#Franco Evangelisti

[marcogiovenale]

commiato dal musicista antonello neri

Il commiato dal musicista Antonello Neri, scomparso il 28 maggio, si terrà domani, martedì 30 maggio alle ore 15 al tempietto egizio del Verano, dove sarà proiettato il documentario Antonello Neri, di suo figlio Federico Ayrton. Antonello Neri: Iren – ImprovvisAzioni vesuviane (29 maggio 2010) Konsequenz (KNZ012) Musica e pianoforte: Antonello Neri Fair…

[warendenkform]

Every Noise Has a Note

“Every Noise Has A Note”: New Music and Leftist Radicalism

by Felix Klopotek

I.

In the 1960s and 1970s, New Music underwent a political radicalization analogous to its process of musical radicalization. It was a leftist radicalization, owing much to the times, without being completely absorbed in them. The concern of composers in that moment was serious.

Young composers, colleagues or students of Karlheinz Stockhausen or John Cage in the 1950s, developed—partially in open dissociation from one another—models of music, or, more exactly, music making, which broached social themes, and which conceptualized sound as an expression of the social. It was a matter of Totality: they abandoned the concept of the composer in favor of collective, folk, improvisational, and non-musical methods of working. Which means nothing less than that they attempted their own self-negation and abolition.

Groups like the Scratch Orchestra and AMM, Musica Elettronica Viva, Gruppo die Improvisazzione Nuova Consonanza, and composers and meta-musicians such as Frederic Rzewski, Eddie Prévost, Keith Rowe, Cornelius Cardew, Franco Evangelisti, Christian Wolff, and Takehisa Kosugi reflected in their musical praxis the point of interaction between composition as an aesthetic expression of critique and utopia and the social, the direct societal field of class struggle. The precariousness of this interaction consisted of the fact that, in its ultimate ramifications, the musical should be absorbed by the social, which was no longer seen as something separate.

Compositional praxis, musical praxis period, should abolish and transcend [aufheben] itself. The premises that determined what one understood as composition or performance should be thwarted to the point where it would be possible to understand a musical praxis as genuinely social.

“Every noise has a note,” the statement of AMM-percussionist Eddie Prévost, something between a demand and an observation, expresses this: that noise, which in the sense of the educated, polite bourgeoisie is non-musical, has a regularity underlying it and thus like music can be traced back to a creative ordering principle, which implies a mediation between “noise” and “music,” between noise and note. The activation/generation and derivation of a noise are determined by social praxis. Environmental noises are not to be considered as separate from the social actors moving within this environment.

A consequence of this is the transcendence of the separation between performer (composer/musician) and listener. Looking back in retrospect at this period in the 1960s, when AMM first surfaced with this demand, Prévost writes: “It is a tribute to our early supportive audiences that they could respond to our work and reinforce the validity of our activity; these were immensely valuable responses given the newness and uncertainties which accompanied the music.”[1]

However, in the moment where the social and the conceptions of the composer are shown to be disinterested and the working class is not inspired to undertake the final conflict by the deconstruction of the classical concert situation, in the moment where the jump into reality remains absent and the separation between avant-garde and audience is confirmed and reproduced ad infinitum, the concept of the “composer,” which should have been transcended, becomes reified.

The very thing that this generation of composers opposed—for example, that Stockhausen’s once revolutionary technique had fossilized into an invocation of god and proved to be well-suited for a domination-affirming de-subjectivization in music and the cult of the genius in the culture industry—repeated itself in the instant when the grounding of a postulated unification of musical theory and social praxis failed.

As the aforementioned composers returned to a classical form of composing and the larger groups dissolved themselves or, like AMM, hibernated in an almost mythically idealized method of production, the movement disappeared, and with it, the overall idea of the collective. Herein lays the reason why this part of the history of the New Left—particularly in the New Left’s own consciousness itself—is completely lost.

Concomitant with this, the protagonists of this movement, who in the meantime became established composers, have engaged in a critical settling of accounts with their past (without making the “long march through the institutions” with the rest of the 1968 generation) without, however, broaching the issue in such a way as to make it communicable with regard to current debates.

II.

“Does group direction, or authority, depend on the strength of a leading personality, whose rise or fall is reflected in the projected image, or does the collation of a set of minds mean the development of another authority independent of all members but consisting of all of them?”

AMMMusic liner notes

As familiar as the implied egalitarian attitude might seem today, having been established through Free Jazz or politicized pop groups—collective methods of working were not originally on the agenda for the New Music of the 1950s.

In Europe, the highest priority was the composition of music organized on a sufficiently rational basis. This praxis took up the tradition of Schönberg, whose twelve-tone music ordered tonal pitches in rows, that is, rationally. Schönberg’s post-war followers, the Serialists, went one step further: all tonal dimensions, such as duration, volume, and timbre, were to be ordered in rows, with the intent of creating an “integral work of art.”

One early critic who recognized the streak of delusional fetishism and barely concealed affirmation of dominance in this pretense was Adorno: “With curiously infantile faith, the material is invested with the potential to create musical meaning of its own accord. Astrological trickery asserts itself as the relations of intervals according to which the twelve tones are ordered are cheerlessly worshiped as cosmic formulas. The self-constructed law of rows thus becomes a veritable fetish.” [2]

As if to confirm this, Stockhausen blustered about “tuning in to the cosmic whole.” The publishing organ of the Stockhausen circle, Die Reihe (sic!), celebrated the dehumanization and de-subjectification of music in favor of a cosmic order: “In fact, such music has a cosmic character. Lost in reverie, galactic distances removed from the subjective sphere of emotion; in the alienating, new, in many ways terrifying forms of this music, forms arise which are not merely superhuman, but extra-terrestrial.”[3]

In principle, the role of the composer is thus devalued. The composer merely executes the logic of an external principle. However, at the same time, the composer can still celebrate his own genius, which has been endowed by the cosmic order, to which Adorno responds: “An order which proclaims itself is nothing but a cover-up for chaos.”[4]

Thus, the attempt that began with Schönberg as a planned, rational structuring of musical material and an order no longer subject to the whims of nature, and which in the ideal situation represented a method of working not based upon the repressive, mediating logic of valorization consummated the dialectic of enlightenment. Order degenerated into a second nature. “Having thus barely escaped “total” domination (National Socialism [F.K.[5]), the younger generation submitted to the total imperative of the ‘integral work of art.’”[6]

On the other hand, the libertarian variants of the American avant-garde, the works of the New York School centered around John Cage, Morton Feldman, Earle Brown, and Christian Wolff, also did not aim for the liberation of the interpreter, nor for improvisation. However, instead of embarking as God’s prophet on a Serialist ascension to heaven, in these compositions the composer bid farewell in a more sublime and ironic manner.

The New Yorkers developed models of indeterminacy whose guiding principle, for all intents and purposes, was the question of how controlling fanaticism and the intention to domination over musical material could be transcended. They attempted aleatoric procedures based upon principles of chance, which limited the influence of the composer to the setting of a framework and initial conditions. Cage’s most famous piece, “4:33’,” which specifies the non-playing of instruments for this period of time, means nothing other than this: that in the moment, when no musical activity emanates from the musicians, noises, coughs in the audiences, noise from the street, and the creaking of chairs attain a level of meaning that was previously repressed or ignored.

Another compositional principle consisted of the working out of graphic notation, which suspended the intended tonal control parameters of classical notation in order to leave a greater freedom of space for interpretation. Alexander Calder’s mobiles were an important source of inspiration in this context.

This withdrawal of the concept of the composer nonetheless raised a question which was not originally considered by Cage or Feldman: that of the freedom of the interpreter. The disappearance of the composer in no way meant the exaltation of the performer—improvisation was strictly prohibited. The music itself was not to be understood as a social experiment.[7]

Nonetheless, the New York School had “created” a vacuum. Whereas this vacuum would remain unoccupied in Cage’s further activity, in the sense of a winking Zen Buddhism, the occupation of this vacuum seemed obvious from the perspective of the other side, that of the actors (interpreters, musicians, audience). That is, an understanding of environmental sound not only as an immanent broadening of the concept of music but predominantly as something created by humans.

It was already evident in the overcoming of Serialism through Indeterminacy, whose activist component was the early Fluxus movement at the beginning of the 1960s, that this was not an exclusively musical process.

The concerts and actions that took place from 1960-1962 in the atelier of Cologne artist Mary Bauermeister, and which also established the Fluxus movement in Germany, were Happenings, which were loaded with a subversive intent: “There was a clear trend which predominantly determined the selection of repertoire and hardly admitted the works of the Cologne school (the circle around Stockhausen [F.K.]) although the atelier series was closely connected with its composers. It was pieces such as Cage’s ‘Cartridge Music’ and ‘Water Music,’ Busotti’s ‘Pearson Piece,’ and Paik’s action pieces, which stood at the spiritual center of the series—pure live works, which were to be experienced with all of one’s senses, and of an inescapable presence. The specifically un-American aspect of the atelier concerts was the integration of the Cage circle’s ideas with massively socially critical, dialectically, and ideologically flanked European thought, specifically that of the Cologne avant-garde (meaning the authors and critics Hans G. Helms and Klaus-Heinz Metzger [F.K.]). Cage’s Zen-influenced, Confuscianist works were misinterpreted as socially critical, or laden with a new framework of ideas.”[8]

Be that as it may, the enthusiasm for Indeterminacy was met with an increasing ideology-critical sense of discontent with one’s own musical socialization by former Stockhausen adepts such as Cornelius Cardew and Franco Evangelisti.

III.

Decisive triggers for the final breakthrough of collectivism were the developments taking place in Jazz, which by the mid-1960s at the latest had aggregated into Free Jazz.

Up to that point, Jazz and New Music had existed in mutual exclusivity. It is true that there were efforts made within “Third Stream Jazz” to connect to the formal language of twelve-tone music, but this fusion proved to be hardly productive—despite all the elegant music that came out of it. The mediation seemed too superficial, the alternation between the music of Schönberg and Thelonious Monk too indecisive. From the side of the composers, one spoke only disparagingly of Jazz, if at all. Cage and Feldman rejected improvisational attitudes. When the Fluxus movement protested against Stockhausen’s 1964 New York visit—“The first cultural task is to publicly expose and FIGHT the domination of white, European-US ruling class art! (…) Stockhausen, patrician ‘Theorist’ of white supremacy: go to hell!”—the actions had also been motivated by Stockhausen’s discriminatory comments about Jazz (the authenticity of which however, has not yet been sufficiently proven).

With Free Jazz, improvised music entered a phase that left behind the classical Blues and song schemas as foundations for improvisation. No longer bound by fixed harmonic-melodic material, and dissolving 4/4 time into a multi-directional pulse, the Free Jazzers won their own entry into noise as an integrated part of playing. This act of production was practiced and thought of as a decisively group process—music-making as a social act was already realized. Free Jazz (re-)introduced collective improvisation into Jazz.

In 1965, Cardew, 29 years old and, after a few years as an assistant to Stockhausen, now a teacher himself, looked for a young, open-minded Jazz combo that was ready and willing to realize his masterpiece, “Treatise,” an extensive, openly-structured graphic composition which emphasized the role of the performer. One could no longer speak of mere “interpretation.” More important for Cardew than the question of what the performers would play was that of how they communicated with each other and how they could collectively realize the graphically set element. As opposed to his teacher, Cardew was not concerned with the sacredness of sound but rather with the difficult construction of an egalitarian form of social cooperation. In the 1960s, he could only imagine this within the medium of advanced sonic research.[9]

Cardew found his Jazz performers in the group AMM, in which, for example, the Pop-Art painter and guitarist Keith Rowe had decided to stop tuning his guitar and began to conceive of it as an entirely new instrument, laid out on a table and mauled by steel springs, files, rubber balls, or contact microphones. Among the curiosities of this period was that AMM had the same management as and played concerts with Pink Floyd and was able to release their first record on a major label.

Cardew was so swept away by his encounters with the group, for whom reflections about the meaning of music were just as important as playing it, that he became a member and an adherent of improvisational praxis. At the end of the 1960s he wrote an ethics of improvisation. Counted among the seven virtues that a musician could develop were simplicity, integrity, selflessness, tolerance, preparedness, identification with nature, and acceptance of death (Cardew was a Buddhist and would later become a Maoist).[10]

AMM’s improvisations during this period were a harsh, inexorable racket: the intent was to prohibit the ability to determine which instrument was the source of a particular sound. The group performed as a group—even if they emphasized the importance of individual voices in the process of sound generation, they played no role in the larger picture. The group performed in darkened spaces, the concerts lasted a number of hours and incorporated long periods of silence.

Cardew was not an individual case: Frederick Rzewski, like Cardew, a virtuoso pianist and one-time prodigy, founded Musica Elettronica Viva (MEV) with dissident colleagues Alvin Curran and Richard Teitelbaum. Here, as well, the broadening of the concept of music to include noise crossed-over with improvisation.

Franco Evangelisti stopped composing altogether and called into life the Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza. Ennio Morricone was present, along with Rzewski. The group Ongaku and later the Taj Mahal Travelers operated in Japan, with the violinist Takehisa Kosugi, an important Cage interpreter and Fluxus activist, playing in both groups.

The differences between the various groups consisted in their way of dealing with the concept of the “work.” Whereas AMM took a principally anti-institutional attitude and accused the other groups of belonging to the establishment, Nuova Consonanza rejected this as out-of-bounds: the music remained a composition, even if it was developed in an impromptu manner in which all musicians participated with equality. MEV, on the other hand, mutated into a nomadic commune and integrated their everyday identity into the group and its performances, in which the audience was a participant.

Frederick Rzewski would soon detach himself from the practice of direct improvisation and begin to write political works. The pieces “Coming Together” and “Attica” (both from 1971) had as their thematic material the massacre committed by New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller and New York State Police against the inmate uprising at the Attica prison complex. Along with recited letters from the prisoners, Rzewski develops a dense but nonetheless catchy tonal sound surface. The compositions have agitation as their intent, without completely dispensing with the experience of improvisation: the works are realized by Jazz performers and contain extensive improvisational passages. Rzewski’s most well-known composition is his thirty-six variations on the revolutionary Chilean song “The People United Will Never Be Defeated” (1978). This is a work that demands a high level of virtuosity from the performer because Rzewski designed the variations as more and more complicated and elevated permutations of the original folk music material in homage to the creativity of the masses.

IV.

On July 1st, 1969, the Scratch Orchestra was founded. It was initiated at the suggestion of Cornelius Cardew and a number of other composers and students of Cardew’s. The list of composers, who count today among England’s most prominent, is still impressive: Michael Nyman, John White, Gavin Bryars, Michael Parsons, Howard Skempton or Brian Eno. What was decisive, however, was that the group was oriented explicitly toward non-musicians.[11] In the Orchestra’s constitution—it was actually called that—among other things the following is written:

A Scratch Orchestra is a large number of enthusiasts pooling their resources (not primarily material resources) and assembling for action (music-making, performance, edification).

Note: The word music and its derivatives are here not understood to refer exclusively to sound and related phenomena (hearing, etc.). What they do refer to is flexible and depends entirely on the members of the Scratch Orchestra.

[…]

Popular Classics

Only such works as are familiar to several members are eligible for this category. Particles of the selected works will be gathered in Appendix 1. A particle could be: a page of score, a page or more of the part for one instrument or voice, a page of an arrangement, a thematic analysis, a gramophone record, etc. The technique of performance is as follows: a qualified member plays the given particle, while the remaining players join in as best they can, playing along, contributing whatever thev can recall of the work in question, filling the gaps of memory with improvised variational material.[12]

At the inaugural meeting in Autumn of 1968, seventy musicians and activists met. Cardew solved the problem of a democratic organization of such a large heterogeneous group by giving everyone present a date on which he or she could perform a concert according to their own criteria. In its first year of existence, the orchestra played over fifty concerts. No other group dealt so seriously in a consistent manner with all of the implications that the young composers had deduced from their experiences with Fluxus, Free Jazz, and Hippie-Marxism.

Roger Sutherland, who came into the group as a non-musician and is active today in the noise-improvisation group Morphogenesis, describes the performance of one of many scores:

The score was called “Anima Two” and simply instructed: “Carry out every action as slowly as possible.” Everyone in the Orchestra could realize that however they liked. One sat at the organ and played a single chord from Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D-Minor. He held the chord for the entire duration of the performance, as if it would last forever. I interpreted the score by going from one end of the stage to another, in unbelievably slow motion. I had practiced that for weeks. One could hardly see that I was moving. (…) Cornelius Cardew sat there like a statue with his cello case, and he began to open the case very slowly. He took two hours to do that. Those were all very quiet activities. The only thing one could hear continuously was the static organ chord. There were also a few other sounds, but the main effect was that fifty people carried out unbelievably slow actions, so that the impression arose that time had somehow been abolished.[13]

These days, one is touched by the energy and enthusiasm with which such a large group was together able to realize concepts that were just as obvious as they were completely unworldly. How did they find the time and money?

The members probably did not waste a single thought on the notion that such concepts at some point would congeal into methods. The group broke up a few years later, but not because the composers wanted to impose their educated bourgeois claims against the non-musicians. Looking back, Roger Sutherland comments upon the creeping disintegration:

What happened was rather unexpected. Around 1971, Cornelius Cardew and a few others, particularly Keith Rowe and (the pianist [F.K.]) John Tilbury began bringing ideological and political texts and reading them aloud for hours on end. We all didn’t like that. That alienated the people who weren’t interested in politics. Cardew was about to convert to a sort of Chinese socialism. He thought that the most important tasks were political revolution and socialism. If musicians wouldn’t subordinate themselves to that, then they were counter-revolutionaries. That was rather primitive logic. Music, regardless by whom, whether by Cage, Stockhausen, or Cardew himself, that didn’t express a socialist ideology, and very emphatically, and which furthermore was capable of convincing people about socialism, he considered reactionary, negative, and so on and had to be rejected. And Cardew did the unbelievable thing of rejecting all of his previous work. He began writing songs and piano pieces that were transcriptions of Irish or Chinese revolutionary songs. With regard to harmony and rhythm, they were very simply constructed. The discussions about the function of music, whether music was political or not, split the orchestra. What happened, for example, was that we were now supposed to suddenly learn how to play instruments conventionally. There were even classes where one received instruction in rhythm or playing violin. I didn’t join the Scratch Orchestra for that. I wanted to experiment with sound, not play conventional music. I could have done that somewhere else.[14]

In 1974, the activity of the Scratch Orchestra petered out for good.

AMM also split. The quartet actually managed to disintegrate into an anarchist wing with Eddie Prévost and the saxophonist Lou Gare, and a Maoist one consisting of Rowe and Cardew. They still went on a tour of Europe together in 1973 but performed separately. Rowe and Cardew played noisy improvisations to songs and news broadcasts from Radio Tirana (!), which were supposed to reflect the alienation of the proletariat in everyday factory life. This was a bittersweet example of the decline of both the protest movement and the at one time so advanced musical praxis. Only in the late 1970s did AMM form as a united group once again.

Back to the Scratch Orchestra: the process of democratization was supposed to lead to the construction of a musical cadre party. That failed. Cardew, who in a dramatic essay accused his teacher Stockhausen of imperialism and was not above castigating himself for his earlier enthusiasm for Cage, also drew practical consequences. As a member of a British New Communist group, he provided musical accompaniment at demonstrations, agitated on picket lines, etc. When he became composer in residence of the Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin in 1973, he distributed leaflets against the Künstlerhaus and advocated instead for establishing a children’s polyclinic in its place.

In 1981, Cardew was fatally wounded in a traffic accident that was never solved. From the middle of the 1970s on, he played individual “secret concerts” with AMM, unannounced concerts under fake names. Cardew had, according to Keith Rowe, never given up his passion for the avant-garde

No recordings of the Scratch Orchestra are available today.[15]

V.

The politicization of new music failed due to its own radical standards. The social question took such a central place within the musical activity that the absence of the supposed logical consequence (revolution) robbed the music of its foundation. It became obsolete, entangled in ludicrous battles (Scratch Orchestra, AMM), or became kitschy (not dissimilar to current, silly Stockhausen performances).

What remains is the high level of engagement with the material. Precisely in the ruthless thematization and incorporation of the social field, which did not occur at the expense of the music,[16] there could be a path that leads beyond the dichotomy of music as social effect vs. music as technique. There’s a difference between understanding music in a truncated way as derived from concrete social circumstances or, as those composers did (of course failing to recognize their own privileged backgrounds) as a genuine social praxis.

It’s just as interesting to observe how the composers and musicians have engaged with their own survival. As a consequence of failure, AMM (namely Eddie Prévost) has conceived a “meta-music” intended to make getting through the winter possible.[17]

Every utterance, rustle and nuance is pregnant with meaning. To make a meta-music is to hypothesize, to test every sound. To let a sound escape unnoticed before coming to know what it represents or can do is carelessness. Each aural emission can be unlocked to show its origins and intentions. […] If humanization is our ultimate goal, “art for art’s sake” can only be justified as a tactical withdrawal. No sound is innocent—musicians are therefore guilty if they collude with any degeneration or demoralization of music.[18]

Just as before, the point is to decode sounds as social events and thus integrate them consciously into a social nexus. This consists, however, in the music-making collective itself—for lack of a real correspondence. “Meta-music” is music that reflects upon its own concrete conditions of emergence, through itself as a medium. A perpetuum mobile. “The reason for playing is to find out what I want to play.”[19] Any form of fixed pre-determination is forbidden: “Organizing sound limits it potential.” The music can only be realized as a spontaneous, common effort.

The concept of the social is only expressed through music—regardless of how emphatically AMM stresses this linkage, it no longer manages to become an expression that constitutes community, which is just the logical conclusion of the 1960s. Back then, improvisation, as an idea and as praxis, was taken as surface for the projection of universal utopias. The egalitarian collective of players anticipates an egalitarian society. Eddie Prévost probably wouldn’t assert anything else, ultimately; however, his own praxis is wiser, because it is the constant critical interrogation of one’s own activity, and thus it works out a set of rules that can only be applied to one’s own music.

As a listener, one can deduce what one wishes from that. These days, AMM, who no longer play as loud as they used to, but are just as breathtakingly lost in reverie, are celebrated as pioneers of industrial and ambient music, and there’s no trace of their former Maoism.

All deductions are one thing; the music is another. As improvised music, it remains fleeting, in principle unpredictable, without giving up its obligation to the movement in which it’s played and—beyond this—to the collective.

Thus, the subversive potential in the music has withdrawn into a theory that, because it is identical with its praxis, is hard to decode, utterly ensnared in its own decades-spanning history. As I said, very little remains for practical application.

But in contrast to thirty years ago, AMM would welcome this state of affairs.

[1] From the liner notes to the first AMM LP, AMMMusic, issued in 1966 and still available as a CD (Recommended Recordings). Prévost continues: “An AMM performance has no beginning or ending. Sounds outside the performance are distinguished from it only by individual sensibility.” AMMMusic is such a statement: the group does not play improvised music, or New Music (thus fulfilling no genre criteria), but rather music that develops the criteria for its own verifiability and transparency from within itself.

[2] Theodor W. Adorno, Philosophie der Neuen Musik, Suhrkamp: Frankfurt, 1958 (107).

[3] Quoted in Gottfried Eberle, “Neue Musik in Westdeutschland nach 1945” in Heister, Hanns-Werner and Dietrich Stern: Musik der 50er Jahren, Argument-Sonderband AS 42, Hamburg 1980 (47). Hanns Eisler also formulated a trenchant critique, writing, with regard to Stockhausen’s composition “Gesang der Jünglinge” (1953): “Stockhausen for example has created an electronic—or whatever you call it—piece of music over many years, after the section of the Bible, “Three Men in a Furnace.” In Luther’s translation, this Bible passage is a delightful piece linguistically, a report of prehistoric resistance. What does Stockhausen turn it into? The text is made intentionally inscrutable through manipulation of the tape, and thus the actual social meaning of this Bible passage is swept away. What remains is: ‘Great God, we praise you.’ It’s as if the musical squad of the ‘Königin Luise’ club were brought into the next village church by means of rocket aircraft” (quoted in Heister and Stern 78)

[4] Adorno, Philosophie der Neuen Musik 6

[5] [In various quotes used in the original German version of this text, Klopotek inserted brief parenthetical comments. These are denoted in the present translation by his initials in square brackets: [F.K.]—Tr.]

[6] Eberle, “Neue Musik in Westdeutschland nach 1945.”

[7] However, in this tradition there are also unmistakable, but very intricately rendered political statements. “King of Denmark,” a composition by Feldman from 1964 for solo percussion, demands extreme sensitivity towards the instrument on the part of the performer. The performer is not allowed to use mallets and can only work with his or her hands, arms, etc. This very quiet piece of music (standing in demonstrative contrast to rather loud percussion music) is an homage to the Danish king Christian X., under whose rule the Jewish population of Denmark was saved from the Wehrmacht by being evacuated to Sweden, and who publicly wore a yellow star as a sign of solidarity.

[8] Robert von Zahn, “Refüsierte Klänge. Musik im Atelier Bauermeister,” in Das Atelier Mary Bauermeister in Köln 1960-1962 (117). This volume provides a rather complete picture of the primordial soup of the cultural Left, which includes everyone from Adorno to Cardew, Bauermeister herself, Stockhausen, Jam June Paik, LaMonte Young, Klaus-Heinz Metzger, and Hans G. Helms.

[9] A performance claiming to be complete can be found on Cornelius Cardew’s Treatise album on the Swiss HatArt label.

[10] Peter Niklas Wilson Hear and Now: Gedanken zur improvisierten Musik, Wolke Verlag: Hofheim, 1999 (11).

[11] The American composer Christian Wolff—son of the legendary publisher Kurt Wolff, who emigrated with his family to the USA in the 1930s, where Christian, having just turned 16, met John Cage and joined his “school”—began to compose for non-musicians. The score of Stones (1968) consists exclusively of a poem, which in a few lines provides instructions on how sounds can be created with stones: “Make sounds with stones, draw sounds out of stones, / using a number of sizes (and colours); / for the most part discretely; sometimes in rapid / sequences. For the most part striking stones with / stones, but also stones on other surfaces (inside / the open head of a drum, for instance) or other than / struck (bowed, for instance, or amplified). Do not / break anything.” (From Prose Collection 1968-74). Interestingly enough, at the same time Cardew was also working on a piece, The Great Learning, that also contained (improvisational) passages played exclusively with stones. Concerning Wolff’s series of compositions Excercises, the performer Eberhard Blum writes: “For the performers, the point of orientation is the act of playing in unison, but they are free to decide about tempo, dynamics, articulation, the manner of playing, and the length of pauses, as well as, at any time, whether or not they want to play, i.e., about instrumentation. All of that is decided in the course of the performance, meaning that all of these aspects of the performance are improvised, other than the fact that playing in unison, regardless of how far it might be, is always a point of orientation to which a player must return when straying too far. In other words: every performer is free to the extent that he or she succeeds in time in acquiring the agreement of others for his or her own special manner of performance.” (liner notes to: Excercises 1973-1975, hat ART CD) In his work, Wolff contrasts “parliamentary participation,” which allows interpreters to be free in shaping the reduced compositional instructions, to the “monarchical authority” of the composer, which he wants to see abolished.

[12] Cornelius Cardew, “A Scratch Orchestra: Draft Constitution,” The Musical Times 110:1516, 125th Anniversary Issue (Jun. 1969): 617-619

[13] Quoted in Hanno Ehrler: Radikale Demokratie: Das Londoner Scratch-Orchestra in Musiktexte 75 (August 1998): 52.

[14] Quoted in Ehrler, p. 57

[15] At least, no authorized ones. An unwritten Scratch law states that issuing a record requires the approval of all living members of the group. That will never be the case—that’s at least one point on which the still-divided Scratchers agree (even disregarding the aesthetic implications of issuing a record—what does it mean to choose one concert, and not another, from the mass of recorded material—there are also legal issues: who gets the royalties? Ultimately, the works of the Scratch Orchestra and its composers are regarded by the (copyright) collecting societies as classical music, and the respective royalty payments to individuals—group and collective compositions hardly count at all—might be correspondingly high. Nonetheless, in the year 2000 the California label Organ of Corti issued the CD Cornelius Cardew/The Scratch Orchestra: The Great Learning. It was a reissue of an album that was released in 1971 on the classical label Deutsche Grammophon. The Great Learning, a reference to the classical Confucian canon, is a vocal work consisting of seven paragraphs. In each paragraph, a section of the Confucian canon is declared. The composition, which Cardew worked on between 1968 and 1970—three paragraphs were finished before the group was founded, so they cannot be identified with the praxis of the Scratch Orchestra, even if he dedicated them to the group—is regarded, along with Treatise, as Cardew’s masterpiece. However, The Great Learning is not exemplary of the work of the Scratch Orchestra. In that sense, the reissue, supplemented by a performance of the first paragraph from the year 1982, is more of a Cardew CD than a Scratch one.

[16] Even in cases where the music retreated into the background, as with Cardew, it was a radical step. He did not water down his avant-garde compositions with tonal elements but rather devoted himself completely to simple workers’ songs.

[17] Edwin Prévost, No Sound is Innocent: AMM and the Practice of Self-Invention, Meta-musical narratives, Essays. Essex: Copula, 1995. If one is not further disturbed by its pathos, this book can be recommended as an introduction full of rich material

[18] Ibid., 33f. Prévost has adopted this moralism from Cardew.

[19] From the liner notes to AMMMusic

[odedmusic]

Franco Evangelisti ~ Random or Not Random

#OdedFriedGaon #OdedMusic

[delectablywaywardbeard-blog]

Festival Nuova Consonanza, concerto finale il 22 dicembre

L’ultimo concerto del Festival di Nuova Consonanza vedrà in scena a Roma, come è ormai consuetudine, i finalisti della 25/ma edizione del Concorso di composizione Franco Evangelisti. L’appuntamento è per il 22 dicembre alle 21 al Mattatoio-La Pelanda con il Quartetto Indaco che esegue le tre partiture finaliste affiancandole a brani di riferimento della letteratura quartettistica contemporanea,…

[lamilanomagazine]

Mantova: in piazza Virgiliana l’ultimo appuntamento di Festa di piazze martedì 22 agosto alle 21

Mantova: in piazza Virgiliana l’ultimo appuntamento di Festa di piazze martedì 22 agosto alle 21. Torna Festa di piazze, la rassegna è ormai giunta all’ultimo appuntamento. L’evento è martedì 22 agosto alle 21. La serata di danza, musica, teatro e intrattenimento è organizzata dall’associazione Amici di Palazzo Te e dei Musei Mantovani, con il contributo e il supporto del Comune di Mantova, e, da quest'anno, anche di Confartigianato. Si parte con Cod Danza che manda in scena “Chagall”. Lo spettacolo è un omaggio alla sua arte. Lo spettacolo è un ponte tra realtà e fantasia, un luogo dove uomini e animali vivono insieme sotto una grande luna, come al momento della creazione. Chagall è il pittore dell’unità degli opposti, dell’unità dell’amore, e la danza contribuisce a enfatizzare lo splendore di questo suo respiro. La coreografia e la regia è di Chiara Olivieri. Gli elementi scenici sono curati da Pietro Mattioli. La durata è di 40 minuti circa. Subito dopo si potrà assistere al teatro di Ars Creazione e Spettacolo con “Brodbeck Mountain”. L’interpretazione riguarderà i segreti di Brokeback Mountain di Annie Proulx, tratto dalla raccolta di racconti "Distanza ravvicinata", proposto in formato reading. Gli interpreti sono Adriano Evangelisti e Raffaele Latagliata. Drumless: Palmieri, Cocconi, Caniato, Capiluppi. Questa formazione (che vede al sax tenore Igor Palmieri, alla tromba Franco Capiluppi mentre Stefano Caniato e Marco Cocconi sono rispettivamente al pianoforte e al basso elettrico) si rifà al grande trombettista Chet Baker. Il famoso musicista ha spesso suonato in gruppi privi del supporto della batteria, accompagnato dal basso e dal pianoforte. Questa particolare soluzione esprime una sonorità unica e molto intima, permettendo all'ascoltatore di cogliere ogni più piccola sfumatura degli strumenti impiegati. La scelta dei brani, operazione non facile vista la grande vastità del repertorio eseguito da Chet, copre sinteticamente tutto il periodo della sua attività, dagli anni '50 sino agli anni '80. I componenti sono Igor Palmieri (sax), Franco Capiluppi (tromba), Stefano Caniato (piano) e Marco Cocconi (basso elettrico). Info: tel. + 39 340 6501380.... #notizie #news #breakingnews #cronaca #politica #eventi #sport #moda Read the full article

[messinacalcio]

Il Messina pareggia a Taranto e disputerà i play-out con Gelbison - VIDEO

https://www.messinacalcio.org/video22-23/38-Taranto-Messina0-0.mp4 Nemmeno l’aver infranto dopo oltre un anno il tabù del rigore ha permesso al Messina di vincere una partita fondamentale contro il Taranto, che avrebbe permesso ai biancoscudati di evitare i play-out. Il Messina è sceso in campo spaventato ha subito gli affondi del Taranto che ha colpito tre pali e traverse ed in più occasioni ha sfiorato il gol del vantaggio. Il Messina poteva segnare alla mezz’ora dl primo tempo quando l’arbitro De Angeli ha assegnato dopo oltre 70 partite un penalty per un fallo di mano di un calciatore del Taranto, ma il tedesco Kragl praticamente passa il pallone a Vannucchi e spreca l’occasione. Solo nel finale il Messina tenta un arrembaggio disordinato che non porta a nulle se non a tante recriminazioni per quello che si poteva fare non solo in questa patia, ma nel finale sciagurato di stagione. Il Messina termina il campionato al diciassettesimo posto ed affronterà nell’unico play-out che verrà disputato sabato 6 maggio fuori casa e il 13 maggio al Franco Scoglio la Gelbison. Si spera che in questo periodo di tempo riacciufferà la giusta condizione psichica e atletica per raggiungere questa sofferta salvezza. Tabellino: Taranto-Messina 0-0 Taranto: Vannucchi, Ferrara, Antonini, Provenzano, Bifulco (71' Nocciolini), Mazza (76' Semprini), Evangelisti (76' Sciacca), Formiconi, Mastromonaco, Tommasini, Romano (60' Labriola). A disposizione: Loliva, Caputo, Manetta, Fontana, Citarella, Colurciello, Rossetti, Finocchi, Canalicchio. Allenatore: Capuano. Messina: Fumagalli, Baldè (46' Ferrara), Marino R. (62' Iannone), Berto, Fofana (46' Mallamo) (68' Konate), Balde, Ferrini, Celesia, Fiorani, Perez, Kragl (62' Grillo). A disposizione: Lewandowski, Zuppel, Trasciani, Salvo, Marino G., Ragusa, Ortisi. Allenatore: Raciti. Arbitro: De Angeli di Milano. Read the full article

[garadinervi]

Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza, Musica su schemi, CRSLP 6109, «nova musicha» 9, Cramps Records, 1976 [Fondazione Bonotto, Molvena (VI)]

[ozkar-krapo]

GRUPPO D'IMPROVVISAZIONE NUOVA CONSONANZA

"Niente"

(LP. The Omni Recording Corporation / The Roundtable. 2012 / rec. 1971) [IT]

[burlveneer-music]

Lorenzo Morresi & Tenderlonious - new album inspired by classic Italian jazz-funk and library music!

In the late 1960s and early 1970s Italian soundtrack and library music went through its most experimental, prolific and dazzling period having a strong radio presence in both Europe and the US. Musicians and composers such as Piero Umiliani, Amleto Armando Roelens and even Ennio Morricone - with his side project Gruppo Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza lead by Franco Evangelisti - were regularly experimenting with idiosyncratic combinations of jazz, electronic, progressive, disco, funk and psych genres. Some of their output from this period was wonderfully joyful, atmospheric, ironic and erotic, with it’s treasures only now being discovered by the most dedicated of diggers and enthusiasts. It was their mutual love of these 60s and 70s soundtracks that brought Lorenzo Morresi and Tenderlonious together. After performing alongside each other at a festival in Italy back in 2017 they quickly bonded over a shared love of Jay Richford and Gary Steven’s album ‘Feelings’ - which, in reality, is the Italian duo Brugnolini and Torossi - as they both owned the Schema repressed vinyl version. The idea was quickly conceived to put together a fresh take starting with that early 1970s Italian style, using contemporary analogue inspired arrangements combined with experimental and joyful 'tongue-in-cheek' sounds that could work on the dance floor as well as at home. The album is mainly in the territories of Italo jazz funk and the aforementioned Italian library sound. Some tracks like ‘Nuda Sorgente’, ‘Doppio Sogno’ and ‘Estate’ are also club oriented with a musical crossover from old-to-new. ‘Estate’ is a cover from the classic jazz standard by Italian singer Bruno Martino. "With this project we’ve done our best to deliver our own interpretation of this wonderful era of Italian music and rediscover a beautiful genre, whilst maintaining a strong respect and admiration for the sounds that those original Italian masters created. Their records impressed and inspired us and we hope it will be the same for our listeners today." LORENZO MORRESI; GUITARS, BASS, ROLAND JUNO-60, YAMAHA MR10, CYCLONE TT-303 TENDERLONIOUS; FLUTES, SAXOPHONES, VOCALS, YAMAHA DX7, OBERHEIM MATRIX-1000, PERCUSSION ARCHELAO MACRILLO; DRUMS EMILIO MERONE; KEYBOARDS

[chez-mimich]

ENNIO

Quando si va al cinema, solitamente, si va per vedere un film. Non è così se si va a vedere “Ennio”, bellissimo film-documentario di Giuseppe Tornatore sulla vita, ma soprattutto sull’opera di Ennio Morricone. In questo caso si va a vedere non solo “un” film, ma una buona parte del cinema italiano dal dopoguerra ad oggi. Questo grazie alla straordinaria figura e, per una volta l’aggettivo non è usato a sproposito, di Ennio Morricone e la sua intensa collaborazione con buona parte dei grandi registi italiani e non solo. Il film di Tornatore indaga a fondo sul rapporto tra regista ed autore della colonna sonora, e più in generale il rapporto musica-film e lo fa attraverso la testimonianza appassionata ed approfondita del grande compositore romano. Morricone ricorda gli albori del suo rapporto con la musica, quando il padre lo costrinse allo studio della tromba che gli consentì di aiutare anche economicamente la famiglia. Dallo studio della tromba, ed in maniera inconsueta, Morricone, sotto l’egida di Goffredo Petrassi, ebbe accesso al corso di composizione del Conservatorio di Santa Cecilia a Roma. Ed è proprio l’intenso rapporto dialettico ed anche il conflitto ideale con Goffredo Petrassi a segnare nell’intimo tutta la sua carriera. È con Ennio Morricone che la colonna sonora, diventa un vero linguaggio narrativo, certamente in simbiosi con l’immagine cinematografica, ma anche semanticamente autonomo. Ed è proprio su questi temi che il confronto con il Maestro Petrassi, fu quantomai intenso ed aspro. Morricone componeva colonne sonore, come un musicista classico componeva una sinfonia, non dimenticando che Morricone veniva proprio dal mondo della composizione e della sperimentazione più ardita, quale fu quella del gruppo di Darmstadt e di “Nuova Consonanza” fondato da Franco Evangelisti. Una personalità poliedrica che fu capace di passare dagli arrangiamenti per la musica leggera (Gino Paoli, Gianni Morandi, Mina, Edoardo Vianello e tanti altri), alla musica sinfonica, sempre con una qualità pressoché inarrivabile che lo portò in seguito a lavorare al fianco di registi, compositori e sceneggiatori quali Bernardo Bertolucci, Sergio Leone, Gillo Pontecorvo, Elio Petri, Pierpaolo Pasolini, i fratelli Taviani, Nicola Piovani e Carlo Verdone, Clint Eastwood, Hans Zimmer, Oliver Stone, Quentin Tarantino e Bruce Springsteen, solo per citarne alcuni. Nel film di Tornatore le parole di Morricone vanno a ricostruire con maniacale precisione la genesi di molte delle più famose colonne sonore del cinema italiano e statunitense, una appassionante narrazione di filologia musicale che a tratti lascia esterefatti. La grande capacità tecnica non sarebbe però sufficiente a definire questo grandioso ed eclettico musicista, senza l’ingrediente fondamentale per ogni creazione artistica: la passione. Non sono rare le sequenze del film dove Ennio Morricone è in preda alla commozione che è molto, molto vicina a quella “trance creativa” senza la quale ogni arte sarebbe solo téchne. Un magnifico documentario su un compositore che ha scritto pagine indimenticabili anche per la storia del cinema.

[myrecordcollections]

“Music especially created for films, television, radio, publicity and industrial use”. The disclaimer coming with these two records – "Here And Now 1 & 2" – puts a smile on our lips and brings us back to more culturally innocent and naive times. A quick listen is enough to realize that this is top quality material (even if often hidden behind weird and mysterious titles), which can’t be compared to anything released in recent times. Paolo Renosto, the person behind the moniker Lesiman and the author of these two albums, was a composer, an experimenter, a music teacher and a piano player – an artist with the amazing skill of mixing together pop(ular) atmospheres and learned quotes. Born in Florence in 1935 (he died in Reggio Calabria in 1988), Renosto studied with Luigi Dallapiccola and Bruno Maderna; he also was a member of the Associazione Nuova Consonanza of Roma. He obviously joined, for some time, the renowned Gruppo d’Improvvisazione, with Franco Evangelisti and Domenico Guaccero. When he started collaborating with RAI, he began working in the field of sound dubbing – which he contributed to radically change, mixing different influences such as jazz and orchestral music to create music for tv shows. His long artistic career developed around many partnerships, following different paths, always in complete freedom: Renosto worked for theatre, but also wrote – with his friend and colleague Ennio Morricone – wonderful movie soundtracks. Like the one used for the cult horror movie Un angelo per Satana (directed by Camillo Mastrocinque in 1966) or that of Irene, Irene (directed by Peter Del Monte); but he also worked – almost anonymously – on many western and “poliziotteschi” movies. Then, and we’re talking about the two amazing albums you’re holding in your hands right now, Renosto/Lesiman created many high profile sound dubbings which are now very rare collector items. Besides the Here And Now series, devoted to funk and criminal-jazz, Lesiman recorded other gems deserving to be rediscovered, like High Tension (another series) for the iconic Vedette label. It’s hard to choose one of these two reissued volumes: they create some kind of unique body of work and they’re best enjoyed as a whole. In volume one you can find one of the most famous tracks of his career in sound dubbing – the hypnotic and contemporary sounding Moto centripeto – but also other brilliant compositions such as Bagliori, Via nell’autunno, Le regole del gioco and Segni cromatici. Volume two, on the other hand, features the famous Playcar – which was sampled by rapper Fabri Fibra – with its swing and lounge mood; but also Permanenza, Controcorrente, Ciclo interrotto and Cristalli.

[marcogiovenale]

"nuova consonanza": nuova uscita su vinile del disco del 1975

“nuova consonanza”: nuova uscita su vinile del disco del 1975

Sandro Ricaldone GRUPPO D’IMPROVVISAZIONE NUOVA CONSONANZA Il gruppo durante la registrazione di “Musica su schemi”, 1975 [cliccare per ingrandire]Giancarlo Schiaffini, Antonello Neri, Giovanni Piazza, Ennio Morricone, Egisto Macchi e Franco Evangelisti. Foto di Roberto Masotti Il Gruppo di Improvvisazione “Nuova Consonanza” è stata una formazione attiva tra il 1964 e il 1980, dedita alla…

[meravigliedappertutto]

Franco Evangelisti / Heinz Holliger "Die Schachtel / Der Magische Tänzer"

[levysoft]

CHIESA APOSTATA

L’ascesa al potere di molti dittatori, o aspiranti tali, non sarebbe potuta avvenire senza il supporto e l’avallo, spesso entusiasta, di importanti esponenti della Chiesa. Se vi sono stati sempre, e ci saranno, preti coraggiosi che pagheranno con l’emarginazione, la persecuzione e anche con la vita, la denuncia della prostituzione della Chiesa al potente di turno,è innegabile che gran parte della gerarchia ecclesiastica è andata senza alcun imbarazzo sottobraccio con i dittatori e ha sempre benedetto e guardato di buon occhio quei politici che garantiscono la salvaguardia della triade Dio-Patria-Famiglia. E non importa, se per farlo, manipoleranno e calpesteranno il messaggio di Gesù, e limiteranno o soffocheranno ogni libertà. Per questi ecclesiastici, fiancheggiatori di prepotenti, il vangelo è solo un libro da incensare nelle liturgie, così come per i potenti è un mero specchio per allodole da sbandierare nei comizi, come un burattinaio con i suoi pupazzi, senza che il messaggio di Gesù abbia minimamente influito nelle loro vite, o che vedano una contraddizione tra i valori da essi strenuamente difesi e la loro condotta.

È triste e imbarazzante dover ammettere che, nella tragica storia del cattolicesimo, la Chiesa è stata connivente, o addirittura benedicente complice di ogni dittatura e, solo per restare alla storia più recente, basta ricordare quella di Mussolini, “l’uomo della Provvidenza”, quella del cattolicissimo Franco, “Caudillo de España por la gracia de Dios”, e del tanto pio, quanto feroce, Salazar, ex seminarista portoghese, fervente sostenitore della Madonna di Fatima, sino agli squallidi replicanti odierni, cinici difensori a oltranza della tradizione e dei sani valori del passato.

A che si deve l’attrazione irresistibile della Chiesa per ogni forma di dittatura? Perché la Chiesa, che dovrebbe essere espressione di una comunità profetica animata dallo Spirito e la sentinella della società, che per prima lancia segnali d’allarme al nascere dei nuovi dittatori, li coccola, li sostiene, e li protegge? La gerarchia religiosa, consapevole della fragilità e inconsistenza della dottrina che vuole imporre ai fedeli, fa sì che essa, per sopperire alla propria debolezza, senta la necessità di allearsi con i detentori del potere, ricorrendo spesso all’uomo forte, quello dai modi spicci e dal linguaggio rozzo. Pur di costringere i fedeli a ubbidire ai divini voleri, molta parte della gerarchia è così disposta a sostenere apertamente o velatamente quelle forze politiche che si presentano come salvatrici della Patria, della Famiglia, e della Religione, in una sorta di tacito diabolico patto, dove il potere religioso sostiene e nel contempo ha bisogno di essere supportato da quello politico. Ma questo scellerato comportamento, tanto antico quanto tragico, ha un nome che, paradossalmente, è nato proprio nella Chiesa: apostasia, il ripudio della propria fede, tradimento del proprio credo che si trasforma in inganno in quanto questi ecclesiastici, pur essendo apostati, mantengono intatto tutto il loro apparato esteriore, diventando vuoti simulacri, manichini di paramenti luccicanti che nascondono il nulla, se non qualcosa di peggio, “sepolcri imbiancati” di evangelica memoria, dai quali Gesù invitava a stare alla larga, in quanto “all’esterno appaiono belli, ma dentro sono pieni di ossa di morti e di ogni marciume” (Mt 23,27).

Come è possibile che proprio i rappresentanti della religione, quelli che pretendono di essere investiti da un mandato divino, siano poi i primi a tradire il loro Signore per vendersi al signorotto di turno? Nei vangeli ci sono pagine tanto drammatiche quanto attuali sull’apostasia, che nasce dal confronto tra da due poteri, quello politico, rappresentato da Pilato, e quello religioso, raffigurato dai sommi sacerdoti (Gv 19; Mt 27). Devono decidere le sorti di quello che entrambi sanno essere un innocente, Gesù. Pilato è ormai deciso a liberarlo, non vede in lui alcun pericolo per l’Impero e comprende che l’accusa che i capi religiosi rivolgono a Gesù, di essere un malfattore che pretende farsi re, è solo un pretesto. Anche i sommi sacerdoti sanno che non era vero il motivo della pericolosità di una regalità di Gesù. Il pericolo per l’istituzione religiosa, da essi sostenuta e rappresentata, è che con Gesù Dio comunica e si manifesta direttamente nell’uomo, senza alcun bisogno delle mediazioni create dall’istituzione religiosa, dal tempio al culto, dal sacerdozio alla Legge…

Di fronte al Procuratore romano, i capi religiosi, pur di riuscire nel loro intento di eliminare Gesù, giocano la loro ultima carta, quella del ricatto. Sanno che Pilato è un uomo frustrato. Sognava chissà quale carriera a Roma ed era, invece, finito nella lontana e sperduta Giudea, con l’unico titolo di “Cavaliere”: “Se liberi costui, non sei amico di Cesare! Chiunque infatti si fa re si mette contro Cesare” (Gv 19,12). “Amico del Cesare” [Amicus Cesaris] non era un semplice attestato di amicizia con l’imperatore, ma un ambito titolo onorifico concesso da Tiberio alla ristretta cerchia dei suoi intimi ed era quel che permetteva di salire nei suoi favori. Pilato, che è chiamato a scegliere tra la vita di un innocente e la propria carriera, fa un ultimo tentativo, chiedendo ai capi religiosi se deve crocifiggere il loro re (Gv 19,15). I sommi sacerdoti, che sono chiamati a scegliere tra Gesù e la fine del sistema religioso messo in pericolo dalla sua predicazione, senza esitare fanno la loro scelta, affermando di non avere “altro re all’infuori di Cesare” (Gv 19,15). Al re dei giudei, i capi religiosi preferiscono il re romano, al liberatore il dominatore. Per i detentori del potere religioso è meglio un dominio oppressore, che permetta però di giustificare la loro oppressione sul popolo, che il Dio liberatore. Quelli che pretendevano essere gli unici rappresentanti di Dio, sono in realtà quelli che lo tradiscono. E Pilato cede e lo consegna a loro “perché fosse crocifisso” (Gv 19,16).

Nel vangelo di Matteo, i capi religiosi si rivolgono a Pilato chiamandolo Signore (gr. Kyrie): non riconoscendo in Gesù, “Dio con noi” (Mt 1,23),  il Signore, sono costretti a rivolgersi con questo appellativo al dominatore romano. L’apostasia è consumata: Gesù è un impostore e Pilato il loro Signore. La denuncia degli evangelisti è molto severa: questi capi religiosi non sono servi di Dio, ma del potere, al quale si sottomettono, riconoscendone la potestà, pur di conservare intatti i loro privilegi e interessi. Dai vangeli emerge una linea molto chiara: la Chiesa, quella che nasce dalla buona notizia di Gesù, non deve mai allinearsi ai potenti e tantomeno essere loro complice, non deve mai restare silente per la propria convenienza, ma denunciare i loro misfatti. Solo così avrà la garanzia di essere fedele al Dio che rovescia i potenti dai troni (Lc 1,52).

[giancarlonicoli]

27 ago 2020 19:14

“SI È PERSA LA MEMORIA DEI MORTI CHE ABBIAMO CONTATO” – IL PRESIDENTE DEL CONSIGLIO SUPERIORE DI SANITÀ, FRANCO LOCATELLI, SCONSOLATO DAI COMPORTAMENTI DEGLI ITALIANI: “STUPISCE LA TENDENZA AL NEGAZIONISMO: INDOSSARE LA MASCHERINA E MANTENERE IL DISTANZIAMENTO NON SONO COSE CHE VANNO AD ALTERARE LE LIBERTÀ INDIVIDUALI” – CRISANTI: “LE DISCOTECHE NON DOVEVANO PROPRIO APRIRE. LA COSTA SMERALDA È…”

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1 – «AUMENTANO I MALATI GRAVI FACCIAMO RISPETTARE LE REGOLE»

Mauro Evangelisti per “il Messaggero”

«Per natura io penso sempre che l'educazione e il convincimento siano più importanti della repressione. Però a un certo punto le regole vanno fatte rispettare». Il professor Franco Locatelli, luminare del Bambino Gesù (è direttore del dipartimento di Oncoematologia Pediatrica), membro del Comitato tecnico scientifico e presidente del Consiglio superiore di sanità, nei mesi difficili del lockdown, quando ciclicamente è comparso in tv, ha aiutato gli italiani a capire quanto stava succedendo. Ad avere fiducia anche nei giorni più difficili.

Ha spiegato le ragioni dei sacrifici che hanno quasi azzerato il numero dei contagi e, ancora più importante, delle vittime. Dopo qualche mese, però, l'Italia è cambiata: finito il tempo del Paese che reagiva compatto e coraggioso all'epidemia, che sosteneva i medici e gli infermieri e piangeva i morti, l'estate ha restituito immagini di movida, assembramenti, scarso rispetto delle regole, ribellione alla prudenza, aggressioni agli agenti che tentano di fare rispettare le norme. Fino alla deriva negazionista.

Professor Locatelli, quanto pagheremo questa avversità al rispetto delle regole scritte ma anche del buon senso?

«Se veniamo meno ai principi che ci hanno portato fuori da quella che era la fase critica, rischiamo di fare tornare il sistema sanitario nazionale e il Paese in una significativa difficoltà. Il virus ha continuato a circolare.

È bastato allentare un attimo l'attenzione e c'è stata la ripresa del numero dei contagi. Non solo: per quanto l'età dei casi positivi si sia abbassata, c'è stato anche un incremento dei malati gravi. Questo lo vediamo ormai ogni giorno, comprese le ultime 24 ore».

Servirebbero più severità e puntualità nel fare rispettare le regole?

«Personalmente credo molto di più nel convincimento e nella persuasione delle persone, rispetto a misure coercitive o a provvedimenti di carattere punitivo. Questo detto, però è chiaro che non possiamo pensare che la scarsa responsabilità di pochi metta poi a repentaglio e a rischio la salute di molti.

L'appello è a considerare sempre come preminente il rispetto di se stessi, degli altri e della memoria di chi non ce l'ha fatta. Bisogna avere sempre bene in testa che questo è un problema che continua a esistere.

La capacità di conviverci dipende largamente da ognuno di noi, fino a quando non ci sarà un vaccino disponibile. Più saremo in grado di farlo nella maniera più opportuna e prudente, più sarà meglio per tutti».

Giusto spiegare alla gente cosa sia giusto fare, ma poi le regole in qualche modo vanno fatte rispettare.

«Ovviamente, come tutte le regole, ogni volta che ci sono, vanno rispettate e vanno considerate le strategie perché questo rispetto sia garantito».

Secondo lei da dove nasce questa forma di ribellione, questo reagire in modo violento a un sacrificio per la verità non così pesante come indossare la mascherina o mantenere le distanze?

«Come dice giustamente, non si chiedono grandi sacrifici: indossare la mascherina, mantenere distanziamento e lavarsi spesso le mani non sono cose che vanno ad alterare le libertà individuali o a incidere in maniera così pesante sullo stile di vita di ognuno di noi.

Stupisce che ci sia questa tendenza al negazionismo, credo che tutti, lo dico anche a me stesso, dobbiamo avere responsabilità nella informazione e nella comunicazione e non fare passare messaggi fuorvianti».

Eppure, sono gli stessi italiani che hanno rispettato il lockdown, contribuendo a una sostanziale diminuzione del numero di positivi.

«Probabilmente i numeri bassi che abbiamo avuto attorno alla metà di luglio e il quasi azzeramento dei decessi hanno dato la falsa illusione che eravamo fuori dal problema. Ma dal problema non si è fuori, si è solo usciti dalla fase più drammatica, guai a ritornarci, a vanificare gli sforzi profusi. Guai a perdere altre vite».

Le immagini degli assembramenti arrivati da varie regioni d'Italia l'hanno colpita?

«Ðiciamo che si è persa la memoria di quanto è successo nel Paese e del numero dei morti che abbiamo contato in quei giorni. Forse dobbiamo tornare con la memoria a quel periodo e proprio dalla memoria farci guidare nei comportamenti. Ripeto: non si chiedono grandi sacrifici, ma solo buon senso».

2 – IN SARDEGNA CONTAGIO ANOMALO «COLPA DI TRAGHETTI E DISCOTECHE»

Mauro Evangelisti per “il Messaggero”

Il caso Costa Smeralda andrebbe studiato, andando ben oltre l'attenzione sui personaggi più conosciuti che si sono contagiati. La stima plausibile è che in una settimana si sono infettate 1.500 persone, alcune (per fortuna una piccola minoranza) sono finite in ospedale, anche in condizioni serie.

La carica virale, dice chi ha visto gli esiti dei primi tamponi, era alta in modo anomalo. Una rapidità di diffusione del coronavirus come quella che si è vista, nelle prime due settimane di agosto, tra Porto Cervo e Porto Rotondo, non ha eguali nel resto d'Europa, neppure negli altri epicentri della vita notturna, come Ibiza e Pago (Croazia).

Solo nel Lazio sono già stati intercettate 562 persone positive (giovani ma non solo) tornate dalla Costa Smeralda. Secondo l'assessore alla Salute del Lazio, Alessio D'Amato, che valuta ogni giorno il tasso di crescita dei nuovi infetti che vengono trovati con i tamponi eseguiti al porto di Civitavecchia, il conto finale sarà molto più alto.

«Ciò che è successo in Costa Smeralda è simile al caso della partita Atalanta-Valencia che si giocò a Milano e che, ormai si è dimostrato, ha moltiplicato drammaticamente a febbraio il numero dei contagi nella provincia di Bergamo».

Non c'è solo il Lazio: in Campania ieri 41 i positivi rientrati dalla Sardegna, una decina in Emilia-Romagna, un'intera famiglia nella Marsica. Conteggiando anche i dati dei giorni passati, la Sardegna ha restituito almeno 1.000 turisti positivi alle altre regioni. A questi si aggiungono i positivi che sono stati rilevati in Costa Smeralda, a partire ad esempio dai dipendenti dei locali più conosciuti come il Billionaire e il Sottovento.

In sintesi, una stima prudente parla di almeno 1.500 casi. Dalla Sardegna sottolineano: non è stata la Costa Smeralda a contagiare i turisti, ma sono stati i turisti a portare il virus. Probabilmente è vero, ma questo però non serve a comprendere i meccanismi del contagio di massa. Sarebbe molto più utile capire perché nei locali della movida si sia creato lo scenario perfetto per l'effetto moltiplicatore.

CAUSE

Secondo D'Amato i lunghi viaggi in traghetto possono avere alimentato, anche all'andata, il contagio, per questo oggi chiede un'intesa con la Sardegna per eseguire i tamponi agli imbarchi su chi ritorna. Ma l'accordo ancora non c'è, si sta perdendo tempo, il governo non interviene e l'estate sta finendo.

Secondo il professor Andrea Crisanti, docente dell'Università di Padova «gli spostamenti in traghetto non giustificano numeri così alti». Aggiunge: «E neppure si può pensare alla presenza di uno o due soggetti super-spreader, i famosi super diffusori che contagiano molte persone. I soggetti positivi di partenza erano molti di più».

La differenza rispetto ad altre regioni in cui comunque c'era la movida e i vacanzieri - dalla Romagna alla Puglia - allora può essere un'altra: «La Costa Smeralda è un punto di incontro, uno snodo, tra turisti che arrivano non solo da varie regioni, ma da tutta Europa. E poi certo, mi pare evidente che ci sia stato uno scarso rispetto delle regole, diciamo che la condivisione di eventi ricreativi non poteva che portare a questa situazione».

Feste in barca, feste nelle ville, feste in discoteca. «Mi ripeto: le discoteche non dovevano proprio aprire», dice Crisanti. Simile la posizione del professor Massimo Galli, infettivologo dell'Ospedale Sacco di Milano che a SkyTg24 dice: «Quelli come me che credono nel buon senso erano sicuri che non aprissero le discoteche e non si consentisse la movida. Ma non è stato così.

Al Nord della Sardegna le movide hanno avuto un risultato e in altri posti della regione non c'è stato. Un intera regione sta subendo pesanti conseguenze che non è difficile da imputare ad alcuni comportamenti sconsiderati». E secondo Marcello Acciaro, esperto dell'Unità di crisi della Sardegna, ora c'è un altro problema da affrontare: in Costa Smeralda ci sono decine di turisti bloccati perché positivi. «Il Governo preveda con urgenza un protocollo per il rientro protetto dalla Sardegna di positivi asintomatici e persone in quarantena: devono poter tornare a casa, hanno solo una valigia e vivono chiuse in una stanza, non è questa una condizione ottimale e dignitosa».

[garadinervi]

Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza, Niente, The Roundtable, 2019 (originally recorded in 1971)