Federico Agnello

Alienazione Eterea

Honorable mention in the Composition Competition organized by the wind orchestra "ofsi-orchestra" of Italian Switzerland on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of its foundation.

This composition, with an emblematic title, has as its guiding principle the contrast between earthly and otherworldly elements. Through a free rhapsodic form, the work portrays them following one another and sometimes merging as if to recreate changing paradoxes.Alienation, that is man’s discomfort due to the inexorable “repetition” of manual work within the industrialized assembly lines of the 1900s, is here musically treated through a minimalist process where obsessive rhythmic and intervallic cells overlap to recreate complex structures strongly linked to the numerology of human proportions studied by Leonardo Da Vinci.On the other hand, the ethereal, or the indefinite and immaterial concept of the spiritual, is musically described through soft sound solutions without clear boundaries. These aim to create rarefied environments with gloomy traits that arrive at moments of celestial suspension.A small 3-note cell, at times repeated obsessively, is present throughout the whole composition. Through mutations that are sometimes audible and other times subdued, it creates a strong magnetic effect between the two elements almost as if to recreate the balance of the universe in which we belong.