Scroscio (1989)

Scroscio was composed in the summer of 1989 in Siena, under the burning heat of the Tuscan sky and as far away from water as one can imagine. The word ‘scroscio’ refers to the roar made by the rush of water or rainbursts. But the title is not intended to infer a noisy music built of textural fields, but rather the kind we might imagine while we watch a noiseless waterfall and follow the torrential force as it crashes down on racks, showering droplets and spray to glint in the sunlight. It was especially the phonetic sound and structure of the word which attracted me.

This music of directed torrents dominates more or less the first minute of the piece. It is followed by a slower section with mellower harmonies, which is gradually stripped bare by lines struggling towards the extreme high and low registers. Out of a static and frozen situation at the middle of the piece, low-pitched, damped sforzato attacks in the piano gradually awaken, building up eventually into a torrent. As they spread to the other instrumental parts they start to occupy the entire pitch register, engendering a shimmering type of surface. This static surface is followed by three further attempts, each of which is cut short by a wiping gesture from the side or straight through the middle. This is followed by a fourth - a murmuring trill texture - which is the only one which is reminiscent of water's roar, and even then only distant. The meandering legato lines of the end of the piece gradually come together to form a rhythmically homogenised wedge which opens and closes, broken momentarily by a bell theme recalled from the opening of the work.