The Magical Forest
for/with Marina Hasselberg, cello
Thank you Marina!
Thank you to John Korsrud and to The Hard Rubber Orchestra/An Earful of Vancouver for commissioning this video, and to Marina for her beautiful playing and the embracing of these resonances.
This is Panel III from: TDU MH – il fuoco e l’artificio (2018) for cello, 16 Red Cedar and Pacific Maple resonators and live electronics https://giorgiomagnanensi.com/tdu-mh-2/ TDU MH has been written with the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and it is dedicated to Marina Hasselberg.
This work is both a statement and a poetic exploration. The statement displays sound in its visceral immanence – il fuoco, the body, the voice. The poetic exploration wanders in multiple metaphors (l’artificio) and symbolic resonances of the Forest, La Selva.
“From the family tree to the tree of knowledge, from the tree of life to the tree of memory, forests have provided an indispensible resource of symbolization in the cultural evolution of humankind, so much so that the rise of modern scientific thinking remains quite unthinkable apart from a prehistory in such metaphorical borrowings.” *
Starting from here and inspired by the intense quality of resonating wood instruments, I wandered in four imaginary and symbolic landscapes to think, observe and design spatial and sonic analogies to remind myself, and hopefully others as well, about the beauty of the trees, their symbolic powers and the power of imagination and Harmonia: a utopia worth living for and within. The piece is articulated in 4 seamless panels:
I. La Selva Oscura • ansia/anxiety Dark winds, vectors of speed
II. La Selva Antica • rumore/noise Swarming of voices, colors and games
III. The Magical Forest • sogno/dream Veils of expanding spaces and spectral resonance
IV. The Place of Correspondences • Harmonia Doubling and pairing; mirrors and transparencies
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*) Roland Bechmann, ‘Des arbres et des homes’ (p. 258-63), Paris: Flammarion, 1984