DANIELA TERRANOVA
composer
Velature (2022)
for alto flute, alto saxophone, percussion, piano, double bass and electro-acoustic system
Duration: 10'
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Commissioned by Ensemble Suono Giallo in partnership with Tempo Reale,
funded by Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation
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Premiere: 9 October 2022, Festival Mixtur, Fabra I Coats, Barcelona; performed by Ensemble Suono Giallo

© Ensemble Suono Giallo
In a long and continuous formal span, within which patches of sound with blurred edges germinate, we hear timbres that thicken into clots of rough matter and then melt into unexpected transparencies. Each geometry breaks its own rigidity, becoming filled with a matter that shatters into an iridescent dust. Timbre becomes architecture, and the listening reveals a multiplicity of overlapping layers. The acoustic sound is veiled by the electronic sounds that several transducers project onto the piano’s soundboard and the skin of a tympanum, generating a kind of ‘underlying painting’, a primordial layer made up of a few colours that define the chiaroscuros and contrasts of the timbres that are most evident to the listener. In each sonic gesture the shadow of an underlying layer shines through, and everything seems to expand into a space where all appears in veiled suspension. Each voice is treated as a mix of changing colour, capable of transforming the seemingly monochrome and flat surface into a living and pulsating area, within which sound moves from the inside to the outside and vice versa. Sound is perceived as an atmospheric, shifting colour as variations in timbre, density and dynamics paint new veils that highlight ever-changing nuances. The prevailing colours and textures tend to pulverize and tear, allowing bare, rarefied sounds to emerge at times that suspend the listener in an apparent, meditative stasis.