… As Fernando Pessoa wrote, “no nostalgia hurts as much as nostalgia for things that never existed”. Francesco Ciurlo, in this overview of his works,...

… As Fernando Pessoa wrote, “no nostalgia hurts as much as nostalgia for things that never existed”. Francesco Ciurlo, in this overview of his works, frees us from this condition and invites us to another state – the state of exactness, which does not comprise only of precision. The sound objects are there, exact, reiterated, and are what is needed to give the idea of a place we live in at the precise moment in which it shows itself in all its parts. Not only a memory of a supposed listening, but a hic et nunc listening. The sound concretions always stand out precise and in forefront, without masking, with no prospective distances, and without nebulosity.

In this collection, a sort of evolution towards a clear and consolidated maturity of the composer is undoubtedly illustrated, defining and radicalizing the strong and unambiguous signs of a vision of music: a substantial coldness of the texture; a ruthless cleanliness of the images; a “narration” which is only present in watermark and therefore to some extent unnecessary and, in fact, once the subjection for it is gloriously overcome, Francesco Ciurlo focuses on ignoring it; furthermore, a disregard for decorative nuances, even within an obsessive richness of writing; an objectivity of things which is neither emotional nor of epicironic detachment; a fundamental renunciation of expressiveness; a theatre of sound within a theatre of cruelty, with a cruelty that however causes no pain but is rather cruel in the sense that it rejects everything that turns out to be extraneous or discordant. In a substantially denied narration, the complex processes appear with no resolution. This condition places us even more in front of the presence of “things” precisely at the moment of their manifestation and their repetition. Nothing more than this or rather, nothing more behind this.