Fornari-Cavallaro, “Passages” (Diacronie Media, 2024)

By Héctor Cavallaro / / music / No Comments

Fornari-Cavallaro

Rome, IT / Paris, FR

Itinerant between Rome and Paris, the Fornari-Cavallaro duo conducts a creative research that emerges from a historical, almost “archaeological”, interest in ancient musical materials of written and oral tradition, as well as from a curiosity towards the possible iterations in which these can be transfigured by the processes of electroacoustic aesthetics. Their first album “Passages” was recorded in 2023 and released in 2024 by Diacronie Media.

Passages (2024)

“Le nouveau, en tant que cryptogramme, est l’image de la ruine; l’art n’exprime l’inexprimable, l’utopie, que par l’absolue négativité de cette image.”

Th. W. Adorno, Théorie Esthétique

Released in 2024, “passages” is the first musical output of Ruggero Fornari and Héctor Cavallaro as the duo Fornari-Cavallaro. The creation process started as an investigation of some extended techniques for piano and electric guitar, later processed and integrated with sampling, no-input mixing and other forms of live processing through a modular synthesizer. The composition process, strictly connected to the recording of the materials, manifests itself as a sound collage, a juxtaposition of idioms and textures, a fragmented sonic environment where the subject-matter appears to be the history of music, as well as the history of sound itself. Processed sounds of ancient choral music from Europe and South American folklore effortlessly coexist with electro-acoustically treated pianos and guitars, symbolic apparitions in an informalist narrative.

Héctor Cavallaro: piano, prepared piano, bowed cymbals, toy piano
Ruggero Fornari: electric guitar, modular synthesizer, sampling, programming.

All compositions by Héctor Cavallaro and Ruggero Fornari.  Recorded by Ruggero Fornari, April 24-30, 2023 at "Il Moggio Assisi".  Mixed by Edoardo Maria Bellucci and Giangiacomo Gallo at Diacronie Lab, Roma. Mastered by Edoardo Maria Bellucci at Diacronie Lab, Roma
Artwork by Alejandro Beltrán

[DCRN 002] diacronie-media.bandcamp.com

https://ruggerofornarihectorcavallaro.bandcamp.com/album/passages

Passages (2024)

The clogged ear in the twelfth song of the Odyssey would represent, according to Nietzsche, almost a condition of philosophyzing in antiquity, as a repressive fear of the senses in front of the sensuality of the songs of the sirens. However, to deny the senses is to deny vitality, that passionate and subjective one of the sailor seduced by the sirens and their song, but also that vitality, rather objective, of the specific contents within the materiality of sound objects. This chaotic, entropic vitality would thus be, more than a refined quality of certain music, a sine qua non condition of sound materials. For this, the philosopher will say, in some way, every music is sirens’ music. In Passages (2024), we worked starting from the fascination for some particular materials, from different contexts: from renaissance and baroque music to the most dystopian noise. It was our principle to follow a specific experimental process, where the writing phase would be intimately linked to sound research, accompanied by a broader reflection on the dionysian force of music and, ultimately, on the life and death of musical idioms – even, with a tender gaze towards ruins, whether past ones or future ones.