Franca Sacchi: EN (I,1970,re.2011)****'
Franca
Sacchi studied piano and composition in Milan and also frequented the
ORTF in Paris and the Léo Kupper studio in Brussels. Between 1966 and
1975 she mainly worked as an electronic and concrete music musician
holding seminars on the subject too. In 1968 she founded the Research
Centre for Electronic Music in Milan until 1970. There she worked on
cross-disciplinary projects. After an intense period of meditation she
abandoned composition and since then only improvised musically and
"choreutically". She also obtained a degree in sacred music singing and
Gregorian chant.
The
first piece (“ainsi fut le commencement, il n’y aura pas de fin”, 1970)
sounds like a pulsating tone with additional fading in harmonic and
noise textures and similar pulsations, expressed in total in the same
way as a natural environment with insects, only this sounds a bit more
like a machine with some small irregularities in the pulses it also
makes it more natural. It is a very meditative piece.
The
second piece (“arpa eolia”, 1970) seems to be based upon piano note
harmonies separated from recordings from inside the piano and made more
like round fading in clustered waves with its own not too harmonious
keyboard-like tonal tensions because of the surrounding resonating
strings and limited sound chamber of the piano. There are a few layers
of them pulsating on its own rhythm of which some of them have surface
noise textures.
The
third track (“quando mi hanno ucciso, se posso dire, e quindi rinasco”
1972) is an electronic harmonic tone pulsating its way through space and
time with small, directed changes in its shape and form. New tones with
overtones pulsate in space too. One beeping pulsation and a smaller,
slower pulsation then are combined. There’s some small tape hiss
present.
The
last track (danza, mia cara”, 1971) goes even further and stretches
some changes in shape and form of some foundation into another like one
big improvisation. It starts with a basic reverb reverberation that
could have been a tape manipulation perhaps mixed with electronic music,
finding its own rhythm. Then a second part starts with sea shore-alike
white noise that is combined with new electronic radiowave sounds, then
two layers of oscillating and sequencing notes move up and down. Also
this finds a rhythm of its own, the control over it possibly is based
upon a direct discovery process through the ears with a direct reaction
of reshaping this. Certain rhythmic overtones are filtered out and
become more apparent. New patterns of oscillation, melody and strange
harmonies are taken to evolve further in time, with for instance changes
in tone. These melodic patterns evolve further until certain tones or
waves are again more dominant pulsations. An interesting piece of a
creative meeting place of hearing alertness, skills of controlling
sounds and improvisation by being one with the material.
This
is the most meditative electronic music I've heard, even though it
requires best full listening attention, the results are in a more
complete range of reality in experience compared to music that is
deliberately made for meditation as functional music, which this surely
is not. Franca Sacchi saw music as a state of self-recognition, so that
music making for her is different from the traditional sense of
composition as a deliberate thought-process, this goes deeper and more
directly towards consciousness over sound and the creation and findings
made with it. This sort of oneness can be sensed very well, especially
on the longest (and last) piece.
