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The Stars
" I clearly remember how, as a child, I was fascinated
and profoundly amazed while observing the vault of the sky.
However, astonishment and knowledge can not but move forward
together, at least for me. As with reading the great science
fiction writers such as Philip Dick, James Ballard, Clifford
Simak has always been linked with an impassioned and continuous
reading of magazines such as “Scientific American”.
All this – far from validating the old and intolerable
commonly-held view that science is arid – has contributed
to enriching the range of my interests. I must say that the
great films about space and documentaries on the stars, have
also sparked and expanded my imagination concerning worlds
that are distant and different than our own.
With the passing of the years we understand that knowledge,
either rational, scientific, or in the spiritual, imaginative
form, is without end. Other than providing me with a few answers,
however, all these suggestions have inspired me to pose new
questions that seek true understanding of a portion of human
consciousness, an actuality that is much like deep space.
Facing this realization, I believe, we have only two choices:
find ourselves in a type of sterile dismay, or immerse ourselves
in the adventure of this profoundness surrounding us and that
we feel to be our own, like a home in which we live and where,
after all, we barely understand the hidden corners.
For many years I have been asking myself, a prey to my enthusiasm,
how I could participate in, "live" this marvelous
mystery that is the universe. Music seemed to be the most
immediate way, the most natural, the only one that felt agreeable
to me. But given that when overwhelmed by emotions, in a story,
one can risk saying nothing, therefore I have tried to select
my own way, to involve myself in an area that seems to have
been neglected by others. We are not talking about inhaling
absolute and therefore impossible originality but to reach
places in the spirit where, for right or wrong, I believe
others have not gone.
The magnificent opera “The Planets” by Gustav
Holst, is an example that I particularly love; some of his
passages have inspired my work. It provides, however, a romantic-descriptive
vision of the planets of the solar system. These appear to
have typical features and a personality that has been masterfully
translated into music by the English composer, and is immersed
in a discourse started by modern science in the distant XVII
century. Personally I have been fascinated by the problematic,
dark, unintelligible, sidereal aspects of the cosmos. Less
reassuring questions have come into my mind: can we ever truly
understand the concept of a "beginning" that originated
from nothing? Of a space that is created as a function of
the expansion of matter? Of time that is only a human convention,
but has no reason to exist where nothing exists? Will we ever
really be able to grasp the idea of a spheric and finite expanding
space, within which violent battles of opposing forces erupt?
Maybe we are on the verge of a Dawn of consciousness ...
I hope then that there is also a place for my brief song."
LUIGI MAIELLO
Luigi Maiello
"I am born in Rome in 1980. I studied there and received
my first diploma from the Liceo Classico Socrate. I then received
a bachelor with honours in musicology from the University
of Tor Vergata. Currently, I am specializing in composition
and electronic music at the Academy of Santa Cecilia.
Between Brahms and Wagner I have always preferred the second
and therefore enjoy creating music that speaks of emotion,
worlds, feelings and passions that being told of through music,
go beyond the music. If not what is the use of music or art?
Maybe, it is for this simple and primordial need that I love
American films (meaning those of Penn and Eastwood), science
fiction (to continue, intending those of Dick, Bradbury and
Ballard), paintings (Caravaggio, Poussin, Turner, Hopper,
Magritte and Vermeer). All music: from Pink Floyd to Mahler,
from Celtic folk to Vaughan Williams, because they are inspired
by those internal spaces I only found in the great northern
landscapes.
I have written film scores, music for the theatre, cinema
and television. Although, it would be better to say that I
wrote the music ...and then the theatre, television, radio,
cinema decided to use it.
If I could visit an imagined character, I would prefer to
have among my friends the young Holden Caufield; maybe I travel
and read a lot in order to meet someone like him. I love reading;
Dante, Milton, Eliot and also Hemingway, Conan Doyle and Herman
Hesse.
I have always had a passion for the roots of things: it is
not by chance that I love plants, flowers, nature and, when
I read on music, I prefer to read texts on the “origins”
such as the books of Mithen, Adorno and Rosen.
I believe in the truthfulness of art, and live thinking that
nothing else can be more important. But, I believe that I
am not very original in this, since there have been at least
two, three thousand philosophers of human history who were
here before me."
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