Domenico Guaccero

by Egisto Macchi (1985)

[In «Eupalino. Cultura della città e della casa», n. 6, 1985, pp. 58-61; also in Egisto Macchi «ARCHIVIO, Musiche del XX secolo», Palermo: CIMS, 1996]

Sixty-six are the titles to be found in the catalogue of the works (1951-1983) that Domenico Guàccero has left us over the years. […]. His last work, "Un Hombre" for voice and piano, was written a mere eight months before the composer’s death on Tuesday, April 24, 1984, at 5 pm., two days after Easter Sunday.

Domenico Guàccero was a man of our time, a true "musical operator" (an "operational musician", "with an eye, as e himself states, to practical events, things to do, and to cope with all the partianship of those who feel like doing those things and not others, at the time".¹

Attentive to every change, sensitive to all stimuli, curious of all possible novelties, he employed the principle of "variation" as an aesthetic credo, letting it permeate all his work. And, in fact, it is the catalogue of his works which offers us a primary confirmation of this. His "musical ensemble" are varied to the nth degree, as if he wished to ensure his compositions an independent tension quite separate from the execution, an original choice, unrevokable and never in doubt, not even in the presence of always possible negative results. In short, 66 works of witch nine (divided into four groups) present identical elements and more precisely:

1. Two compositions for voice and piano, and, oddly, the one which opens the catalogue ("Three lyrics by Montale", 1951) and the one which closes it ("Un Hombre");

2. Three compositions for pianoforte ("Partita", 1953 - "Sonatina prima", 1956/57 - "Esercizi", 1965);

3. Two compositions for soprano solo ("Esercizi", 1965 and "Glossa", 1970);

4. Two compositions for string quartet (1955 and 1980)

The other 57 compositions all have different musical ensembles. The "white" years in which no composition was published are 1966, 1969, 1971, 1974 and 1984. Guàccero leaves 18 articles dated between 1959 and 1983. To him […] articles of a certain importance have been dedicated by Mario Bortolotto, Piero Dallamano, Antonino Titone and Gianfranco Zaccaro. A degree thesis on "Domenico Guàccero, composer and musicologist" was presented by Toni Geraci who discussed in on July 4, 1984 at the Faculty of letters at Palermo University, rapporteur prof. Paolo Emilio Carapezza. Nuova Consonanza then published this thesis in the book "Domenico Guàccero, practice and theory", which came out in November 1984.

Guàccero’s compositional iter may be profitably reconstructed only if one is able to group, under a common denominator, a number of works which, especially after 1960, escape a linear evolution; the fact was acutely pointed out by T. Geraci in the afore-mentioned thesis: "After 1960, his music does not follow a linear development, but consists in a varied and multiple weaving of a few fundamental motifs. In his later years, in fact, Guàccero aimed at renewing himself in each work rather than definitely establishing a language. This choice was completely conscious act and was meant as an invitation to remain open-minded, receptive to problems and research; in short, it as a desire to exorcise the danger of conventionality which is always present in the contemporary music"².

The most important denominations in which to group this confused collection of works may be identified as the following:

1. The alea and aleatory signs

2. Experimentalism

3. Gestural art and the musical theatre

4. Theoretic works

1. Alea and aleatory signs.

The lessons held by John Cage at Darmstadt at the end of the ‘50’s initiated the debate in Europe on open works and aleatory signs. Guàccero himself wrote: "Such notations have developed in the most varied original efforts, research and flourishings; so much so that they no longer seem to be necessary to a performance (as regards their practical use, their service, traditionally carried out by musical notations, of transmitting the musical ideas of the composer as faithfully as possible to the performer): they are set down as independent events, as something different, a "graphie autre" from what we conceive as the writing of something. Therefore a radical difference witch, once swept away the mists of interested self-defence or the superficial incomprehension (of opponents), is revealed as being organically joined, with an aleatory language and syntax and with the general configuration of contemporary civilisation".

This independency of the signs in aleatory graphics is present, according to Guàccero, in two cases or main moments: a) that of the non-correspondence of the signs to the event insofar as either the event is from time to time, in fact not performable or, if performable cannot be appreciated as such in its albeit extreme precision, due to the limited perceptive skills of the listener; b) that of the graphic sign used as stimulus for a mute reading of pictorial event; the former case sparking the independent interpretation of the performer, the latter, going beyond the true sonorous experience, to the point of abstracting it, in favour of an "independency of internal image" where it is possible, but not ultimately vital, to add sounds. The classification Guàccero draws up for graphic signs, which does not presume to comprehend all possibilities, starts off from traditional graphics, moving on through notations without metre and the purely casual signs caused by the author (Cage’s ink spots), in order to reach the pictographies (see Bussotti) mentioned above. But on the subject Guàccero takes pains to examine the problem thoroughly, probing the classic parameters of sound one by one, beginning from the pitchs and their regulation in the tempo (tempo meant as succession, monody and tempo as simultaneousness, polyphony) to then moving on to loudness and timbre, with all implications, not only graphic, connected to the more discerning, specific and analitycal use of those very parameters employed to reach a melody of timbres, memory of Schönberg, and even a melody of loudness to place next to the traditional pitch melody.

"The fact that all types of notations signs – notes Guàccero – pitch, loudness, timbre and lenght present insuperable difficulties either due to intrinsic graphic difficulties, the resistance encountered in the material instruments of execution or to insufficient research on the behaviour of those instruments, means that the roads separate. On the one and, the vague "control" on the material by the "pointelist" composers, a control which, the best brains have ended by admitting, lasted the "espace d’un matin", and ends in its absolutely definite fixing on magnetic tape…; on the other, one unbridles the actual flight of the material towards chance, hiding in the embellishments of a fictitious control, or else one consciously accepts this flight and incorporates chance. We are already in the proclaimed aleatory stage."³.

2. Experimentalism.

"The fiasco of the various compositional experiences implemented ut to now in history is not a good reason to give ut trying" wrote Guàccero in 1961. In fact, his work was a continuos experiment "with the cautious scepticism of the negative", as he himself said, well able to define experimentalism "his natural vocation"⁴. (Suffice it to carefully observe the musical ensemble of his 66 works in order to glean a primary confirmation. There is a timbre research in these musical ensemble which incessantly violates traditional lines of conduct, reaching new sonorous strongholds trough courageous couplings, the extreme differentiation of instruments or through the re-enforcing of similar if not identical timbres (e.g. "Positive" 1980 for solo flute and 11 flutes). One often comes up against variable musical ensembles, as for example in "Variations 3" (1968), which may be executed by groups which go from one to 54 performers, or in "Symphony 3" (1973) for small, medium and large orchestra – There is no lack of examples of complex scores composed of more than one section, as for example "Kardia", made up of three scores; one for strings only, composed in 1972; one for wind instruments, written in 1973 and a vocal one dated 1976 which may be executed simply or with two or three together. The pieces written for soloists are fairly numerous and are explicitly intended to experiment new types of sound emission: the long list includes clarinet, piano, viola, clavicembalo, soprano, baritono, vocalist, mime, percussionist, harp, violin and prepared violin.

His experimentalism includes the use of the quarter tone, often used as a means to obtain an improved fragmentation of the frequency interval without ever presuming to base on the latter and type of new harmonics. Even the use Guàccero makes of the interval belongs to his animus of experimentalist. Since "Iter segnato" (1960) Guàccero indicates the precise and meticolous arrangement of the instruments in the concert hall and their possible movements. For example, in "Symphony 1" (1963) for variable ensembles he writes that the performers have to set themselves along the perimeter of the hall and begin to "play simultaneously at the director’s beat with a pianissimo as if they were creating a spatial phonic "panel". According to whether a listener draws near to an instrument, the executor will slightly increase the intensity, as if this was a detail of the panel which was then highlighted". In "Variations 2" (1967) for strings, the last variation has to be executed "on three psychological sound levels; one more external and virtuosic, towards the public, another through the exterior with the interior, indifferent to the public, one internal and static, invisible to the public".

3. Gestural art and the musical theatre.

Guàccero wrote on this subject in no uncertain terms in his treatise "The tradition of the Musical Theatre" (1981-1983): "I do not wish to speak of "gesture" in a figurative sense (…) but of "gestures" in a proper sense, as a corporal activity, as movement, mime, fact-to-be-seen, as well as heard"⁵. A gesture, that is, as an extra-musical, non-musical moment of making music, entrusted to interpreters who one habitually sees involved in other specifically musical activities, to instrumentalists, for example, or singer or directors. This tendency may be imputed to the birth and development of a new type of global composition in which specialists, but more generically executors, called to cover a much wider range of responsibilities, were no longer automatically preferred to the primary constitutive elements (sounds, song, movement, words). This had a dual effect of implementing on the one hand a musical theatre made up of few instruments but increased agility an on other, to a phenomenon that Guàccero call "de-specialisation", "intra-discipline". We are already in Guàccero’s real musical theatre which, in fact, exploits agility and de-specialisation (without forgetting the suppression of the stage as a privileged place, an operation punctually executed by Guàccero in all his pièces). Musical theatre, in short all the elements which are part of a playhouse plus music. The ensuing global composition entails the component element aligned in a dimension hierarchy which rangers from the parameters of music and their temporal arrangement to words, mime and vision and ends in the actions of the performers and the public, the latter being also involved. "Counterpoint of elements" says Guàccero and not only "separation of the elements" as in Brecht. Counterpoint of some or all the elements in a succession of primary and secondary roles as in classic counterpoint where the "theme" passed from one voice to another with no one in the role of guide or leading part. And at this point I believe that Guàccero offers the proof of a rare understanding of the phenomenon "theatre" when he writes: "But that which constitutes the musical theatre is not the mere creative and perceptive activity of the hearing sense (sounds and logic meanings) and the seeing sense (mime and scenes), but the "living inside" an action. I mean, the theatre is action. If you consider an illustrative or evocative theatre, according to Brecht’s distinction, the audio-visual fabric must be kept together by a web of action. A weft, as in material, to be exact"⁶.

All this and more may be found in the most significative works of gestual theatre that Domenico Guùccero has left us ("Tree Way meeting"-1963, "Negative" - 1964, "Interior-Exterior" - 1967) and in those works which more appropriately belong to the musical theatre ("Scene of Power" - 1964-86, "Representation and Exercise" - 1968, "Rot" - 1970-72, "Absolute Novelty" - 1972).

4. Theoretic works.

Guàccero’s main articles may be divided into:

a. Works regarding seriality

b. Works on the problems of alea and aleatory graphics

c. Works on the musical theatre

a. works on seriality.

"Problems of musical syntax, I", published in the first number of the music magazine "Ordini – Studi sulla nuova musica" (1959), dealt with the subject of classic dodecaphony. Its natural sequel "Problems of musical syntax, II", which was to appear in the second number of "Ordini" (unfortunately never published due to the death of the Roman Editor De Luca) remained unpublished. What strikes one in these two treatise in Guàccero’s well-defined standpoint as regards the "linguistic impurities" that composers of dodecaphonic renown as Schönberg and Berg, for example, reveal in their works; impurities against which Boulez had taken arms in his famous article "Schönberg is dead". In the musical text of these composers, Guàccero locates the presence of "tonal fossils", the function of which is to make up for the deficiencies of the series when the latter cannot be perceived with the same absoluteness with which, for example, a tonal fabric is perceived. Seen in this light, the tone and authentic serial composer in Anton Webern, who takes special care in the construction of a series in order to make it obvious to listeners and at the same time, capable of balancing works and syntactic laws influenced by the series itself (this is basically similar to what happens in tonal music). In his "Iter segnato" in 1960 (performed during the first week of New Music in Palermo in the same year) Guàccero practically applied the considerations he had just exposed in his treatise, moving away from the serial principles and courageously introducing "impure" elements of marked Jazz tendencies.

b. Works on the alea and aleatory graphics.

This subject was treated by Guàccero in five essays, three of which were published in the above-cited volume edited by Nuova Consonanza. The subject has been amply discussed in point one of this article and therefore we refer back to it.

c. Works on the musical theatre.

Three are the articles Guàccero has left us on the musical theatre: "An experience of Musical Theatre" (1965), "Annotations on the musical theatre" (1966) and "The tradition of the musical theatre" (1981-83). First and foremost Guàccero reviewed the history of the musical theatre from the Greek theatre to the European one, from the mystic-initiatory practices to the mass and ensuing liturgical drama, up to the melodrama and all the "reform" attempts to which Opera was subjected from the time of Marcello down through Gluck, Rossini, Wagner, Debussy, Bartok and Berg. Form this red thread which he skilfully unravels is born a "hierarchical unity" between the music, text and gesture which becomes the privileged target of Guàccero’s analysis, as already pointed out in point 3) of this article. In particular, I would like to stress the insistence with which Guàccero returns to the concept of the active participation of the public. Guàccero writes: "An active and conscious, spontaneous and critical participation is or should be quite different. It almost means a prefiguration of a new society of equals, where the relationships of dependency and hierarchy are mobile and natural, without prejudices. This in fact means that the public is no longer "public", or rather a group of individuals who, without knowing each other and having paid a ticket, find themselves sitting next to each other. The "public" should be substituted with the collectivity or community, already ideologically oriented and possessing a minimum of common intent, in view of what is to occur. Continuity in art or life would thus be seen as a positive and real element and would take on all the present practices which, in an ever more manifest fashion, tend in this direction…Are we at the "death of art", at the victory of sound or actions of everyday life? But even everyday life seems to consequently tend, towards imagination in art. perhaps we are the spectators of the balancing of two moments, life and art"⁷.