A poco a poco (Leonardo Schiavo)
I have composed this work to sing the Peace theme. First of all I have thought about an image that could be an emblem and a symbol of peace and grace. So, I have thought about the image of a caress. I have tried to create music that was made of “caress-sounds”. To do this I have imagined myself as a Japanese calligrapher. I have imagined writing my letters with poetic and flowing gestures of my brush. The reference to Japanese ideograms is this: ideograms are signs that can be understood by people of different languages. So, I thought they were perfect for the Peace theme. In the vocal writing of A poco a pocoI have recreated some of these letters and also signs of neumatic musical notation.
The whole musical notation derives from neumatic notation: this notation has changed the sounds into signs. I have tried to do the opposite thing, to change the signs into sounds, because the sound is one of the universal languages to sing the Peace.
Leonardo Schiavo
Lech Wałęsa
(Nobel Lecture, 11 December 1983)
“We shall not yield to violence. We shall not be deprived of freedoms (…)”
Aung San Suu Kyi
(speech after receiving the Sakharov Prize, 10 December 1991)
“The quintessential revolution is that of the spirit.”
Barack Obama
(remarks by the President at In Performance at the White House: A Celebration of Music from the Civil Rights Movement, 10 February 2010)
„Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time.”
