Kugelförmigkeit by Francesca Gaza

Kugelförmigkeit establishes a particular relationship, a sort of counterpoint between a modernist distrust arising from the consciousness of the passage of time, and a romantic yearning for the repose that can be found in unity and stasis.
The unusual configuration of instruments is woven into an imaginary spherical space where the proximity of present, past and future is explored.

The concept of “Kugelförmigkeit der Zeit”, the spherical shape of time, was firstly used by the German post-modern composer Bernd Alois Zimmermann around the 1950s, who used this image to describe the inexistence of timely distance between historical eras and styles.

It gave me the impulse to combine what is perceived to be stylistically afar by proving the actual proximity of it.
The question for what is consonant and what is not, what is coherent and what is a pastiche.
Might merging contrasts give life to something aware of the past, respectful of the present and impatient for the future?
The music I wrote wanted to reveal a sympathetic connection between seemingly disparate principles, fusing instruments and techniques from Renaissance, Baroque, Jazz and Experimental Music into a coherent genre-defying musical microcosmos. The individual sound character of each instrument with its historical density is crucial for the body of sound as a whole and the criteria to decide what would influence the music lied in the affect (affetto) that the techniques and structures convey.
The cohesion and symbiosis that occurs by letting different forms of art be influenced by each other, is mesmerizingly rich and included several artists,
Consequently, other artists, apart from Zimmermann, who have addressed the complexities of the form of time in their way, have influenced the body of work, such as T.S. Eliot, O. Messiaen, G. Boccaccio, O. di Lasso, G. de Machaut, L. Carroll, G. Klein, L. Blaga, A. Pärth, C. Gesualdo, and others.
What has led to the musical understanding we have nowadays?
Gaining an understanding of the development of harmonic rules, counterpoint and form throughout musical history was a focal point of interest. The question for what is consonant and what is not, and the fight for acceptance of new methods, is an ever-present concern. The more we move away from the Renaissance and early Baroque era towards the more traditionally classical era, the less the form stays malleable and fluid and becomes more structural but also enriched by the other parameters. What is the content and what is the container? Which one stays, which one is replaced? The periodicity with which musicologists and critics where condemning either the abandonment of certain criteria or encouraging the renunciation to the security of the past for future-loving dynamism is inspiring and still a very contemporary concern. Through the reiteration of historical periods, one earns more solidity in the ocean of variables that one encounters as people and hence as musicians with such strong historical conditioning and baggage of the past that we all carry with us. It is not my intention at all to make a break with the compositional traditions but to observe, as tradition is carried forward to produce something new and assure the continuity of creation.
Kugelförmigkeit was born out of natural sympathy for the body of melodic tendencies, for the vocal style and musical language which I came to admire more and more in the periods of Renaissance and Baroque and combine it with my rooted background in Jazz.
The music was composed against the background of this year's global pandemic as a meditation on the relationship between time and men.
The main themes are the preoccupation and ongoing effort about time and its relation to what is timeless as well as how the individual relates to the past and the future and the impossibilities that arise once one gains consciousness of time. There is a young moment where one literally "lives in time" before gaining an awareness of its passing but despite the moment of disillusion, we are still able to believe in the poetic surprise that lies in the mystery of tomorrow.

Francesca Gaza (*1995) is an Italian/German singer, composer and pianist with romanian roots currently living in Basel, Switzerland.
As a bandleader, sidewoman and arranger she is working extensively in Jazz, Antique, Classical, Pop and Theater music and is part of both Basel's and Florence's vibrant art scene, regularly performing and collaborating with musicians from across Europe.

francescagaza.com