DANIELA TERRANOVA
composer
Notturno in forma di rosa (2016)
for Flute, Clarinet in Bb, Piano, Violin and Cello
Duration: 7'
Premiere: 13 October 2016 - St. John's Smith Square, London; London Sinfonietta conducted by Marco Angius
Broadcast by BBC Radio 3 Hear and Now
with Andrew Burke, Francesco Filidei, Marco Angius at St. John's Smith Square, London
A poem about a rose is hardly ever about a rose in a botanical sense: the beauty of the flower is an archetype, a single sign within which infinitive meanings are hidden. Looking at the image of the rose, Umberto Eco coined the phrase “unlimited semiosis” to refer to this open-ended possibility of human interpretation. He mentioned that the rose came to symbolize so many meanings that "it hardly has any meaning left". This richness of signification allows the flower to be used as a metaphor of the hidden essence of composition itself, getting closer to the threshold, to the "limen", that divides what is being perceived by intuition from what could be understood by intellectual ability. In the work the sounds depict smooth shapes, drawing a line that spirals to contract inwards and expand outwards like the outline of the petals in a rose. When the musical figure seems about to define itself, it dissolves into new figures, creating a feeling of openness: a working process that constantly starts and suspends, mapping out a structure that goes beyond individual objects in order to weave larger sonorous continuities.
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