An Enc Ohn Rea Ethnicity As Post-Modernism W Uovo Barocco Le Mythe De Railleurs Strangers' Fugue
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NO 1 • May/June 1985 Contemporary Music An Enc ohn Rea Ethnicity as Post-Modernism W uovo Barocco Le mythe de railleurs Strangers' Fugue: An Interview with Aldo Mazza Vice Versa Advertising: phone: (416) 367- 3828 Date of Publication: May 1985. Transcultural Magazine pu Second Class mail registration blished bimonthly by Les Edi No. 6385. All correspondence tions Vice Versa enr. P.O. Box should be directed to Vice Ver 821, N.D.G. Station Montréal, sa. P.O. Box 821, N.D.G. Sta Québec, H4A 3S2, ISSN tion, Montréal, Québec, H4A AN ENCOUNTER 0821682-7 3S2. Editorial Board: Lamberto Opinions expressed outside of f/t. *m Tassinari, Bruno Ramirez, Ful- specifically marked editorials vio Caccia, Antonio D'Alfonso are not necessarily held by each and every individual Toronto Bureau: Joseph Ma- member of the editorial group. viglia, Antonino Mazza. Mario Godlowski, Damiano Pietro- Manuscripts not accompanied paolo by a stamped, self-addressed envelope will not be returned. Design: Gianni Caccia Typesetting: Les Ateliers Chio- ra Inc. Vice Versa gratefully acknow Proofreader: Ann Vergeylen ledges the support of the Ca nada Council, and the Minis Printing: Payette & Simms tère des Communautés cultu Distribution: Les Messageries relles et de l'immigration du de Presse Internationale, Mon Québec tréal, Toronto, phone: (416) 928-0099 Cover: Serge Brunelle Read Mary Melfi A Bride in Three Acts MARY MELFI III i Capezio Gucmici Editions and Dance and A Queen Is Holding Vice Versa and Words a Mummified Cat MARY MELFI Capezio : EN IS I The Art rn^Sfi Guernica EdkiûOI of Dance Guernica P.O. Box 633, Station N.D.G. Montréal. (Québec), Canada H4A 3R1 Dance apparel carefully manufactured in Canada by Angelo Luzio Ltd. This First Issue fter two years of publication, primarily Contents within the Montreal context, we thought the time had come to move outside Quebec and link our reflections with the wider Canadian spe< num. Vice-Versa is a bi monthly magazine published in Montreal since 1983. It covers literature, social criticism and the arts free John Rea, Musician Afrom academic concerns; what characterizes its way of viewing 4 by Laurence Cohen things is an open, non-ideological approach that we call «transcultural». You will notice it in the magazine's choice of topics, in its trilingualism, and in the names of its editorial Zen and the Computer Screen staff and contributors. In Vice Versa, we meet at a cross-roads of various cultural universes, a shifting pe! spe« live whose 6 by Marco Fraticelli boundaries are as wide as those of emigration. Vice-Versa is not only an instrument of change, but a Heels Clicking product of the profound transformations that our society is by Joseph Maviglia undergoing. 7 These are just a few reasons why we think Vice-Versa deserves your attention. And more than that, we hope you will Strangers' Fugue: an Interview with Aldo Mazza adopt it as your magazine.D 8 by Antonino Mazza Ethnicity as Post-Modernism 10 by Fulvio Caccia II Nuovo Barocco Read 12 by Antonio D'Alfonso Fulvio Caccia Immigrant Culture or the Identity of the Voiceless People Irpinia 14 by Marco Micone Surprise in the Archive 16 by Bruno Ramirez Filippo Salvatore n The Empire Strikes Back I / by Lamberto Tassinari Suns of Le Mythe de l'Ailleurs Darkness 19 Claude Beausoleil In Search of a Lost Culture 20 by Bruno Ramirez An Italian Anthology Antonio D'Alfonso 20 by Maria Redi Black Tongue The Way They Talk in Broke City s^vi 21 by David Homel D.A.F.: a German Minimalist Duo and its Weltanschauung U <N 22 by Christian Roy ^ Comic-Strips 24 by Vittorio * Subscribe # Subscription rates: Annual (6 issues) $ 8.00 • Institutions, abroad $18.00 • Sustaining subscriber $25.00 • or more ,*^ Name •c-ai.JS^ ! Address City Province. Postal Code Vice Versa Guernica P.O. Box 821, Station N.D.G., P.O. Box 633, Station N.D.G. Montreal, Quebec, H4A 3S2 Montréal, (Québec), Canada H4A 3R1 An Encounter with John Rea, Musician by Laurence Cohen is music? Veritable sound paintings, the interplay of structures and forms. From opera to electronic music, his works display great variety. According to him, it is with chamber and orchestral music that his message comes across best. In Corn-possession, he succeeded in Hcreating a 20th century tarantella, a work which, at present, remains the only "detour" into his past — into the Italian Mezzogiomo, land of his parents. "When I wrote this piece," he says, " I understood those words of Jean Cocteau : The more a poet sings inside his genealogical tree, the more he sings in tune. But as I see it, the more he sings, the more he cannot help but sing inside his genealogical tree." Being a painter of sounds, Rea has often been inspired by pictorial works : Hommage à Vasarely ( 1977 ), an optical/kinetic-like work whose topological distribution of orchestral instruments alludes to similar visual grids in the works of Vasarely Treppenmuskid 1982, making reference to the paradoxical staircases — ascents and descents to somewhere/ nowhere — and other strange configurations found in the graphic works of M.C. Escher, where time develops its own consonance beyond our Euclidian logic; and recently, Spin (1984), a quintet inspired by two tableaux of British artist, Peter Sedgley — using the same rhythms (4 minute cycles) of kinetic objects made from mirrors, filters and light projections. Rea often plays with words as with the palindromes in Prologue, Scene and Movement, or juxtaposes them with sounds as in the spoken-opera Le Petit Livre desRavalet. Sometimes his compositions evoke myths: The Prisoners Play, an opera; The Days, a ballet; La Dernière Sirène (The Last Siren), a trio. At other times, they reflect a kind of orientalism. From his travels to Asia ( Indonesia, Japan, China), he has retained a certain point of view. He says that Mediator ( Plectrum ) is a friendly attempt at communication between musical instruments of our tradition and certain sounds and gestures of East Asian musics. Reception and Offering Music, a work which uses expressly the context of Tibetan ritual music, pays homage by way of musical quotations to composers such as Mahler, Bach and others, composers who, he says, may be thought of as Buddhas. One finds musical quotations in his work (again in John Rea was born in Toronto, January 14,1944. After having studied composition in Canada and the Treppenmusik and La Dernière Sirène) in the way one might come United Stales, he founded in 1978, and in collaboration with José Evangelista, Lorraine Vaillancourt, and the to a crossroad where past meets present. This kind of multilayering late Claude Vivier, the Montreal contemporary music society "Les Événements du Neuf" (events on the (of live music, of recorded music and of this music sometimes ninth, at nine; novel events). That same year, he participated in founding another society "Traditions heard again overlapping with the former at the end of a Musicales du Monde" which, during its five years of existence, helped Montrealers get to know non- Western music by way of lectures, films and concerts. He has taught music theory and composition at McGill performance) makes one think of the process of wanting to surpass University since 1973. In 1981, he won the Jules Léger Prize for new chamber music with his work oneself, of magical enchantment, of stretching and contracting the Corn-possession. He has also lectured and written articles on contemporary music. Since 1982, he has been on time through which Rea elaborates his musical compositions. the board of directors for the Société de musique contemporaine du Québec. Between January and July 1984, he was composer-in-residence at Mannheim, Germany. Q. : You are one of the foun the rediscovery of a musical or each event. frontiers as well. came to take such aesthetic ding members of "Les Évé visual object which one A.: Yes, for the most part, A.: That depends. Each decisions in our music, to nements du Neuf". For what thought exhausted or empty. because it helps perception. concert has its own inspira travel "there" rather than reasons was the society creat This is our modest contribu When the place changes, the tion. Five years ago, we pre "here", so to speak. ed? tion in the field of contempo environmental context sented music of the composers Musicians must work with A.: "Événements du Neuf" rary aesthetics. changes and, consequently, so of Les Événements du Neuf: at the nationality of sounds, and was founded seven years ago. Picasso, at the beginning of do the visual and acoustical the time, Vivier, Evangelista that's a fact. Why does music In die beginning and as it still this century, painted works perspectives. Instead of being and myself. sound the way it does? Our does today, the society wished whose images result from the sealed in a traditional hall The concert was entitled compositions tried to explain to, as it were, break away. superimposition of many va with a proscenium stage, one "Travel Books". Because our other musics (Indonesian, Ja However, without it being a nishing points. There is a might find oneself in another own music had come to show panese, Chinese), not as a revolutionary act, our goal similar procedure at work in space: in the center, or to the the influence of certain non- point of departure but rather was to help audiences better our wish to listen to music by side of a stage or area where Western cultures, we decided as a point of reference for our know and appreciate different way of many perspectives, the action, the visual object or to invite our listeners to make listeners.