To slightly misquote that great British conductor, Sir Thomas Beecham, I may not understand much about contemporary music but I like the sound a lot of it makes.

When one thinks of Lucca and music Puccini clearly comes to the forefront: Giacomo Puccini Jr. that is, since the composer of three of the ten most frequently performed operas in the world came at the end of a long line of musicians like many other composers: J. S. Bach, for example.

In his life-time Puccini was considered avant-garde, particularly in the use of whole-tone scales (‘Madama Butterfly’), exotic orchestration (‘Turandot’) and clashing dissonances ‘(La Fanciulla’, ‘Tosca’) and also in his musical structures. Puccini must, indeed, have sounded a very progressive composer when first heard and still does today if one listens to him with fresh ears. Among Puccini’s admirers for example was Anton Webern.

Today Lucca continues to preserve its open-minded approach to modern music, particularly through ‘Cluster’, its association for contemporary composers. Cluster’s president and founder member is Francesco Cipriano, also a fine composer, brilliant pianist and editor of the on-line review of music events in Lucca province ‘Luccamusica’ of which I curate the English version – See http://www.luccamusica.it/language/en/).

Cluster also has its facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/CLUSTERcomposers/ .

There was a time when current music seemed to me to be largely of the ‘crash, bang, wallop’ variety. (I mention no composers’ names in this regard). Happily, in today’s scene, anything goes so long, of course, as it is well-crafted and genuinely meant. Sonority is the name of the game and the sound of music can range from sparse minimalism to lush romanticism.

Today, there’s no such thing as an old-fashioned modern composer as such greats as Vaughan-Williams and Finzi used to be called in their time. If one feels like writing a hummable melody that’s fine. Reminiscences of past composers may be collaged, the variety of instrumental combinations knows no limits, and melodic forms create ever new varieties. It’s important to realise that music, like any other art does not progress in the way say astro-physics does. Music creates new knowledge of organised sounds by a sort of ever-changing fruition borne of the landscape in which its seeds are planted. Musical creation is like a garden where great compositions are born from careful pruning and grafting of existing varieties of plants to create new species.

The amazing varieties of contemporary music are nowhere better seen that in the series of ‘Cluster’ concerts which I’ve already listed in my post at https://longoio3.com/2018/04/13/luccas-new-cluster-music-season/

I recently attended this Cluster concert by the Aurora Ensemble:

As a picture can describe an infinitesimal number of words I will spare you the ‘Hans Killer’ (remember ‘Private Eye?)  approach to wordless functional analysis of the music I heard and just recommend you to attend any other of the Cluster concerts when in Lucca and let your ears enter into the often astounding sonorities of contemporary music.

To take one example of how appealing music written in our time I’ll post an excerpt of Francesco Cipriano’s composition called ‘waterfalls’.  Over an ostinato, descriptive of the flow of water and also with an alusion to Chopin’s ‘Revolutionary study op10.2), arpeggiando cascades begin to descend in brilliant, almost canonic-like, sequences. Then it appears to me that the music focuses on what in my mind’s eye is a description of a tropical pool such as we have come across in Saint Lucia where the turbulent falls resolve themselves into a jungle-shaded tranquillity, not without a hint of a samba rhythm,  where the lianas are filled with mysterious species.

Anyway chacun a son gout; but there are so many musical tastes to savour in a relatively small city like Lucca that one is truly spoilt for choice!

(Participants and sponsors in the concert I attended. Maestro Cipriano is third from the right)