins to remember Faust more intensely.

    The vocal line goes up.

    Harmony tends.

    The breath becomes more and more urgent.

    As long as the memory arrives:

    His kiss.

    And that's where Schubert makes the most beautiful gesture.

    For a moment, the wheel stops.

    The piano loses its incessant movement.

    As if the memory had become so powerful to interrupt even reality.

    Quiet.

    Suspension.

    Then Gretchen returns to himself.

    And slowly the wheel starts again.

    It's one of the moments when we understand why Schubert didn't just "play" Goethe.

    He read it through the sound.

    The note remains

    There are thoughts that we do not remember: we continue to live them.

    The greatness of Gretchen am Spinnrade is not only the famous imitation of the archaeologist.

    If so, we would have a wonderful descriptive music page.

    Schubert does something much deeper.

    At first we believe that the piano represents the wheel.

    In the end we understand that it represents Gretchen.

    His thought became circular.

    It does not proceed towards a conclusion. He always comes back to the same point: he.

    This is what happens to us when a memory becomes too big.

    The world keeps moving.

    We continue to do the necessary things.

    We open doors, we answer, we work, we fix, we walk.

    The wheel turns.

    Yet, under every gesture, there may be a name around which everything secretly continues to rotate.

    Schubert knew.

    She was seventeen.

    Which is slightly irritating for all of us who at seventeen years were already satisfied when we could understand what to do in the afternoon.

    Take him with you

    When the track ends, the wheel has not solved anything.

    Gretchen is no longer free than he was at first.

    The memory remains.

    The desire remains.

    Even the shade seems to bring it back to the point from which it had left.

    Yet we have understood something.

    Not all thoughts must lead us somewhere.

    Some come back because they keep something that we have not yet finished loving, understanding, losing or wanting.

    Maybe that's why Schubert lets the wheel continue.

    He's not trying to heal Gretchen.

    He listens.

    And in doing so he transforms his restlessness into one of the most extraordinary musical images of the human mind.

    A wheel.

    A girl.

    A memory.

    And that strange truth for which, sometimes, while life continues perfectly to proceed, the heart remains firm at the same point.

    Leave a comment

  • The awakening of the Giant

    A book that has been closed for too long. A boy decided to open it. And a music ready to return to the world.

    by Marialuisa Veneziano

    ***********

    🎧 MUSIC FOR LETTURE
    To accompany The awakening of the Giant, we recommend listening to the initial chorus "Kommt, ihr Töchter, helft mir klagen" from Passion according to Matthew, BWV 244 by Johann Sebastian Bach, in the execution of Netherlands Bach Society direct from Jos van Veldhoven. It is precisely the music at the center of our fairy tale: the great one Passion that, in 1829, Mendelssohn helped to bring back to the public.
    Two choirs, orchestra and choral intertwine in a monumental construction that seems to progress slowly from a long time to us. It is not only the beginning of a Passion: for our history it is the very voice of the Giant reopening his eyes, abandon the powder of the shelf and breathe back through other hands, other voices, another time. Click on the arrow of the logo "cuffie", press play and start reading.

    In Berlin, in a large hall where men spoke undervoice for respect for music and scores spoke loudly as soon as men left, there was a shelf that no one ever looked at.

    It was tall, dark and slightly crooked.

    On the last shelf, crushed between a volume of motets and a collection of corals that claimed to have personally known at least three principles, he rested a huge book.

    It had the worn cover, the folded corners and many pages that the little Minuetto, the most vain among the compartments of the room, considered it almost a manufacturing defect.

    — How many pages do you have? — He asked him one night.

    — Lots.

    — I see that. How many?

    — Enough.

    Minuetto sighed.

    — That's why they don't play you. Today we have to be brief.

    The great book did not answer.

    On the back he had a name that dust had almost hidden:

    Johann Sebastian Bach.

    And below, in letters now a little discolored:

    Passion according to Matthew.

    The other scores called him simply The Giant.

    Not because he was scared.

    Because it occupied a lot of space and spoke very little, two characteristics that, according to Minuetto, in the musical environments were often enough to be considered important.

    Every night, when the lights went out in the hall, the scores started their conversations.

    Ottavia the Chromium ran from one leggio to another bringing news that no one had asked her.

    — Tomorrow they try Mozart! I heard everything! Full orchestra! Two oboi! Two horns! And maybe even cookies in the range!

    — Cookies do not concern music — Herr Fagotto.

    Herr Fagotto was an old tool that lived in the corner and considered everything that had happened after his youth a progressive deterioration of civilization.

    — In my day... — He often said.

    No one had ever understood exactly what his time was.

    They changed according to the subject.

    Madame Ragnatela lived above the Giant.

    She was a small ragna convinced that she was appointed General Custodian of the Archive, although no one remembered by whom.

    — The Giant is perfectly preserved — He declared.

    — You're covering me with webs. — He was watching.

    — Preventive storage.

    — I can't almost see.

    — The light spoils the paper.

    And so years passed.

    The scores were coming.

    They were open.

    Play.

    Closed.

    Others became fashionable.

    Others stopped being.

    The Giant stayed there.

    But what no one knew was that he had not been completely forgotten.

    He was the one who learned to hide.

    A long time before he had known hands that peeled him, musicians who bowed on his pages, voices that turned those little black signs into something capable of filling a church.

    He remembered a man.

    Not his face with precision.

    Hands.

    Hands tired, strong, fast.

    Hands they wrote.

    Correct.

    Cleared.

    Recomposed.

    Those hands were gone.

    Not even those rumors.

    And the Giant had discovered one of the most difficult things to understand:

    time also takes away what we thought should remain.

    So he made a decision.

    He wouldn't sing anymore.

    If it had been closed, nothing would have changed.

    No new voice would take the place of the ancients.

    No one could have played it differently.

    The past would have been safe.

    Or at least he thought so.

    Every afternoon, however, a little girl arrived in the room.

    His name was Lotte.

    He was nine years old, two braids that never remained of the same length and a curiosity considered excessive by all adults except his father, who worked in the hall and had now given up to prevent her from asking questions.

    Lotte couldn't read a score.

    So, unlike adults, he wasn't afraid of important scores.

    One day he sat down in front of the shelf.

    He looked at the Giant.

    — You must be very sad.

    The book had a taste.

    Of course, Lotte couldn't hear him talk.

    Or maybe.

    In the fables this distinction has never been particularly useful.

    — Why? — asked the Giant.

    — Because no one opens you.

    — Maybe I don't want to be open.

    Lotte thought about it.

    — This is even more sad.

    The Giant is offended.

    — I belong to another time.

    — My grandfather belonged to another time.

    The book was silent.

    — Where is it?

    Lotte lowered his eyes.

    — There is no more.

    For some time no one said anything.

    Even Ottavia la Croma, who had passed to announce an urgent matter concerning a dynamic fork, decided to postpone.

    Then Lotte smiled.

    — But some things I say to her.

    The Giant didn't understand.

    Lotte got up and ran from his father.

    But that phrase remained in the pages.

    A young man came to the room some time later.

    She was twenty years old, hair that seemed to have discussed with the comb and lost all interest in reconciliation, and a curiosity at least equal to that of Lotte.

    His name was Felix Mendelssohn.

    Minuetto observed it.

    — Too young.

    Herr Fagotto:

    — In my time at 20 years, we had already the decency to look tired.

    Felix began to examine the scores.

    He opened one.

    Then another.

    Then he came to the giant shelf.

    Madame Ragnatela came down immediately.

    — Vietato.

    Felix, of course, didn't hear it.

    He extended his hand.

    The Giant stiffened.

    The cover was opened.

    A dust cloud hit Felix.

    Ottavia sneezed for seven consecutive games.

    Felix began reading.

    Slowly first.

    Then more and more carefully.

    The Giant felt something he hadn't felt for years.

    The notes inside him were moving.

    A distant voice seemed to wake up.

    Then another.

    Then a choir.

    The old book was afraid.

    Turn around.

    Felix stepped back.

    — Curious.

    — Damn it! — protested the Giant.

    — Interesting — said Felix.

    — I said rude!

    But Felix reopened it.

    Minuetto observed the scene with growing concern.

    — This young man does not know respect for ancient music.

    Herr Fagotto brontolò:

    — Finally.

    That night Felix had a dream.

    It was in the large hall, but the shelves had become very high and the leaves flew in the air like white birds.

    In the end there was the Giant.

    — Why don't you want to be played? — Felix asked him.

    — Because nobody can play me like that.

    Felix was silent.

    — That's true. — he finally said.

    The Giant didn't expect that answer.

    — Then leave me here.

    — No.

    — Why?

    Felix approached.

    — Because remembering doesn't mean remaking yesterday.

    — So what does that mean?

    Felix looked at his pages.

    — Allow yesterday to arrive until tomorrow.

    The Giant trembled.

    — But if new voices sing my notes, the old ones will disappear.

    Felix pointed out Lotte, who was sitting at the bottom of the room in his dream.

    — When you repeat a phrase from your grandfather, do you cancel your grandfather?

    The Giant looked at the baby.

    — No.

    — Then maybe a new voice doesn't erase the old one.

    Felix smiled.

    — Maybe the door farther.

    The Giant did not answer.

    Because there are thoughts that, when they really come deep, they need silence before finding an answer.

    The evidence began.

    And they were a disaster.

    At least according to Herr Fagotto.

    — Too fast.

    — We haven't started yet — they noticed.

    — Exactly. An unbearable rush.

    Ottavia the Chroma ran on the pentagrams shouting:

    — Wake up! Wake up! After almost a hundred years we can’t show up!

    Minuetto offered himself as an artistic consultant.

    — I'd notice.

    — What?

    — Everything.

    — Why?

    — The modern public.

    — And what does the modern public want?

    Minuetto stopped.

    — I have no idea. But everyone says you have to give it to him.

    Madame Ragnatela suffered a lot.

    Every time someone turned a page, his web was destroyed.

    — Barbary! — screamed. — Years of archival work!

    Little by little, though, something happened.

    The notes that had long remained still began to remember that they were not born to be watched.

    One after another they became sound.

    The Giant listened.

    They were different voices.

    Different hands.

    A different time.

    At first it hurt him.

    Then he understood something strange.

    Those new voices weren't taking the old place.

    They were doing what the old had done before them:

    They got the music.

    And then they delivered it.

    He arrived on 11 March 1829.

    The Sing-Akademie Hall in Berlin was full.

    Felix Mendelssohn went to the podium.

    The Giant was open in front of him.

    The pages trembled.

    — I can still run. — said Minuetto, hidden under a chair.

    — You are not even part of the work — Sibilò Ottavia.

    — Precisely. I have less to lose.

    Herr Fagotto took a position.

    — If we have to attend a historical event, I hope at least that it will end at a reasonable hour.

    The Giant didn't listen to them.

    He looked at the audience.

    New faces.

    New clothes.

    Another century.

    — They won't recognize me. — He whispered.

    Felix put a hand on the score.

    For a moment the Giant had the impression that he could hear it.

    — Are you taking me back? — He asked.

    Felix lifted his eyes.

    And in the mysterious language that sometimes exists between a musician and a page he replied:

    — No. I'm entrusting you to the future.

    He raised his arms.

    Quiet.

    Then the music began.

    The first sentence crossed the hall.

    The Giant recognized every note.

    But no voice.

    For a moment he felt a fit.

    It's not them.

    Then a voice picked up a sentence.

    Another led her forward.

    The instruments took advantage of it.

    The choir raised her.

    And something began to pass from one person to another.

    You couldn't see.

    And yet there was.

    Like a little light.

    From the composer to the pages.

    From pages to musicians.

    From musicians to the audience.

    From past to present.

    The Giant finally understood what had been wrong for many years.

    He believed that living meant staying the same.

    Instead, living meant continuing to be received.

    Bach didn't come back to the hall.

    The old voices didn't reappear.

    No dead hand returned to browse the pages.

    That's why the miracle was bigger.

    The past had not returned.

    He found a way to move on.

    Under the chair, Minuetto had become strangely silent.

    Ottavia looked at him.

    — What?

    — It's not modern at all.

    — Is that a problem?

    Minuetto listened a little longer.

    — No.

    Then, almost countervoke:

    — I think it's the opposite.

    Herr Fagotto dried an eye.

    — Are you crying?

    — Condensa.

    — March?

    — Historical condense.

    When the last note is lost, for a few seconds no one moves.

    The Giant waited.

    Then the applause came.

    Strong.

    Long.

    The old book felt something like happiness.

    — I'm back — He said.

    Madame Ragnatela, for once, did not answer.

    Because the most important moment had not yet arrived.

    Outside the hall, Lotte walked by his father.

    He listened to everything.

    He didn't understand all the words.

    He didn't know the story of that score.

    He couldn’t even explain why that music hit her.

    But as he walked the road he began, without noticing, to sing a small sentence.

    The Giant heard it from the window.

    — My music!

    Lotte kept moving away.

    — He's taking away my music!

    Madame Ragnatela slowly came down on the cover.

    — No.

    — How not? Can you hear her?

    — Of course.

    — So what are you doing?

    The ragna looked at the child disappearing at the corner of the road.

    — He's moving her on.

    Then the Giant remembered.

    A child sitting on the ground.

    Two unequal braids.

    A phrase pronounced almost by chance:

    Some things my grandfather said to her, too.

    Finally understood.

    People don't defeat time by preventing things from changing.

    They cross it by leaving something in the hands, words, gestures and memory of those who come after.

    That night the Giant returned to the shelf.

    Minuetto approached him.

    — So?

    — So what?

    — You're back young?

    — No.

    — Have you become modern?

    — No.

    — Famous?

    The Giant reflects.

    — Maybe.

    Minuetto seemed satisfied.

    — I knew it.

    — But it doesn't matter.

    Minuetto was deeply troubled by such a little worldly statement.

    — So what does it matter?

    The Giant looked at their pages.

    — Someone can open me again tomorrow.

    Madame Ragnatela began instinctively to weave a thread on the cover.

    The Giant shook him gently.

    — Not this time.

    — What's that?

    — Let me open.

    — But dust!

    — Come in.

    — The light!

    — That'll come too.

    — Your fingers!

    — They'll turn the pages.

    Madame Ragnatela was scandalized.

    — You're gonna ruin yourself.

    The Giant smiled.

    — Maybe. But at least I'll live.

    And that night was slightly open on the shelf.

    He no longer waited for someone to bring him back to the past.

    He was waiting for someone willing to take him a little further to the future.

    And somewhere in the streets of Berlin, a little girl kept singing.

    Remembering does not mean holding back the past so that it remains still. It means delivering what we have received to someone who will come after us. Things really live change voice, change hands, cross other times; and that's exactly how they don't end up with who created them.

    🎬 IN FAVOLA CAST
    Each character has a part. And someone, maybe, plays more than one. (click on the arrow and find out more!)

    📖 The Giant
    An old score that stopped wanting to be opened.
    (The memory) — represents what we have received from the past and that, for fear of losing or changing it, we risk transforming it into something real. His journey teaches that guarding does not mean closing: it means delivering.

    🎼 Felix Mendelssohn
    Twenty years, curiosity and the dangerous habit of opening what others have left closed.
    (The bridge) — is the one who communicates two times. He does not want to rebuild the past, but to allow him to reach the future. It represents the interpreter, the scholar, the teacher and whoever receives something and chooses to hand down it.

    👧 Loans
    Nine years, two unequal tresses and no subjugation in front of important things.
    (The inheritance) — represents what continues without knowing yet to continue. The phrase learned by the grandfather and the melody chanted after the concert show that we often bring within us what we received much before understanding its value.

    🎩 Minu
    Elegant, vain and convinced that anything too long should be immediately shortened.
    (La moda) — represents the need to be always new, current, easy to consume. He is convinced that what does not belong to the present is inevitably overcome, until Bach shows him that some works do not need to be modern because they manage to be contemporary at every age.

    🎶 Ottavia la Croma
    Very small, very fast and unable to stay still long enough to finish a conversation.
    (The future) — is what runs forward. Brings news, movement, curiosity. Remember to the Giant that time cannot be stopped: we can only decide whether to stay still or travel with him.

    🎵 Herr
    Burbero, nostalgic and absolutely certain that "at his time" everything worked better.
    (The nostalgia) — represents the other temptation of memory: to idealize what has been until it makes it untouchable. He loves the past, but he risks loving him because he can no longer change.

    🕸️ Madame Ragna
    Self-proclaimed responsible for the preservation of the entire archive.
    (The fear of losing) — She wants to protect everything so well that she can almost breathe. It is the symbol of a conservation that, when it becomes excessive, ends up resembling the burial. His comedy hides a serious question: How much can we protect something before we stop her from living?

    What about Bach?

    Bach doesn't need to get into the scene.
    (The voice remaining) — is present precisely through what he left. He does not return as a ghost, he does not speak, he does not ask to be remembered. His music does something much more powerful: continue without him.

    BOX HISTORY

    Leave a comment

  • Master Metròn and the forbidden break

    In Beethoven's Vienna, a small metronome discovers that time can be measured, but music is not.

    by Marialuisa Veneziano

    ***********

    🎧 MUSIC FOR LETTURE
    To accompany Master Metròn and the forbidden break, we recommend listening toAllegretto of the Symphony No. 7 in the major, op. 92 by Ludwig van Beethoven, in direct execution by Nikolaus Harnoncourt. About eight minutes built over a regular and inexorable pulsation, almost the tic tac of a large invisible metronome; and yet, above that beat, Beethoven lets music breathe, grow, change intensity and become deeply human. It is precisely the heart of our fairy tale: time can be measured, but music really begins when the measure stops being a cage.
    Click on the arrow of the logo "cuffie", press play and start reading.

    In Vienna, in a winter when even snow seemed to fall with education, a thirteen-year-old boy named Matthias lived.

    Matthias studied piano.

    He was not a prodigy child, which he was very sorry for, especially because he read that prodigy children began generally before him and had already composed at least three concerts in the age when Matthias had learned not to overthrow the soup.

    But he had a rare quality:

    It was accurate.

    Terribly accurate.

    His scales began at the established time, his fingers fell on the keys exactly where they had to fall and, if a semi-minimum appeared on the score, Matthias treated her with almost administrative respect.

    His master, Herr Weiss, often told him:

    — Matthias, you play all right.

    The boy smiled.

    Then the second sentence always came.

    — Unfortunately.

    Matthias never understood how something could be correct and, at the same time, wrong.

    He seemed an offense to logic.

    One afternoon Herr Weiss arrived with a box.

    — It's for you.

    Inside there was a strange wooden object, with a metal rod swinging from one side to another.

    — One metronome.

    Matthias looked at him like other children would look at a white horse.

    Herr Weiss loved him.

    Tic.

    — It's time to keep it.

    The boy's eyes lit up.

    Finally.

    Someone who didn't say "with more feeling", "respirate the sentence", "do not rush but not slow down".

    The metronome wasn't talking about puzzles.

    Sixty was sixty.

    Eighty was eighty.

    Hundreds, thank God, were hundred and twenty.

    Matthias took him to his room and spent the afternoon studying.

    Tic.

    Scale.

    Tic.

    Arpeggi.

    Tic.

    Studies.

    Never a statement.

    That night he went to bed happy.

    At midnight he was woken up by a noise.

    Tic.

    He opened his eyes.

    Tac.

    He sat down.

    The metronome was on his own.

    — You forgot to turn me off. — said a voice.

    Matthias opened his mouth.

    — Did you talk?

    — Of course.

    — Metronomes don't talk.

    — Even the pianists should not do it during the performance, yet I know a lot of them moaning.

    Matthias lit the candle.

    — What's your name?

    The auction rose with dignity.

    — Master Metròn. Time Keeper, Defender of Regularity and Natural Enemy of the Mal Giustificati Rubies.

    — It's a very long name.

    — At sixty beats per minute it takes exactly the time needed.

    Matthias was enchanted.

    He finally met someone who thought it like him.

    From that day they became inseparable.

    Master Metròn ruled everything.

    — Eighty through the stairs.

    — One hundred for the exercises.

    — Sixty-six for Adagio.

    Matthias obeyed.

    Metròn then began to take care of the rest of the house.

    He chronomed the maid while sweeping the floor.

    — Too irregular.

    He measured the cat's pass.

    — Undisciplined.

    He even tried to establish the correct duration of the embraces of Matthias' mother.

    — Four beats are enough.

    — But she's my mother.

    — Feeling does not authorize anarchy.

    When Matthias's little sister burst out laughing during dinner, Metròn shouted:

    — Out of time!

    — He's laughing. — protested Matthias.

    — Precisely. No recognizable structure.

    The boy began to think that his new friend was perhaps a bit demanding.

    But at the piano the results were extraordinary.

    He wasn't accelerating anymore.

    He wasn't slowing down.

    Almost nothing was wrong.

    The day came when Herr Weiss heard him perform an Adagio.

    Matthias played everything perfectly.

    It ended.

    The master sighed.

    — Impeccable.

    Matthias waited.

    — And?

    — He's dead.

    — How'd he die?

    — I don't know. You must have killed him on the second page.

    Master Metròn, from the table, taught himself.

    — Calunnia!

    Herr Weiss didn't hear it.

    Matthias is.

    — I've respected every value.

    — I know. — answered the master. — That's what worries me.

    A few weeks later Herr Weiss brought Matthias to listen to a famous man.

    Ludwig van Beethoven.

    Matthias imagined it solemn, ordered and probably surrounded by a special light.

    On the other hand, he found a broken man, with cards everywhere and an expression that suggested that the world had lost him a lot of time.

    — Sound — said Beethoven.

    Matthias sat down.

    Master Metròn was placed next to the piano.

    Tic.

    The boy began.

    No mistake.

    No hesitation.

    No surprise.

    When he finished, Beethoven remained silent.

    — Did I do something wrong? — asked Matthias.

    — Unfortunately not.

    The boy moved.

    That was exactly Herr Weiss' sentence.

    — Then it was perfect.

    Beethoven looked at the metronome.

    — Even a watch is perfect. I wouldn't give him a sonata.

    Master Metròn lightly accelerated for indignation.

    — But the metronome tells me time — protested Matthias.

    Beethoven pointed out the object.

    — That can tell you how long it takes a minute.

    Then he slightly touched his chest.

    — This has yet to decide what to do with it.

    Metròn didn't speak all the way back.

    It was the first time Matthias saw him offended.

    That night, however, the metronome made a decision.

    — I will prove to that man who is in a state that precision can make the whole world perfect.

    — How?

    — Putting it on time.

    Before Matthias could stop him, Master Metròn began to beat.

    ICT. TAC.

    The sound crossed the walls.

    He went down the streets.

    He entered the clocks.

    He went to the bell towers.

    And Vienna began to follow him.

    The next morning everyone walked at the same pace.

    The carriages were leaving at the same time.

    The furnaces kneaded in perfect synchronicity.

    The barbers lifted the razors at the same time.

    The bells of the churches sounded with such precision that even the angels, if they existed, probably controlled the clock.

    At first the city was enthusiastic.

    Nobody was late.

    Nobody interrupted anyone.

    The files flowed beautifully.

    The Minister of the Public Order declared that morning the most successful in the history of the Empire.

    Then problems began.

    A child fell.

    His mother stopped to help him, but the crowd continued to walk.

    ICT. TAC.

    An old man tried to cross a road.

    He couldn't follow the rhythm.

    — Faster! — he ordered Metròn.

    — I can't. — said the man.

    — Time doesn't wait.

    Matthias helped him reach the sidewalk.

    — Master Metròn, can't you go slower?

    — If I slow down for him, everyone would lose time.

    — But he needs more time.

    — Everyone has the same.

    Matthias looked at the old man.

    For the first time, that phrase didn't seem right.

    In a house, a mother cradled a baby.

    The baby was about to fall asleep.

    ICT. TAC.

    The rhythm increased.

    The boy woke up crying.

    Two lovers greeted themselves in front of a carriage.

    He kissed her.

    ICT.

    — Time's up! — he ordered Metròn.

    — Wait a minute.

    TAC.

    — I said time.

    Matthias intervened:

    — Maybe a kiss doesn't always last the same number of beats.

    — That's why kisses never produced an efficient civilization.

    The boy wasn't completely sure.

    In the afternoon the Vienna orchestra held a concert.

    It was the most precise execution that had ever been heard.

    All attacks together.

    All exact durations.

    No freedom.

    No hesitation.

    No mistake.

    When he finished, no one applauded.

    Not because it was bad.

    Worse.

    He didn't say anything.

    Matthias watched Master Metròn.

    — Did you like it?

    — Technically irrepressible.

    — I didn't ask you that.

    For the first time, Metròn hesitated.

    Tic...

    The auction resumed.

    — Technically irreproachable — repeated.

    But with less conviction.

    That night, Matthias was supposed to play in front of Beethoven.

    The room was full.

    Master Metròn imposed time.

    — Sixty-six.

    Matthias began.

    ICT. TAC.

    It sounded good.

    Then he came to a slow sentence.

    One note went up to another and seemed to ask for something.

    Matthias felt she should have waited.

    ICT.

    Your fingers should have gone on.

    They didn't.

    TAC.

    Matthias remained still.

    Master Metròn began to shake.

    — Get back!

    The boy let the silence live.

    One second.

    Two.

    Three.

    — Time!

    Matthias looked at the audience.

    At the end of the hall he saw the old man met that morning.

    It was late.

    He was breathing so hard.

    Matthias waited.

    Until the old man looked up.

    Then he started playing.

    Not when he ordered Metròn.

    When the sentence asked.

    Music changed.

    He didn't become disorderly.

    She became alive.

    A phrase accelerated slightly because he was in a hurry to arrive.

    Another slowed down because he didn’t want to leave yet.

    A break lasted long enough to allow everyone to miss it.

    Matthias continued to respect the rhythm.

    But he was no longer a prisoner.

    Beethoven smiled.

    A woman closed her eyes.

    The old man at the end of the hall slowly turned back.

    And Master Metròn, for the first time since his construction, stopped beating.

    When the song ended, Matthias turned.

    The metronome was still.

    — You broke up?

    — No.

    — Then why did you stop?

    Metròn blew.

    Then he said,

    — That break...

    — What?

    — Too long.

    — Yes?

    — It wasn't written.

    — No.

    The auction just moved.

    — She was beautiful.

    Matthias smiled.

    — A long time ago?

    — Mostruously.

    Quiet.

    — But beautiful.

    From that day Vienna slowly returned to Vienna.

    The carriages returned late.

    Children ran at unpredictable speed.

    The old ones crossed the streets with the necessary time.

    The lovers, with great scandal of the ministry, returned to decide independently the duration of their kisses.

    And Matthias continued to study every morning with Master Metròn.

    Scale.

    Tic.

    Arpeggi.

    Tic.

    Hard passages.

    Tic.

    One day, many years later, Matthias opened an Adagio.

    He was a pianist.

    Master Metròn had become old. The wood was carrying small scratches and the rod oscillated with some dignified fatigue.

    — Master?

    — Yes?

    — What time should I play it?

    For the first time in his long life, the metronome replied:

    — I don't know.

    Matthias smiled.

    Metròn added:

    — I can help you find him.

    — And then?

    The old metronome made a small ♪.

    — Then listen.

    Matthias put his hands on the keyboard.

    And Master Metròn ate.

    Not because he had nothing to teach him.

    But because he had finally learned when it was time to let him play.

    The rules are precious when they teach us to become free; they become cages when they claim to choose in our place. Accuracy can teach the music to stand, but only listening, thinking and feeling can teach you where to go.

    BOX HISTORY

    The mechanical metronome entered the European musical life in the early nineteenth century thanks to Johann Nepomuk Mälzel. Beethoven was among the most interested composers of the new invention and indicated metronomic values for many of his works. Our fable starts right from this encounter between a great modern aspiration — accurately measure musical time — and a question that no number can solve completely: how much space does the interpreter have?

    4 answers to "Maestro Metròn and the forbidden break"

    1. Avatar Danilo
      Danilo

      At the moment the most beautiful story among those published.

      Reply
    2. Avatar left2ba3d74a7e4
      left2ba3d74a7e4

      How many times in life do we confuse what is right with what is simply measurable?
      We measure votes, salaries, results, numbers, rankings. Reassure us what can be counted, compared, archived. But not all that matters can be counted.
      The love of a mother for a child is not measured. Loyalty to a principle is not measured. The courage to rise after suffering, the kindness offered in silence, the time dedicated to those who need do not find place in a table or in a statistics.
      Yet these realities often constitute the most authentic part of our existence.
      Philosophy reminds us that good does not always coincide with profit, and that truth does not necessarily coincide with what is quantifiable. We live in an age that tends to give value to what produces visible results, forgetting that some of the most important things mature in the invisible: a straight conscience, a sincere bond, a right choice accomplished without witnesses.
      Perhaps wisdom also consists of this: learning to distinguish between what has a price and what has a value.
      Because not all that is measurable is important, and not all that is important is measurable. And often, what is really right is recognized not by the meter of numbers, but by that of consciousness.

      Reply
    3. Avatar
      Anonymous

      Dialogue from which emerges an astonishing, even if laughter, depth of thought.

      Reply
      1. Avatar left2ba3d74a7e4
        left2ba3d74a7e4

        I share. As Socrates taught, true discovery does not always consist in finding something new, but in bringing out what was already present, albeit hidden, in our consciousness.

        Reply

    Leave a comment

  • A front wall, a universe inside

    Sound, light, architecture and provocation: so the Pink Floyd taught rock that even a stage can have a thought.

    by Marialuisa Veneziano

    17 August 2026

    Prologue. The sound came back

    London, 1967.

    The audience is seated in the geometric composure of Queen Elizabeth Hall. The stage is ahead, the armchairs are directed in its direction, the spectators wait for the music to begin from the place from which, for education and custom, the music should begin.

    Then a sound comes behind them.

    It's not a mistake. It's not a bad speaker. The sound moves, crosses the room, passes from one side to another and seems to look for each viewer individually, as if the music had suddenly learned to walk.

    For the first time many understand, perhaps without yet knowing, that a concert should not necessarily happen front to those who listen.

    It can happen around.

    It can happen inside.

    In 1967 the concert stopped proceeding straight: the sound began to turn around the audience

    The leaders of this small perceptive earthquake are four young Englishmen called Pink Floyd. Use a device called Azimuth Coordinator, a kind of joystick capable of distributing sound in space. The music adds projections, lights, flowers and soap bubbles.

    The bubbles spot the carpet and the group is banned from the hall.

    The future of the concert was just born; the upholstery, less visionary, had already asked for compensation.

    But what had happened could no longer be erased.

    Rock stopped standing still.

    The room became a tool

    The real Pink Floyd revolution was not to have more speakers.

    It consisted of having understood that space could also be composed.

    Of a sound we are accustomed to considering height, duration, stamp, intensity. But a sound also has a origin. A voice coming from afar does not mean what would mean pronounced near the ear. A step heard behind it contains a threat that the same step, seen in front, would lose.

    Placement becomes meaning.

    Western music had already known spatiality: just think of the opposite choirs of the basilica of San Marco, where the voices were called by different chanters and architecture entered the composition. Pink Floyd transported that awareness into the electric heart of the twentieth century.

    They didn't just play in a hall.

    They sounded the room.

    From frontality to immersion: when the origin of the sound became compositional material.

    The audience no longer received music as a message sent from the stage. It became the unstable center. The noises reached it from unexpected points, the lights altered its perception, the images extended what the sound could not say alone.

    It was already a form of total theatre.

    Only that, instead of the velvet and mythological gods, there were cables, amplifiers and a number of electrical sockets enough to worry any insurer.

    Pompeii: the concert entrusted to the stones

    In 1971 Pink Floyd made an even more radical gesture. They play in the Roman amphitheatre of Pompeii without public.

    The steps are empty. No one applauds. No one shouts the name of the group. No one lifts the phone, even because the phone, with admirable sense of the measure, was still tied to a wall.

    The musicians, the instruments, the sky and the stone remain.

    GUARDA – When the silence of Pompeii entered the music

    A concert without spectators, destined to be listened to for generations not yet arrived.

    That absence transforms everything.

    An amphitheater born to welcome thousands of bodies becomes the harmonic case of a solitary sound. Music crosses the ruins as if it was questioning what remains after the disappearance of men.

    In Echoes, long progression, remote sounds, rarefactions and crescendos seem to be born from the bowels of the place. The stone is not a picturesque background: it is a presence. Look, hold it back.

    That concert without spectators says something that our time struggles to understand: an event is not great because many people claim to have been there.

    It is great when it changes the meaning of the place where it happens.

    In Pompeii the music does not look for the crowd.

    Look for time.

    And time, for once, answers.

    When even a cash register entered the orchestra

    With The Dark Side of the Moon, Pink Floyd transform the album and concert into a single great form.

    No more a succession of songs, but an organism: heartbeats, voices, watches, breaths, noises and transitions combine songs as connecting rooms of the same mind.

    The watches of Time do not decorate the music: they attack her. Time is not poetically told; it bursts with awakes, bells and mechanisms, as it does in life when we realize we have wasted too much.

    In Money, even money becomes rhythm.

    Cash registers, coins, torn paper and metallic sounds are mounted in a regular sequence. The famous riff proceeds mainly in seven quarters, an asymmetric measure, slightly lame, which seems to advance with the safety of those who own everything and the balance of those who no longer know why they want it.

    Money promises order.

    Music gives it back irregularity.

    ASCOLTA – When coins and cash registers learned to count up to seven

    In "Money" the sound does not accompany the song: it generates its rhythm and anticipates its criticism

    This is the musicological greatness of Pink Floyd: the effects are not supported on the track as lustrini on an already finished dress. They enter the structure, determine its breath, become part of thought.

    Today we would say "sound design".

    Then he really cut the tape with scissors.

    Capitalism, at least for a few jokes, had yet to be assembled by hand.

    The circle that looked at the audience

    In the 1970s, the large circular screen appears on stage to become one of the symbols of Pink Floyd concerts.

    Not a rectangle, not a simple backdrop.

    A circle.

    Eye, planet, porthole: "Mr Screen" did not show the concert, opened a second mind in the concert.
    (click on the arrow and discover the background!)

    Eye, planet, moon, oblue, pupil dilated on the spectator's consciousness.

    The images are not limited to illustrating the texts. Sometimes they amplify them, sometimes contradict them, sometimes they open a second narrative line. It's a real visual counterpoint.

    Music says something.

    The image suggests another.

    The viewer is forced to live in tension between the two.

    This is where the concert becomes a sensitive philosophy. It does not only offer something to listen and see: it modifies the way in which listening and viewing are questioned each other.

    Pink Floyd, moreover, often tend to subtract the face of musicians to absolute centrality. They don't seem to say: «Look at us.».

    They seem to say: «Look what music is thinking».

    An almost ascetic choice for a group that would soon fly a giant pig over the audience.

    But even that pig, of course, was not just a pig.

    The pig who escaped from the symbol

    For the cover of Animals, a huge inflatable pig is suspended over the Battersea Power Station.

    He gets rid of the cables and flies away.

    The previous day was a chosen shooter, in charge of knocking him down in case of escape. The next one, evidently confident in the maturity reached by the pig, did not call him back.

    The pig crossed the British sky and interfered with air traffic.

    Algie above Battersea: when a record cover became political satire, aviation accident and legend.

    The vanguard flies. The authorization form, obviously, comes after...

    Political satire had finally conquered civil aviation.

    But behind the irresistible anecdote there is a serious principle: in Pink Floyd the scenic object is never only decoration.

    The pig represents power, greed, social deformation. Inflatable figures occupy the air because collective obsessions also occupy the space of our lives.

    A special exclaim effect: «Look how good we are.».

    A question symbol: «Look what we've become».

    It's a huge difference.

    And it is not measured in meters, watts or budget.

    The wall really grew

    With The Wall, metaphor becomes matter.

    During the show, large bricks are gradually placed in front of musicians. The wall grows to hide them almost entirely.

    The public does not simply listen to a story about isolation.

    It's isolated.

    The metaphor became matter: the wall did not tell the alienation, made it happen.

    The scenography does not represent incommunity: it produces it physically. Viewers attend the progressive disappearance of the group for which they bought the ticket.

    It is theatre, installation, concert, cinema.

    But above all it is an idea made inevitable.

    Music must even adapt to the times of construction. An instrumental section allows workers to complete the wall if they are late. Technical necessity enters the form: teachers and musicians share the same dramaturgy.

    Here the concert reaches the size of thetotal art work.

    Sound, light, architecture, animation, gesture and story are not separate elements. There are only mutual relations.

    The wall does not accompany the music.

    It's music made stone.

    And that is exactly what many contemporary shows have inherited only in part.

    We have preserved greatness.

    Not always the need.

    GUARDA ANCHE – The animation that transformed the school into a factory of identical individuals

    From the wall to the Sphere

    Today the concert has tools that Pink Floyd of the Sixties would probably judge magnificent, provided accompanied by a manual and an extinguisher.

    Immense screens, spatial audio, drones, augmented reality, vibrating seats, synchronized light bracelets. The Sphere of Las Vegas can almost completely envelop the field of view and direct sound with an unthinkable precision at the time of the Azimuth Coordinator.

    We entered the future imagined by Pink Floyd.

    Today the concert has become a place without visible walls.

    From Azimuth Coordinator to Sphere: sixty years of technology to bring the audience into the sound.

    Yet the problem remains ancient.

    Technology always amplifies something.

    Sometimes an idea.

    Sometimes his absence.

    In Pink Floyd, the sound space expressed disorientation; the circle opened a mental dimension; the pig embodied a political criticism; the wall made alienation physical.

    Today the opposite can happen: first the effect comes, then desperately seeks a song that justifies it.

    First the digital dragon is 30 meters high.

    Then the chorus, intimidated, attempts to be noticed.

    This is not about condemning progress. A technologically grandiose show can be authentic art, if every medium comes from vision.

    But a huge stage doesn't make what happens to you great.

    Sometimes it is limited to offering the vacuum an excellent lighting.

    The public behind their wall

    Finally, there is a wall that Pink Floyd did not foresee.

    It is small, bright and stands in the palm of the hand.

    Today many spectators spend the concert filming what they are experiencing. They don't look at the stage, but the screen on which the stage is reduced.

    Thousands of people record a giant screen through a tiny screen.

    The artist tries to immerse them in a universe; they prepare a vertical version of fifteen seconds.

    IS The Wall, but pocket.

    We knocked down the wall between stage and plate. Then we lit one in the palm of the hand.

    Of course, recording also means wanting to preserve. It is a human gesture: we want to retain what we know is meant to end.

    But live music is precious because it cannot be held entirely.

    The sound is born, it passes through the air and disappears.

    Its fragility is not a defect.

    It's his destiny.

    When we try to keep every second, we risk not really living any of them.

    Pompeii was empty, yet he seemed to listen.

    Today the stadiums are full, but we're not always sure that someone is still really listening.

    Final. The oldest in technology

    Pink Floyd did not just make more spectacular concerts.

    I gave the concert a conscience.

    I understood that the sound could possess a geography, that a light could become a musical form, that an image could open a wound, that a wall could tell what the words could no longer say.

    They did not add effects to the songs.

    They extended songs in the world.

    This is their deepest legacy and the most difficult to imitate. It is easy to buy a bigger screen. It is easy to fly drones, multiply lasers, wrap the audience in images and vibrations.

    It is much harder to know why to do it.

    Technology can surround the viewer.

    Only art can reach it.

    Technology occupies space.

    Art changes interior time.

    Perhaps the concert of the future will be perfectly immersive. The sound will react to our movements, the images will change according to the emotions of the crowd, the floor will vibrate, the artificial intelligence will decide which color to associate with our nostalgia.

    Maybe we'll even get a notification to know when to move.

    But nothing will be enough without a vision.

    Pink Floyd built walls to show us what we brought in. They flew pigs because power appeared grotesque as it really is. They played among the ruins so that the silence of the centuries would enter the music.

    They understood that a concert is not the place where music is simply performed.

    It is the place where, for an instant, a crowd of strangers breathes into the same imagination.

    Then the lights turn out.

    Sound dies.

    The screen turns black.

    But something remains.

    The concert ends when the stage turns off. Art begins with what keeps moving within us.

    Not in phones.

    Not in the photographs.

    It remains at that secret point where music, passing, has moved just the wall that each of us had built within itself.

    Because the future of the concert will not depend on the number of pixels, drones or speakers.

    It will still depend on the oldest, fragile and rare technologies:

    have something to say — and find someone really willing to listen.

    **********************************************************

    VISIVO ARCHIVE – Enter the gallery (click on the arrow)

    Leave a comment

  • The Symphony of Addii

    In the Esterházy Palace, Haydn entrusted silence with a rebellion destined to remind the power that art can be supported, but not possessed.

    by Marialuisa Veneziano

    **************

    🎧 Music for reading
    To accompany The Adii Symphony, we recommend listening to Final: Soon – Adagio of the Symphony No. 45 in fa diesis minor by Joseph Haydn, in the execution ofAcademy of St Martin in the Fields, direct from Sir Neville Marriner. Almost eight minutes in which the orchestra first burns, then slowly empties: a light, a tool and a musician at a time. The real music that inspired the novella becomes his most secret voice. Click on the arrow of the logo "cuffie", press play and start reading.

    Prince Esterházy owned a palace, many horses, a collection of watches and an orchestra.

    At least, he was convinced he had all these things the same way.

    The horses ran when they were sprouted, the clocks sounded at the established time and the musicians, properly fed and dressed, did what was placed on their laws.

    Among them was Elias Hartmann, 19 years old, second violin and owner of an inconvenient amount of thoughts.

    The prince never called him Elias.

    — According to Violino, slower.

    — According to Violino, accompany the Countess.

    — According to Violino, you will wear new livery tonight.

    Elias obeyed. But every time he felt his name was hanging out the door with his coat.

    At court the musicians wore embroidered jackets, white socks and shiny shoes. They had to be elegant, punctual and possibly mute when they didn't play. Nobility loved art, especially when art knew its place and did not ask to sit at the table.

    Joseph Haydn, master of the chapel, knew that strange condition well.

    He was respected as a composer, applauded as a genius and summoned as a servant when the prince desired a new symphony between soup and roast.

    He suffered everything with an irony so discreet that it seemed good education.

    — Master — Elias asked him one day — do you consider yourself at the service of the prince?

    Haydn raised his eyes from the score.

    — Of course.

    — Doesn't it weigh you?

    — I’m especially impressed when the service coincides with lunchtime.

    Then he returned to write.

    Elias did not know if he had received an answer or a lesson.

    At night he composed in secret. He hid the leaves under the mattress and wrote in the light of a candle consumed, while his companions slept.

    He still didn't dream of glory. He wanted something more modest and, for this reason, much more difficult: to see his name above a music born within him.

    One afternoon he composed a brief adagio for violin and strings. He started with four hesitant notes, as he walked in front of a closed door, then opened in a wide and painful melody.

    He left the manuscript on his letting during the trials.

    The next morning he disappeared.

    Three days later, during a reception, the plaintiff put a fresh copy in front of him.

    — You'll have this.

    Elias immediately recognized his notes.

    — Where did you find the composition?

    — In the musical chapel.

    — I wrote it.

    The ruler looked at him with the patience reserved for children and servants who confuse a thought with a right.

    — Exactly. You wrote it here.

    The hall was filled with nobles. They talked about hunting, weddings and returns while the orchestra agreed on the instruments. A duchess laughed so hard that the horn could have asked her lessons.

    Elias raised the bow.

    When he began to play, however, the conversations were lost.

    The melody crossed the hall and did what the music does in its best moments: it forced people very confident to hear something they had not ordered.

    In the end, a Countess approached the prince.

    — Who composed this song?

    Elias inspired.

    The prince answered before him:

    — It belongs to my chapel.

    He said «Hayd». He said «Elias Hartmann».

    He said it belonged to the palace.

    Like a tapestry.

    Like a fountain.

    Like a particularly plastered lever.

    The next day Elias found the manuscript copied on precious paper, decorated with the coat of arms of the Esterházy. He had to be donated to a visiting ambassador.

    The name of the prince appeared on top.

    The author was not there.

    Elias took a pen and wrote down:

    Elias Hartmann, musician.

    The steward read those words. Then he took out a small knife and scraped off the name.

    The paper remained clearer at that point, like a scar.

    — What is composed at the service of His Highness belongs to His Highness.

    — Thoughts?

    — Don't be insolent.

    — I'm just trying to figure out what part of my head the prince's possessions begin.

    The steward roasted.

    — You're paid, dressed and fed.

    — Horses are also fed. Yet no one argues that they have built the roads that run.

    The line went around the orchestra before night. The steward, however, did not find it funny. The intentions rarely appreciate irony: they fear that it is a lock of which they do not possess the key.

    Elias decided he wouldn't play anymore.

    But the old cellist Márton stopped him.

    — Can you afford to be fired?

    Elias did.

    — I have three children. The phagottist keeps his mother. The horner still has to pay the doctor. Your dignity is a noble thing, boy. Just try not to feed it with the bread of others.

    Those words burned him more than the humiliation he suffered.

    He understood now that even courage could become arrogant, when he claimed to choose the price others would have to pay.

    He took the unbridled manuscript and reached Haydn.

    The composer read it without talking. He argued on the point where the name was erased.

    — I want to leave — Elias said.

    — You can.

    — That's it?

    Haydn put the sheet.

    — Being right is a very economical consolation. He doesn't pay the trip and he doesn't change who's wrong.

    — So I should stay and be quiet?

    — I didn't say that. I said a banged door frees those coming out, but rarely educates those who stay.

    Haydn opened a new score.

    On the forehead was written: Symphony in fa diesis minor.

    — The prince has held us for months in the summer residence. The musicians want to return to their families. Requests have been ignored.

    — So?

    Haydn unleashed the pages.

    — Then we'll do what's best.

    — Are we going to eat?

    — We'll stop doing this.

    In the final movement, the parts of the instruments ended one after another. Every musician would have turned off the candle on his ledge and left the room.

    — Is it a symphony that surrenders? — He asked Elias.

    — No. It is a symphony that obeys with such precision to make it impossible to punish it.

    — And you think the prince will understand?

    Haydn smiled.

    — Principles include many things. Usually a few minutes after all the others understood them.

    In the evening of the concert the salon shone hundreds of candles.

    The prince sat in the center, surrounded by guests convinced that the world had been created to offer them a good view.

    Elias was wearing livery.

    In the lining he sewed the paper fragment on which his name had been erased.

    The symphony began with energy. The orchestra advanced compact, disciplined, magnificently captive.

    The prince was pleased.

    Then the last movement came.

    The oboist ended his part.

    Close the score.

    He turned the candle off.

    And he went out.

    The prince turned to Haydn.

    — Your oboist is leaving.

    Haydn continued to lead.

    — It seems so, Your Highness.

    — Why?

    — Maybe he's done.

    Shortly after the phagottist came out.

    Then a hornet.

    Then the other.

    The audience smiled. Sounded like a theatrical find.

    But when he digs the double bass, no one laughs.

    Every musician who left the room left behind an empty chair and a small column of smoke.

    Music became thinner.

    One less voice.

    A light less.

    One less man.

    When his turn arrived, Elias placed the violin in the custody.

    He slowly took off the livery and left it in the chair.

    He was wearing a simple white shirt.

    The prince rose.

    — Where do you think you're going, Second Violino?

    Elias stopped.

    The room held its breath.

    — Elias, Your Highness.

    — What did you say?

    — My name is Elias.

    He directed the livery and the instrument.

    — Second Violin stays here. You can own these.

    Then he went out.

    Only two violinists remained in the hall.

    They played a slow, almost naked sentence.

    It seemed like someone's voice that, after having long asked for permission, had finally chosen the way.

    A candle is lost.

    Then the last.

    The note died.

    The prince looked at the hall.

    The chairs were his.

    The laws were his.

    The instruments, the liveries, the candles and even the palace were his.

    And yet he had no music.

    — Get them back. — he ordered.

    Haydn lowered his hands.

    — I can ask men to come back, Your Highness. I can't command the music.

    — I pay them!

    — Pay their job. It is the only part of them that has ever belonged to you.

    The prince saw the livery abandoned by Elias. From the liner, a sheet of paper was protruding.

    He extracts it.

    He recognized the adage manuscript and the white wound left by the scraped name.

    — This composition is mine — He said.

    Haydn observed the empty orchestra.

    — So, Your Highness, let her play.

    The prince remained silent.

    For the first time he realized that you can possess everything and have nothing more capable of living.

    The next morning Elias was summoned.

    He entered without livery, of course he was fired.

    The prince had in front of the manuscript. A small strip of paper was glued to the scrapped point.

    It was written:

    Elias Hartmann.

    — Mr Hartmann — said the prince, and those two words cost him more than one whole orchestra — musicians can leave.

    Elias just called the boss.

    — The orchestra of master Haydn, Highness.

    The prince shook his lips.

    Haydn, at the bottom of the room, examined the ceiling with great interest.

    — The orchestra of master Haydn — The prince finally ran.

    The musicians left that morning.

    When they returned to court weeks later, their names appeared on the program. The prince had not suddenly become a philosopher, and the artists were not yet completely free men.

    But something broke.

    Not a rope.

    Not a law.

    A habit.

    Since then the prince continued to pay the music, but no longer dared to believe that he possessed those who created it.

    And when he called Elias, he never said «Second Violin».

    He said his name.

    To support art does not mean to possess who creates it. Money can buy the time and work of an artist, but not his thought or his dignity. A man can serve music without becoming a servant of those who pay it.

    BOX HISTORY

    Leave a comment

  • The organ that raises: Marialuisa Veneziano charms Falconara

    By Claudia Valenti

    Marialuisa Veneziano
    (©Emiliano Tarsetti)

    A rough and moving evening, in which the music of Morandi, Bach, Guilmant and Liszt became a gesture of beauty, solidarity and community.

    Falconara Marittima (An), 9 June 2026

    ***

    You should ask yourself sometimes what you really want a crowd when filling a church to listen to an organ.

    Certainly not the noise, of which the world is already prodigal dispenser; not light leisure, which is born and dies with the same hurry; not the vanity of being there, because there are places in which also vanity, if it enters, is forced to lower the voice. On the evening of June 6, in the Church of Sant’Antonio da Padova of Falconara Marittima (An), a very numerous community — a full church, indeed filled, as rarely happens for an organ concert — seemed to look for something more ancient and more necessary: a reason to listen together.

    And that reason came with the first sound.

    It wasn't a simple start. It was as if the air, until that moment immovable, suddenly found a soul. The organ took voice and the church, which was already full of people, seemed to fill itself only then. Because there are tools that accompany thought, and others who call it to judgment. The organ belongs to the latter. He does not ask for distraction, does not give superficiality: he takes the silence of men and measures it.

    At the instrument, Marialuisa Veneziano, organist, pianist and musicologist, interpreter of rare intensity, able to combine a powerful technique with an even more difficult quality to find: the inner necessity of sound. He did not play to adorn the evening, nor to please the audience, nor to exhibit that mastery which also appeared evident from the early jokes. It sounded like those who know that every note, if not born from a truth, remains only a note; and that music, when it is not called to say something of man, becomes a useless luxury.

    The concert was promoted to Caritas, with the support of President Ondina Valeria Ghergut and the Franciscan friars community of the parish. And it is not a detail to put at the bottom, among the obligatory thanks. It is, on the contrary, the moral key to the evening. Because beauty, when she meets charity, stops being isolated contemplation and becomes work. And the Franciscan friars, with that laborious simplicity that often makes more than many proclamations, have opened the doors not only of a sacred building, but of a possibility: to show that a community can still gather around what it elevates.

    From left: the parish priest Father Leon, Marialuisa Veneziano, Marina Mancini
    (©Emiliano Tarsetti)

    To present the concert was Eleonora Tarsetti, and those who had careful eyes would immediately understand that his was not an ornamental presence. There are people who announce them only; others, instead, generate them before they even begin. Eleonora belongs to this second species, more rare and more precious. His voice, measured and participated, brought with him the silent story of a strong, operous friendship, not exhibited. A friendship that believed, organized, supported, prepared the way. Next to her, Marina Mancini has contributed with kindness and grace to lead the public through the evening, as those who accompany without ever oversight, offering to the words the discreet measure of the welcome. This also gave the concert a special tone: not the cold one of the official occasions, but the rarest one of the evenings treated with a light hand, in which every intervention prepares listening and invites the public to enter, step by step, in the deeper meaning of the event.

    Between Eleonora Tarsetti and Marialuisa Veneziano we felt that connection that does not need many statements, because it speaks through gestures. And in times when talent is not always kept — sometimes it is looked suspiciously, as if the light of others was a decrease in its own — It is good to see a friendship that does the opposite act: it does not turn out, does not hold, does not measure; it opens. Eleonora Tarsetti opened a door. And from that door that night, the music passed.

    Marialuisa Veneziano at the organ and Eleonora Tarsetti
    (©Emiliano Tarsetti)

    The program was not a sequence of songs, but a moral itinerary.

    With Giovanni Morandi and his Offer, the organ showed its Italian face, clear, cantabile, almost smiling in its composure. There was on that page a simple, not poor grace; a luminosity capable of combining the sacred measure with a more human, almost theatrical breath. Marialuisa Veneziano made it with finesse, without limestone, without weighting, letting the sound walk in the church as a morning light. It was the right beginning: not the inruption of the sublime, but its announcement.

    Then Bach came. And when Bach really enters a church, he never enters as a guest. Get on the ground.

    The Touch and escape in minor king (BWV 565), so famous to be often consumed by habit, that evening he found his original severity. It was not the "famous" page that the public recognizes with satisfaction; it was a call. The Toccata has torn the space with a force that seemed musical and moral together. The Escape, then, recomposed that shock in order, voice after voice, as if chaos was called to give reason for itself.

    Here the Venetian Master showed an extraordinary mastery. The organ technique, in its complexity of hands, feet, registers, sound balance and control of acoustics, was safe, clear, dominated. But the real merit was another: that technique did not ask to be admired. Served. He claimed. He was carrying. It was like a column hidden inside a building: who looks admiring the time, but the time would not hold without that column. Thus it was the virtuosity of Venice: not vanity, but architecture.

    In Bach, his interpretation took the breath of the necessary things. Every voice of escape seemed to advance with its own dignity, and all together they built that miracle that only Bach does so naturally: transforming thought into emotion without betraying either one or another. The church listened real. And there are immobilities worth more than many applauses.

    With Alexandre Guilmant and the Symphonie n°1 in D minor by organ, the speech became wider. The organ has assumed symphonic dimension, almost orchestral. Not only liturgical instrument, but sound world: imaginary brass, invisible arches, luminous masses, deep shadows. French writing demanded greatness, but greatness is a dangerous matter: in less experienced hands it becomes weight, rhetoric, noise. Venetian, however, has been able to breathe. The sound widened without overturning; it climbed without crushing; it filled without confusing.

    It was, that, one of the moments in which the nature of the interpreter was better understood: a musician capable of power, but not in love with power; able to make the space tremble, but without losing the modesty of detail. And the smell, in art, is not weakness. It is the custody of greatness.

    Finally Franz Liszt.

    Here the evening entered a harsher, more burning, almost prophetic region. The Präludium und Fugue über It is not only a tribute to the genius of Eisenach: it is a struggle with the name, with the memory, with the inheritance, with that absolute that Liszt pursued throughout his life, now with the impetus of the virtuoso, now with the restlessness of the penitent. On this page the music is not limited to proceeding: search, question, rush, go back. Marialuisa Veneziano has entered there without satisfaction. He did not make Liszt an exercise of skill, although the difficulty was evident and very high. He made a play of it. Every passage seemed to bring with it a question: what remains of man when he entrusts his name to music? What remains of pain when it is transformed into form? What remains of fatigue when it becomes beauty?

    In Liszt, the artist appeared in his fullness. Not only the performer from the safe technique; not only the scholar who knows the internal structure of the songs; but the interpreter who risks something of himself. There are correct executions, there are brilliant executions, and then there are executions that seem to have gone through a life before arriving to the public. The Venetian one belonged to this last category. He didn't just produce sound: he delivered it.

    And the audience, in a church now almost a single being listening, received.

    It could be said that applause was warm, and that would be true. One could say that participation was great, and it would still be true. But there are smaller truths, and for this reason more revealing. One of these happened when, in the still vibrant silence after music, a very young voice shouted:

    "Brava prof!"

    You cannot invent a better phrase. No critic, no presenter, no release could have said more with so little.

    "Brava prof!": two words only, but inside there was the whole evening seen from the eyes of a young man. There was the affectionate amazement of those who recognize, in their teacher, not only the daily figure of the school, but the artist capable of shaking a church. There was the tenderness of a generation that, when it is not educated only to noise, still knows how great it is. There was evidence that music, when it is true, does not remain closed in titles and skills: it also comes there where technical language does not serve, because it speaks the heart.

    That cry didn't break the silence. He did.

    He entered the solemnity of the evening a simple, clear, irresistible note of life. And perhaps it was at that moment that the concert showed its deepest meaning: not to separate the top from the daily, but to unite them. Bach and school. Liszt and affection. Caritas and virtuosity. The Franciscan friars and the crowd. The friendship of Eleonora and the voice of a boy. Everything, for a moment, together.

    Marialuisa Veneziano during the execution (©Emiliano Tarsetti)

    This is the power of music when he meets a community: he reassembles what life often divides.

    The evening of 6 June had, in fact, a beauty not only artistic, but civil. Caritas, President Ondina Valeria Ghergut, Franciscan friars and those who made the event possible remembered that solidarity is not only an answer to the emergency, but an education of the gaze. Help also means creating places where man can feel part of something again. A church full for an organ concert is not only a success of public: it is a sign. And the signs, when they are honest, are worth more than the statements.

    In this sign, Eleonora Tarsetti had the discreet and decisive role of those who know how to recognize before others. But to say only this would be little. There are people who do not come to life to occupy space, but to return it; not to ask for light, but to allow others not to be afraid of it. Eleonora, in this evening, was exactly this: a presence able to believe without intruding, to support without holding, to prepare the way without pretending to be the way.

    Not all friendships are generative. Some consulate, others accompany; the highest, however, make things happen. They are those friendships that see when the world distracts, that guard when others disperse, that do not return before the greatness of the other because they do not live it as a threat, but as a gift. At a time when too many energies are consumed to resize, contain, extinguish what exceeds the common measure, a friendship that promotes beauty becomes almost a countercurrent act.

    Eleonora did this: she believed in a light and prepared her space. He realized that a concert could become something more than a musical evening; he could become a meeting, charity, memory, recognition. He brought his care within the organization of the event, but above all he brought that rare form of trust that does not need clamor to be decisive. Because sometimes the greatest things do not arise from those who raise their voices, but from those who know how to say, with firmness mild: "this beauty must happen".

    So the concert became more than a concert. He became a small parable about recognition.

    And in the middle of this parable remains the figure of Marialuisa Veneziano. An artist who does not ask for indulgence, because he possesses the tools of rigour; but who does not take refuge even in rigour, because he knows that art without soul is only well dressed discipline. Its execution has combined precision and fire, control and abandonment, thought and vibration. He made the organ not a monument, but a living creature.

    There was, in his way of playing, something we could call responsibility for beauty. Every song seemed brought to the public not as personal possession, but as a gift. Morandi with his grace; Bach with his ordained abyss; Guilmant with its solemn breadth; Liszt with his spiritual fever. Each page became a stage, and each stage allowed not only the composer, but also the interpreter: his culture, his strength, his history, his ability to transform fatigue into form.

    When the last vibration dissolved, the church did not immediately return to normal. No place returns identical after being crossed by a necessary music. The walls seemed to hold something again; the faces of the public brought that particular light that appears when you received more than you expected.

    Then what happens in true evenings cannot be commanded or predicted: the public stands.

    The applause, already long and grateful, has become a full, warm, almost liberating standing ovation. Not only the tribute to a successful execution; was the recognition of something that had touched deeper. The viewers did not applaud only the technique, although extraordinary, nor only the strength of the songs: applauded the experience lived, the emotion received, the feeling of being carried by hand into a higher place.

    And precisely in the final greetings, when an artist could easily take refuge in the pride of success, Marialuisa Veneziano chose instead the most difficult and brightest way: that of humility.

    He thanked the public with simple words, but capable of moving. "The artist without the public is nothing, because music does not live in the solitary gesture of those who perform it, but in the encounter with those who welcome it. Music needs humanity, people willing to listen, to get excited, to recognize each other through sound."

    It was a moment of rare truth.

    After Bach, Guilmant and Liszt, after the power of the organ and the intensity of the evening, those words brought everything back to its purest root: the music does not belong to the artist as a possession, but passes through the artist as a gift. And a gift exists only when someone receives it.

    The standing ovation, then, is no longer just an applause standing, but an answer. The audience returned to the artist what he had received; and the artist, with humility, handed back to the public the very meaning of music. In that dialogue without score, made of hands, shiny eyes and gratitude, perhaps the deepest meaning of the evening has been fulfilled.

    And perhaps this is the right word: gratitude.

    Recognize towards Caritas and friars, for making the church an open house. Recognize towards Eleonora Tarsetti, for believing and building. Recognize towards Marina Mancini, for having guided the public with grace and kindness through the passages of the evening. Recognize towards the public, for having filled not only a space, but a silence. Recognize to that young man who, with his "Brava prof!", delivered his most innocent and true phrase to the evening. Finally, she recognizes Marialuisa Veneziano, for having remembered that music, when born from study, pain, faith and dedication, can still perform the most difficult miracle: to make men feel less alone.

    We do not know if everyone, coming out of the church, has been able to accurately say what they had heard. Perhaps some will have appointed Bach, others Liszt, others the power of the organ, others still the full church or the emotion of that young cry. But it is not always necessary to give a name to the things that change. Sometimes you just take them away.

    On June 6, in Falconara, many entered the church for a concert.

    They came out with a memory.

    And memory, when it is made of beauty, friendship and charity, resembles a form of grace.

    Leave a comment

EnglishenEnglishEnglish
ItalianitItalianItalianoEnglishenEnglishEnglish