In Lexikon III (2016-2018), Fedele takes up the topics of Italo Calvino’s Six Memos for the Next Millennium, that is, Lightness, Quickness, Exactitude, Visibility, Multiplicity, Consistency—the keywords chosen for his famous 1984 Harvard lecture cycle, each pointing to a basic literary value to be carried into the 21st century. In this vast symphonic cycle, Fedele declines such concepts in musical terms.

Ivan Fedele’s musical evolution can be seen as a relentless quest for a synthesis of opposites, be they contrasting concepts of musical time, or vitalism vs. contemplation, or science-and-math vs. creativity. Such search is best embodied in his orchestral music, starting from his early work, Chiari (1981), where two concepts of time, namely, action/narration vs. meditation, are tackled. In Epos (1989), a synthesis of Fedele’s 1980s experiences, the composer seamlessly links seven large panels (Deciso, Calmo, Ad Agio, Lontano, Vivo, Presto, Maestoso e risonante), like chapters of a vast musical narrative. Similarly, to what he had done in Chiari, he toys with stinging sounds coming from a separate instrumental ensemble, while molding a rich and colorful orchestral texture that is transformed throughout, vanishing and resurfacing as in a Karstic sound landscape. This sort of musical architecture gives way to a theatrical conception in Scena (1998). Here, themes are openly defined as characters on a virtual stage, sedimenting in our memory and triggering a network of tense expectations. The special displacement of the instruments also suggests a stage arrangement. Ali di Cantor (2003) has Fedele further refining such idea. He splits the orchestra into four instrumental groups, placed along a peculiar geometric pattern. Systematic use of such contrapuntal devices as canon and hocket clarifies the pun hinting at Leipzig’s famous Kantor, that is Bach, as well as to mathematician Georg Cantor’s set theory. Conversely, the three pieces that form the 2014 cycle, Syntax, hint at the Viennese Classicism masters—Haydn in Syntax 0.1 (if@hay.dn), Mozart in Syntax 0.2 (if@moz.art), and Beethoven in Syntax 0.3 (if@beethov.en). Fedele never cites their works; he rather takes up certain concepts and archetypes defining their peculiar styles and languages—e.g. proliferation, iteration of rhythmic/melodic patterns, brilliant articulation and tone color, transparent harmonies, and the manipulation of musical material as a genetic code generating hugely divergent musical contours.
Between 2011 and 2018, Fedele penned another symphonic cycle, Lexicon, again linked to musical and extra-musical concepts. Lexicon I (2011) also marks a turning point in his creative trajectory «from narrative time (a metaphor of literary narrative) to crystalized time. In the latter, the composition is no longer gradually revealed like a plot of sorts, but is soon given in its three-dimensional physical essence, like a sculpture in darkness». Here, Fedele is also inspired by generative grammar, which can produce complex organisms starting from a tiny cell. He takes up certain Flemish counterpoint archetypes (see subtitles—The Mirror and Its Canon, Al-Qat, Multiple Echo, Extended Canon) and again exploits spatial dislocation of sound sources, with distanced instrumental groups interacting like double choirs.

In Lexikon II (2015), the concepts and titles of the three movements are Armonico, Inarmonico, and Saturo. In Lexicon III (2016-2018), Fedele takes up the topics of Italo Calvino’s Six Memos for the Next Millennium, that is, Lightness, Quickness, Exactitude, Visibility, Multiplicity, Consistency—the keywords chosen for his famous 1984 Harvard lecture cycle, each pointing to a basic literary value to be carried into the 21st century. In this vast symphonic cycle, Fedele declines such concepts in musical terms. «I could have written many variations on each of those themes—for they are real themes. I limited myself to those elaborations that, I feel, better embody the aesthetics of my latest years. This work proposes a type of narrative that shies away from the literary one and gets closer to a time flow, gradually unveiling the inherent qualities of a fully formed musical thought. There are no characters (musical micro- and macro-patterns) coming on stage to tell a story unfolding over time. There is just one sound material that is revealed, in its intrinsic poetic nature, through a slow, and sometimes repeated, focusing of its basic qualities». Lexikon III is written for an instrumentation including harp, piano and sampler, and is designed to be performed either in full (duration ca. 40’) or in couples of movements, as it was composed and has been performed so far. The first couple, Lightness/Quickness, from 2016, was premièred in Bolzano on February 21st 2017 by the Haydn Orchestra led by Benjamin Bayl. The second one, Exactitude/Visibility, also from 2016, was premièred on March 16th 2017 at the Auditorium Pollini, Padua, by the Orchestra of Padua and Veneto conducted by Marco Angius. Multiplicity/Consistency, dated 2018, is offered here for the first time by the Academy of Santa Cecilia Orchestra led by Stanislav Kochanovsky.

The first movement (Fluido, scorrevole), about Multiplicity, is based on proliferating material. «The Multiplicity topic is treated as multiple relationships that sundry musical ideas entertain both diachronically (over time) and synchronically (at the same time). Each idea could develop along its own independent path and produce a composition in itself. Instead, they all develop simultaneously, generating not only some musical counterpoint but also a counterpoint of meanings, thus going well beyond mere overlapping. Also, those ideas are related by a perceptive code, like a neural network in which various elements turn up sharing a common genetic code». This movement opens on a clear-cut motif — a long sound followed by a very fast line — given to violins, clarinets, vibraphone and piano, combined first with a pulsating and speeding-up pizzicato pattern for the low strings, and then with nervous flute and oboe contours and quick arpeggios. Such elements migrate among instruments and get transformed along the way, thus creating an orchestral texture now thickening in large bubbles, now thinning in areas still full of tension, in which fragments and filaments of the same patterns survive, sometimes taking on the alien tone colors of the sampler. The unique tonal blend of cello-and-bass glissandos in harmonics (a “seagull effect”) together with tremolos of violas, suspended cymbals, and timpani, emerges as an atmospheric episode, then becoming the foil for a condensed recapitulation. The movement ends up on a long, harmonious sound of the winds (Calmo), with terse stabs from vibraphone, piano, and harp, plus short interjections from strings.

In stark contrast to such display of Multiplicity, the second movement, on Consistency, is rooted in a single musical motto, Ab–Bb–F–E, soon introduced by strings and woodwinds. This neat melodic gesture is followed by a tonal-harmonic tail, according to Fedele’s favorite acoustic principle of attack/decay. The same material then appears expanded, compressed, projected onto various registers, producing a varied but always homogeneous orchestral texture, full of quivers and echoes. Again, it ends up on a long, soft blend of flutes, French horns, and string tremolos, punctuated by short half-step cells from vibraphone, piano, and harp.

Notes by Gianluigi Mattietti (translation by Marcello Piras)