Review | By textura
OSTN | PIETRO GROSSI (Sergio Armaroli)
Drawing for inspiration from Alberto Tacchinardi’s 1912-published Musical Acoustics, Milano-based vibraphonist Sergio Armaroli applies its ideas about the relationship between music and science to an hour-long meditation on Pietro Grossi (1917-2002). It’s hardly Armaroli’s first release: music by the self-described “painter, concrete percussionist, fragmentary poet, and sound artist” has appeared on Leo Records, Hat Hut, Da Vinci Classics, and others, and he’s also played with figures such as Alvin Curran, Fritz Hauser, and Elliott Sharp. It’s not uncommon for Armaroli to augment his music presentations with video and painting, and the polymath has clearly found a kindred spirit in Grossi, an Italian composer, cellist, visual artist, electroacoustic researcher, computer music pioneer, and founder of the Studio of Phonology of Florence. In a lengthy five-part essay packaged with the release (issued in a 300-copy CD run), Armaroli cites the fertile foundation Goethe, Pythagoras, John Cage, and others created for Grossi’s own thoughts on harmony, balance, and the music-science relationship in general. Known for questioning accepted beliefs about musical authorship and personal artistic expression, Grossi, like the Pythagoreans, pondered whether music could be subjected to mathematical rules, whatever its long-standing resistance. The composer isn’t so much interested in answering the question, however, as encouraging the development of new perspectives. A Cage-like sensibility is exemplified in Grossi’s position (as articulated by Armaroli) that music made without musicians “is not a paradox but a real utopia of a music liberated from labour where listening becomes central.” […]