G U S T A V H O L S T

Music has always been the invisible thread linking together many aspects of the world around us. Nature, philosophy, painting and other forms of expression have never considered music extraneous, with its role of synthesis or effective “adhesive” in our comprehensive conception of matter.
Our next step now is to project ourselves out of the earth and see what parallels can be found between space and our own world. This research can be divided into three major points:
1- physical space;
2- catharsis;
3- spatiality of thought.
These points are aimed at concentrating the spatial dimension into a psychological, as well as musical, setting. The idea of physical space recalls Plato’s definition of rhythm, when he wrote that “rhythm originates from the movement of the spheres”, that is, the planets. In his days it was an unprecedented association, but in the twentieth century it is quite helpful to grasp the complexity of the concept. Not many composers have devoted in-depth research to this phenomenon, because throughout history the subject of space has never become a fashion or achieved mass diffusion; therefore those who put space at the centre of their studies are very few.

One example is the British composer Gustav Holst, whose work “The planets”, a series of compositions dedicated to the different planets, attempts to probe the intimate relations between man-made sounds and space.
Listening to these pieces conveys the impression of a mediation between traditional music, based on the sounds produced by acoustic instruments, and the philosophy of electronics - a successful compromise. Holst lived in contact with space, although tied to terrestrial tastes; he therefore found it hard to attain the levity and tenuity that are the common denominator of any representation of space. Henri Pousseur, conversely, managed to identify the main characteristics of musical space, producing a series of white sounds, cold and isolated – an instance of the incommunicability that derives from the vast distances of the planets. His works, moreover, show a sharp detachment of the function of time, since that space becomes meaningless on the human scale. All this can be found in his 1951 composition “Trois chants sacres”, for soprano, violin, viola and cello.
The second point, catharsis (in the Cartesian sense), is substantiated by the will to live in a dimension free of the parameters of psychological bonds.
Hence space become the optimal resolution, as demonstrated by musicians such as Brian Eno and Philip Glass. In their compositions space is a continual hallucination, accepted as positive and accomplished by manipulating unearthly sonorities having no connection with the traditional world of sound. Deliverance, mentioned above, is provided by eliminating academic rules and restrictions, in a search for simple and alternative messages. If we want to find a connection to the traditional line, we must not overlook Luigi Nono, whose composition “Al gran Sole carico d’amore” combines worldly symbols with electronic sounds, which, at present, are the only element with which to characterise space.
An observation made by Armando Gentilucci correctly describes the concept of spatiality to be found in Nono’s rigorous research: “... in the sense that for composers, it is not simply a matter of bearing firm in mind the notions of expression, testimony, civil commitment, but, precisely, of conditioning and providing ideological references to the linguistic aspects themselves, even, as is lately the case, when dealing with innovative acoustic material in which undetermined sounds can lead to shapelessness.” Shapelessness, exactly, is what characterises the sense of space and the drive to reappropriate matter in order to recapitulate it.
The final point reflects the limits and the conflicts in the public receiving the message. It is no coincidence that the purveyor considers space as a far-off world, disengaged from this earth, while forgetting that we ourselves are a part of space; composers must take full account of this aspect, which may seem elementary but which has not yet been fully absorbed by the public.

For the future, innovation and the “spatiality of thought” are the paths that we are to follow, supported by music researchers who, though, have yet to discover a music that is out of time and not commonplace.