|
Dé/ployé (1987) |
solo piccolo - 8'
Written while staying in the beautiful valley of Pieve a Bozzone outside Siena during the summer of 1987, this piece is a hesitant first step towards a new - intentionally caballistic - means of investing meaning into my music, drawing here on the name of 'Roberto Fabbriciani'. The work also reflects my mercurial mood of the time, alternating joy at the loveliness of my surroundings and deep gloom occasioned by a drastic change of life and certain lingering problems that refused to let me abandon my "previous self".
Another feature of the piece's landscape was that I had just married the brilliant Australian flutist Laura Chislett, and her promised wedding present from me, the flute solo Sulle Scale della Fenice was extremely late. I therefore decided to write an interim piece for her, a virtuoso étude that incorporated all my newest thoughts. The piece is therefore, and despite its being a birthday present for Fabbriciani, intended for Laura to play.
So Dé/ployé is not a simple piece; its constellation of meanings encompasses the private, public and technical, all within a frame of risky innovativeness. But, to my great surprise and satisfaction, when Laura began to practise it I primarily heard in it the sounds of Pieve a Bozzone: swallows, nightingales and ... bats. Dé/ployé is my Italian piece par excellence, and for all these reasons is my favourite of my works.
© Chris Dench