The composition of Experience in the Musical-Holistic Art of Dario Buccino

Nowadays music is no longer exclusively a performative art: as in the case of electronic music, it can also be produced completely by means of technology, without the live bodily action of an instrumentalist. With respect to this aesthetic paradigm, the Italian composer Dario Buccino (Rome, 1968) does exactly the opposite, creating a music which is even hyper-performative, in that it increases to the highest degree the requirements regarding the performing subject's awareness and free intentionality, and minimizes (human) automaticity. To this end he has developed an original notation system, with many graphical ad hoc solutions, where musical symbols are integrated with indications about the proprioceptive attitude and the physical actions of the performer (often kindred to those of experimental theatre, dance, and body art), above all about the experiences to be felt when playing. Buccino goes farther on the way of Karlheinz Stockhausen's "intuitive music" (about 1968-70), Dieter Schnebel's Maulwerke (1968-74), Helmut Lachenmann's "musique concrète instrumentale", Brian Ferneyhough's extreme demand for effort, and radicalises an approach which instead is typical of other musical genres, where form at all levels arises in composition (often extemporaneous) from the singular physical relationship of the interpreter with the instrument.