1989–1990
Full orchestra, solo-violin + solo- cello
UA: 13/12/2003, Utrecht
Performer(s): Dutch Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, Joris van Rijn (violin), Michael Stirling (cello), Emilio Pomárico (cond.)
CD: Konrad Boehmer (Position) IL COMBATTIMENTO (Ouroboros) BVHAAST 0504.
Dutch Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, perf.: Joris van Rijn and Michael Stirling, cond.: Emilio Pomárico.
IL COMBATTIMENTO (1989/1990) is a dramatic concert piece for orchestra with solo violin and solo violoncello.
Two historical situations are interconnected in this piece: the “Tancredi e Clorinda” episode from the crusades which Monteverdi put into music (the dramatic poem is by Torquato Tasso) and which emphasizes an episode of the historic decline of medieval feodalism, and another episode from the end of the War of Hundred Years, the battle of Agincourt, during which the English archers (modern war technology) conquered the French knights (on their feodal-medevial horses).
Two types of historic conflicts: the first within a social formation, the second one between two formations are the underlying structure of Il Combattimento.
To translate those historic episodes into a musical structure, I elaborated a precise transcription of all physical movements belonging to those two situationas (horse and sword against horse and sword; horse and sword against bows and arrows) into specific musical gestures. A kind of “choreography of notes”, which I then used as a starting point for the elaboration of a musical narration, leading from (vertical) conflicts towards (more horizontal but ‘harmonic’) confrontations between two historic-social formations of our Western History.