Aldo Clementi has been a central figure for the evolution of European New Music since the Fifties. A student of Alfredo Sangiorgi and Goffredo Petrassi, he began to build his own identity as a composer starting from post-Webem serialism coordinates, by elaborating the influence of both attending Darmstadt and acquiring technical skills thanks to the relationship with Bruno Madema. Deeply influenced by contemporary painting (especially by the “informal” art of Fautrier, Tapies, Tobey and Burri, but also by Perilli’s and Dorazio’s works), and by the relationship with John Cage (with whom he shared the passion for chess), Clementi has achieved, since the early Sixties, his own aesthetic, gradually shifting from the structuralist categories to a personal dimension and style. Since the Informel cycle, Clementi’s works feature complex and rigorous contrapuntal textures, resulting from graphic processes and designed to dissolve internal dialectics by saturating the sonic space. Continue reading →