The intent is to underline the cathartic role of art and its foundational value in human society.
Cathar(c)tic is an audiovisual project born from a female collective, composed of: anthropologist documentary filmmaker Carla Fausti, pianist Elisabetta Marcolini, photographer performer Paola Linda Sabatti, and flutist Laura Trainini.
A sort of inner dance inspired by pieces such as
"Wild Riot of the Shaman’s Dreams" by Michael Colgrass, Milhaud's Sonatina, and Liebermann's Sonata.
Contributing to the sense of estrangement is the context of the quarry, an extraordinary combination of artificial and natural settings of marble caves in Botticino, Italy. The project arises from an emotional and expressive urgency post-pandemic.
With Cathar(c)tic, the aim is to evoke the cathartic role of art, expressed dually through sound and visuals.
This concept originates from the solo flute piece set in the Arctic, with the central theme of madness.
A parallel emerges between being "beyond" in the shamanic magical-ritual dimension and the sense of alienation provoked by the pandemic experience. However, the idea is that art, through the audiovisual experience, can serve as a cathartic element of expiation and liberation.
The three works presented are united by the common thread of asymmetry, eccentricity, and the unusual, which sometimes manifest as suggestions of sonic and inner desolations, sometimes as a temporal and harmonic suspension, and at other times as a subtle yet profoundly destabilizing deviation from formal norms.This element is explicitly declared by Colgrass in the preface to "Wild Riot of the Shaman’s Dreams", where this work for solo flute is described as the musical portrait of Kakumee, an Inuit shaman modeled after Farley Mowat's novel "People of the Deer," who goes insane in the desolation of the Canadian Far North.The use of contemporary techniques in this work contributes to the sonic depiction of the Arctic landscape, traversed by winds that make the expanses of ice whistle and tortured by the delirious screams of Kakumee: from the use of low-register flutter-tonguing to the shouted voice within the instrument, the entire work is built on a succession of highly evocative sound images of the vastness of the Arctic and the psychic desolation of the shaman who goes mad and ultimately dies here.
The other two works in the program, both for flute and piano, Milhaud's Sonatina and Liebermann's sonata, while not explicitly based on the musical description of any kind of madness, nevertheless express eccentric atmospheres in music far from serene lyricism, presenting instead a character of escape from form in favor of a convulsive and furious atmosphere at its extreme peaks, suspended and asymmetric in moments (though present) of lyricism.Milhaud's Sonatina, in this sense, is the perfect paradigm of the Dada style, of which the French composer is one of the most famous representatives. Mixing compositional techniques taken from different styles such as American jazz, the polyrhythms and polytonality of Brazilian music, the overall tone of this short but intense work perfectly translates the irrational and nonsensical imprint typical of Dadaist aesthetics into music.
The sonatina was composed in 1922, in the midst of the golden age of jazz (a genre to which it owes much), when Milhaud was at the forefront of the French avant-garde, alongside Cocteau and Honnegger. Although the form is classical (divided into three movements: Tendre, Souple, and Clair), numerous extra-European influences are traceable primarily in the rhythmic and harmonic language and in the organization of the constant dialogue between flute and piano.From the beginning, blues suggestions are evident, where for example in the first movement the sustained B natural and B sharp simultaneously suggest the effect of a "blue note." However, rhythmic asymmetry is the most notable feature of this Sonatina, manifested in the continuous overlapping of flute and piano melodic lines in an extremely irregular polyphonic geometry, complicated by frequent use of polyrhythms that disorient both the listener and the performers.Ironic accents are not lacking, for example in the conclusion of the third movement, where an accent shift between flute and piano translates into music a rhythmic joke that teases the audience's attention.
Liebermann's Sonata is also extremely balanced in terms of form. However, the use of exaggerated tempos in opposite senses of suspended slowness and furious rapidity suggests a contrast that is at least extravagant.The sonata, written in 1987, has two movements, the first in sonata form and the second in rondo form. The entire work stems from the juxtaposition of extreme rhythmic and dynamic elements that shape the melodic material. The contrast between the first movement, which opens with an extremely slow and suspended theme, and the second movement, characterized by a pounding and furious rhythm, creates a narrative path that guides the listener immediately. From a harmonic point of view, Liebermann's musical language blends tonalities, late Romantic expressiveness, and impressionistic use of color, often superimposing major and minor modes but maintaining clear tonal centers.The first movement explores the lyrical nature of the flute, which sings in pianissimo an intimate and eccentric melody that moves on extremely long phrases composed of extreme tessitura jumps. The second movement is instead a furious ride built on an obsessively pointed and staccatissimo rhythm that passes between the two instruments, along the entire instrumental tessitura, with frequent changes of meter that compress the energy until the final explosion of the coda.
Cathartic role of art, whitemarble
