DOI: 10.7256/2453-613X.2021.1.40474

Abstract: Italian composer Salvatore Sciarrino (born 1947), a philosopher and esthete whose music experimentalizes with audibility threshold, is one of the leaders of the vanguard music culture of the 20th and 21st centuries. The author’s artistic concept is developed within the framework of post-serial searching, which is defined as “music ecology” and the “ecology of listening.” Despite his music's wide recognition in Europe and the US, Sciarrino’s artistic work has received little analysis or study thus far. This is especially the case of his opera works, which draw the attention of the leading opera houses and become significant musical events. The topicality of this research is determined by the necessity to study the composer’s works and his philosophic and esthetic views in detail. Sciarrino’s experiments in the realm of music theatre are connected to the notion of azione invisible (“invisible action”), which is the focus of this article in the context of the composer’s artistic concept. The research subject of this study is Sciarrino’s opera Infinito Nero (1998). The research methodology is based on a complex approach that includes systematic, interpretational, musical, and analytical methods. Through an analysis of the libretto, dramaturgy, and its acoustic realization, the author uncovers the distinctive features of “invisible action” in Infinito Nero, including the lack of traditional plot development, the leveling of a visual component, the ambiguity of character identification, the vagueness of space and time, and the modeling of a sonorous environment in which the microscopic acoustic elements with ecological origins and their transformation become of primary importance. The concept of “invisible action” is defined by the dramaturgy of listening and the new mode of listener comprehension in which the visualization process of acoustic images plays a central role in understanding the meaning of everything that’s happening.  

DOI: 10.7256/2453-613X.2020.1.40328

Abstract: Italian composer Salvatore Sciarrino (born 1947), a philosopher and esthete whose music experimentalizes with audibility threshold, is one of the leaders of the vanguard music culture of the 20th and 21st centuries. The author’s artistic concept is developed within the framework of post-serial searching, which is defined as “music ecology” and the “ecology of listening.” Despite his music's wide recognition in Europe and the US, Sciarrino’s artistic work has received little analysis or study thus far. This is especially the case of his opera works, which draw the attention of the leading opera houses and become significant musical events. The topicality of this research is determined by the necessity to study the composer’s works and his philosophic and esthetic views in detail. Sciarrino’s experiments in the realm of music theatre are connected to the notion of azione invisible (“invisible action”), which is the focus of this article in the context of the composer’s artistic concept. The research subject of this study is Sciarrino’s opera Infinito Nero (1998). The research methodology is based on a complex approach that includes systematic, interpretational, musical, and analytical methods. Through an analysis of the libretto, dramaturgy, and its acoustic realization, the author uncovers the distinctive features of “invisible action” in Infinito Nero, including the lack of traditional plot development, the leveling of a visual component, the ambiguity of character identification, the vagueness of space and time, and the modeling of a sonorous environment in which the microscopic acoustic elements with ecological origins and their transformation become of primary importance. The concept of “invisible action” is defined by the dramaturgy of listening and the new mode of listener comprehension in which the visualization process of acoustic images plays a central role in understanding the meaning of everything that’s happening.