Carlo Alessandro Landini

Carlo Alessandro Landini
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Born	(1954-04-20) April 20, 1954 Milan, Italy
Nationality	Italian
Occupation	Composer Scholar Essayist

Carlo Alessandro Landini (born April 20, 1954, in Milan, Italy) is an Italian composer, scholar and essayist.

Biography

Carlo Alessandro Landini began his musical studies in the Piano and Composition classes of the Milan Conservatorio "Giuseppe Verdi", under the guidance of Piero Rattalino and Bruno Bettinelli respectively, graduating in 1978 and 1979. However, his interests did not limit themselves to the sole field of music but led him to graduate – in 1982 – in Modern Literature, with a Dissertation dedicated to the Capuchin nun Saint Veronica Giuliani, a text later on revised and published in the form of a more extensive essay.

After graduating in composition, Landini follows, between 1975 and 1978, the specialization courses held by Franco Donatoni at the Accademia Chigiana (Siena) and again, between 1978 and 1986, the summer courses in Darmstadt held by the masters of French "spectral music" (Gérard Grisey, Tristan Murail, Hugues Dufourt). He then attends courses with Iannis Xenakis, György Ligeti (Aix-en-Provence) and Witold Lutoslawski (Grožnjan). In 1979 he moves to Paris, where he receives lessons from Olivier Messiaen and, once admitted to the prestigious CNSM, attends the classes of Ivo Malec and Claude Ballif. He is awarded the Premier Prix by an unanimous jury. In 1981 he moves to the United States on a Fulbright Fellowship. He resides in San Diego for two years, where he studies and teaches at the University of California, eventually graduating in 1983.

From 1983 he has been teaching in the Conservatory of Piacenza with the role of Professor with tenure, eventually retiring in 2021. Appointed at Columbia University (New York) in 2003, he works with Jonathan Kramer, attending Fred Lerdahl’s lessons, thus investigating the modeling of tension and relaxation in pitch-space. A Fellow of the Italian Academy (Columbia, New York), he served as Visiting Professor at the University of Maryland in Baltimore (2006), the Musikhochschule in Trossingen (2010), the Hamu in Prague (2012).

His works have been performed in important contemporary music festivals, including the historic Ferienkurse in Darmstadt, Chigiana in Siena, the Venice Biennale, the World New Music Days in Vienna-Bratislava, the Prokofiev Festival in St. Petersburg, Salle Gaveau in Paris, the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Pomeriggi Musicali in Milan, the Roy O. Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, the Livewire Festival in Baltimore, JD Robb Composers’ Symposium in Albuquerque, the Autunno Musicale Campano in Caserta, the Filharmonia Śląska Season in Katowice and many others. His works are published by Pizzicato, Sonzogno, Alphonse Leduc, Curci, Carisch.

Mr. Landini is the winner of important international awards for his compositions, such as the Valentino Bucchi (Rome, 1986), Ernest Bloch (Lugano, 1994), K. Serocki (Warsaw, 2002 and again 2004), Athens (2010), the prestigious W. Lutosławski (Warsaw, 2007), being the first and only Italian ever to have won this contest. He also emerged as the winner in the "Francesco Siciliani" Competition (Perugia, 2016) with his Kyrie for choir of 9 mixed voices.

Music

His Sonata No. 1 for piano (1981) lasts over an hour his Piano Sonata No. 2 (1987) an hour and a half, his string quartet Changes is a single, long and uninterrupted movement of 40 minutes (its first performance, entrusted to the prestigious Arditti quartet, took place on August 5, 1994 in Darmstadt) the Sonata No. 5 lasts "seven hours without even a break" whereas its short version lasts 2 hours and a half. This work is an absolute and hitherto unmatched record for a meticulously written-out piece, that is, a non-repetitive music, conceived without refrains in a single, long movement: "a great sound flow, without repetitions, without caesuras, all durchkomponiert and meticulously written-out". The "mammoth" score of this huge work (dedicated to the Genoese pianist Massimiliano Damerini) consists of 650 pages and has been defined a "massage of the body and mind" pretending to give the listener "hours of reflection, rest, well-being".

The musicologist Quirino Principe sees in his music "a search for beautiful sound" that is, the sound vehicle of beauty, which is not present in other composers". In his music the durations are always, continues Principe, "in an organic and necessary relationship with the gradualness that carves the beauty of sound". The cultural sphere in which his music moves is, as the musicologist Renzo Cresti states, "closely linked to the Middle-European one, expanded to the ancient Greek-Latin civilization", such as to situate Landini "a thousand miles away from a volatile communication that doesn't convey anything meaningful: the composer ends up being obsessed with a subtle chisel work that digs and deepens, like a spiral that plunges into the meanders of being".

According to the Baltimore Sun music critic Tim Smith, the former president of the Music Critics Association of North America, Mr. Landini employs in his music "such mastery of structure and such imaginative instrumental coloring that everything emerges with a compelling logic" and the listener’s ear "is drawn into an eventful sound-world".

Selected writings

• Mozart. Il Ratto dal Serraglio. Strategie del testo e pragmatica simbolica, Ivrea: Ferraro, 1997
• La musica colta del ‘900 e il suo rapporto con le altre arti, Piacenza: QLC, 2007
• Lo sguardo assente. Arte e autismo: il caso Savinio, Milano: Franco Angeli, 2009
• Musica, gusto, educazione al Bello musicale in età postmoderna. Dalle Lettere di Schiller alla Diskursästhetik di Jürgen Habermas, Milan: Arcipelago Edizioni, 2010
• Misura & Dismisura. Una Sonata monumentale (with an afterword by Giovanni Piana), Turin: Musica Practica, 2016
• L’orecchio di Proteo. Saggio di neuroestetica, Lucca: Lim 2021.
• Orizzontale/Verticale. Lettera a un medico, Alessandria: Puntoacapo, 2021
• Contra Analyticos. L’analisi musicale, West Side Story e la logica perversa delle lavatrici, Florence: LoGisma 2022

Selected works

Orchestra and large ensemble

• Sinfonia in La for orchestra (1979)
• Musica da camera for 9 strings (1980)
• Variations Without A Theme for 7 performers (1983)
• Sinfonia in Si for orchestra (2002)
• Ecco il giorno for 4 female voices and 12 instruments, text by Massimo Venuti (1998)
• Quare Spes for female voice, 8 instruments and percussions (1998)
• Time On Target for orchestra (2000)
• Midrash Temurah for 13 strings (2003)
• Limen for 16 strings (2010)
• Two More Steps Towards Uncertainty for orchestra (2007)
• Louange de l’Éternel, revised version for orchestra (2014)
• Le Mythe d’Er for orchestra (2018)
• View of the Cathedral of Wroclaw from the Odra River for orchestra (2018)

Duo and small ensemble

• Intermezzo for 3 flutes (1975)
• Rencontres for bass clarinet, double bass and piano (1984)
• Trois plaisanteries for flute and piano (1987)
• Epitafio para el coronel Aureliano Buendía for 3 alto flutes and 2 pianos (1989)
• Epiphané for 5 instruments (1993)
• I tempi di Anika for string quartet and harpsichord (1993)
• Im Wald for flute, clarinet and harp (1994)
• Changes for string quartet (1994)
• Mothers of Hope. A Tribute to Francesco Clemente for voice, violin, double bass and piano (1994), revised 1998 for piano and voice
• Subida y bajada del Monte Carmelo for 4 clarinets (1996)
• Incantesimo divino for 4 female voices, text by Massimo Venuti (2001)
• Coming to Life. Generation, Transition, Interlocking of Phases for 7 performers (2006)
• Le retour d’Astrée for violin and piano (2007)
• This heart thy center is, this flesh thy spheare for clarinet and piano (2012)
• Sonata No. 1 for cello and piano (2012)
• Sonata No. 2 for cello e piano (2013)
• Anulus Veneris for alto flute and bass clarinet (2015)
• Non pianger più for voice, guitar, alto flute, piano (2016)
• Anulus Fibrosus for flute and piccolo (2017)

Solo

• Trois Morceaux for piano (1974)
• Konzertstück for cello (1976)
• Konzertstück for clarinet in B flat (1977)
• Six Nocturnes for piano (1978)
• Incantation for alto saxophone (1981)
• Sonata for flute (1981)
• Sonata No. 1 for Piano (1981)
• Fünf Klavierstücke for piano (1984)
• Deuxième Extrait for double bass (1985)
• Étude minimale for guitar (1986)
• Toccata, Interludio e Fuga for organ (1992)
• Troisième Extrait for clarinet (1994)
• Guirlandes for harp (1994)
• Sonata No. 2 for piano (1994)
• Premier Extrait for piano (1995)
• Sonata No. 3 for piano (1998)
• Tema e 5 variazioni for guitar (2000)
• Dans le remous for piano (2001)
• Elan for flute (2004)
• Louange de l’Éternel for piano (2008)
• Elegy for clarinet (2005)
• Sonata No. 6 for piano (2014)
• Sonata No. 5 for piano (2012-2015)
• Echoes Unplugged for solo violin (2015)
• Sonata No. 7 for piano (2019)
• Sonata No. 8 for piano (2021)

Choir

• Bereshit bara Elohim for unaccompanied 4-voice choir (2015)
• Missa Novem Vocum for unaccompanied 9-voice choir (2012–2020)
• Dona nobis pacem for 4 female voices (2022)

Discography

• 1980 The Depth of Sound, City Records, (LP C 1135 AAD)
• 1987 Étude minimale for guitar, in Works for guitar, Piero Bonaguri, guitar, (PAN PRC S20-44 LP ADD)
• 1988 The Depth of Sound, City Records, City CD 5245 (CD ADD 1988)
• 1990 Sonata n. 1, Carlo Levi Minzi, piano, Rusty Records CDR008 (CD ADD)
• 1993 Six Nocturnes, in Il pianoforte contemporaneo, Carlo Levi Minzi, piano, Rusty Classica RRCL 606645 (LP AAD)
• 1998 Sonata n. 3 for piano, Massimiliano Damerini, piano, PAN CD 3066 (CD DDD 1998)
• 1999 Sonata n. 2 for piano, Carlo Levi Minzi, piano, Rugginenti, RUS 555086.2 (CD ADD 1999)
• 2000 Carlo Alessandro Landini, Rugginenti, RUS 555095 (CD ADD)
• 2007 Musica per orchestra, Tactus, TC 951201 (CD DDD)
• 2012 Exercises in Style, Sinfonica, SCD-015 (CD DDD)
• 2014 Mothers of Hope, for piano and voice, in La voce contemporanea in Italia, Duo Alterno, Stradivarius, STR 33976 (CD DDD)
• 2014 Chamber Music & Orchestral Works, Stradivarius, STR 33986 (CD DDD)
• 2017 Changes, Arditti String Quartet, Stradivarius, STR 37077 (CD DDD)
• 2017 Elan for flute in C, in Fabula ut, Arcadio Baracchi, flute, Stradivarius, STR 37067 (CD DDD)
• 2020 Sonata n. 5, pf. Massimiliano Damerini, Da Vinci Classics, C00258 (CD DDD)
• 2021 Missa novem vocum for choir a cappella, Ensemble Fleur-de-Lys (Giorgio Ubaldi), Tactus TC951202 (CD DDD)

Bibliographical sources

• Cresti, R. (2020). Musica presente. Tendenze e compositori di oggi. Lucca: Lim. pp. 141–152. ISBN 9788855430012.
• Cresti, R. (2000). Enciclopedia Italiana dei Compositori Contemporanei. Vol. 2. Napoli: Pagano. pp. 181–183. ISBN 8887463077.
• Ghezzi, C. (June 1999). "Una Sonata da Guinness. Incontro con Carlo Landini". Suonare. Vol. 5, no. 41. pp. 36–38.
• Incardona, A. (1999). Carlo Alessandro Landini: il tempo e l'estetica musicale nelle Sonate per pianoforte (PhD Dissertation). Bologna: Università degli Studi di Bologna.
• Incardona, A. (2002). Il tempo della musica. Le Sonate per pianoforte di Carlo Alessandro Landini. Milano: Rugginenti. ISBN 9788876654275.
• LeBaron, A.; Buliane, D. (1981). "Darmstadt 1980". Perspectives of New Music. Vol. 19, no. 1–2. p. 440.
• Principe, Q. (1996). La musica a Milano nel Novecento. Torino: UTET.
• Principe, Q. (Jan 23, 2000). "Se l'ascolto dà felicità fisica. Teorie biomusicologiche e inventiva del compositore milanese". Il Sole-24 Ore.

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