Speaking Sounds: A Note on "Eclipse"
Walter Branchi, Renato Pedio · Perspectives of New Music · 1979
In this work for seven speaking voices, (3 males, 3 females and 1 child) composed in 1975-77, the linguistic and musical codes operate together in an unusual format, here called intermedia. This intermedia is not based on the perceptual overtracking (aural, visual, semantical, etc.) of our everyday lives (most exploited by the theater). It attempts, instead, to steal a bit of the other hidden territory that underlies and supports everything. It is in this territory that we find a peculiar perceptive-semantic place, an apparently unfillable between sound and meaning brought by sound, (between an event and the sense we give to it). This emptiness is only apparent and is spanned by the mind with continual association bridges. This work operates precisely in this emptiness. This is a norm of mental activity: and in many aspects a specific place in the mind. It is