Earth Air Water Fire Ether

Alessandro Quarta brings his music to the five elements, transforms them and makes them his own, brings the quintessence of nature in concert, in the wonder of the union of music and nature, so that art can also take care of our world. The Five Elements is the new project of Alessandro Quarta, accompanied by Giuseppe Magagnino on piano and an ensemble. It is music without space-time boundaries, without limits of genre or style. The Salento musician’s creative process is a succession of visions where notes replace words. Imagine Terra as a lady whose voice, a wistful waltz in a violin solo, is that of an old woman carrying millions
of years on her shoulders. Follows Water, born from an image linked to a place very dear to the musician: “the Mediterranean’s most important gateway to the East, Otranto is the city of Italy furthest east, the first to see the sun rise and where at five o’clock in the morning you smell the sea and see a sky tinged with red, towards the East… Acqua begins on the notes of a Middle Eastern theme on cellos. It all starts in the desert of Africa from a drop of water that before becoming a sea is a stream then a river finally a stormy, wonderful sea. Then, like a rewind, the tape rewinds to return to
origins…” Air, a seemingly invisible element, is breath, wind, hurricane. Three chords, three motifs: E minor, G major, B major.

We recognize the “seventeenth-century” style of dense, complex writing: a three-voice fugue, progressions in the manner of Vivaldi… Fire begins with a Cuban tango. It is the fire of eros that fuels life, sexuality. It is the most overwhelming moment in the entire work. The Cuban tango then becomes an increasingly swirling, paroxysmal, fiery waltz that at its climax literally explodes the audience into an irrepressible ovation.
And then Ether, a concluding piece that suggests an icy heath. It evokes peace, tranquility, but the stillness lasts only a moment and the music picks up again until the end of the work. In Aristotelian physics, the first constituents of the Earth were the four Elements: Air, Earth, Fire, Water; and they were also for many cultures around the world; to
these were added a fifth: Ether or Quintessence, a pure element assimilable to Spirit, capable of insufflating life, that is, “the life force
preservative of the memory of forms,” the substance of the Anima Mundi. The mystery science present behind the theory of the Elements considers man as part of nature, which is why the Elements would be outside, but also inside us, and among all art forms music is surely the one that has the closest relationship with nature and science in general. The mere fact of being “air,” existing as an emission of sound waves and being intangible matter made only of frequencies and timbres, makes it difficult to classify.
Music, and especially singing, its first and natural instrument, was conceived precisely as an emulation of the sounds of nature and used for propitiatory ceremonies and celebration of natural events. With music people celebrated the end of winter and the return of the sun as well as wished for good harvests and good hunting. Music was then always used as an instrument of prayer to the Gods, who, personifications of nature itself, were called Ceres or Cybele or Gaea, the primal goddess of the earth.
Alessandro Quarta brings his music to the five elements, transforms them and makes them his own, preceded by a Prologue-The Creation; he brings the quintessence
of nature in concert, in the wonder of the union of music and nature, so that art can also take care of our world. Water said, Flow, do not stagnate. Life is constant movement, it does not stand still.
Fire said, Transform, do not stand still. Life is a fire, a constant crackling.
Air said: Free yourself, melt, detach yourself from everything that prevents you from being and fly free. Life is a sigh, a breath, a moment.
The Earth said: Rise, elevate your branches and bloom. Life contains the mystery of every seed and the ancient wisdom of all forests.
Ether, through the heart, said: Open, expand and love. Love all that your infinite soul embraces. Life, if it does not contain and is not contained in love, is not life.

A.L. Marquéz

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