projects

3e32 Naufragio di terra
Music-drama for 7 witnesses and mixed chorus
(on the Earthquake, 6 April 2009, L’Aquila)
Texts based on testimony collated by Guido Barbieri
with fragments from Hölderlin, Shelley, Voltaire
Concept, dramaturgy and staging by Guido Barbieri
Commission: Società Aquilana dei Concerti B. Barattelli
First performance: 28-4-2012, Basilica di Collemaggio, L’Aquila
Ready Made Ensemble, Corale L’Aquila, Coro L.Sabatini di Albano
Gianluca Ruggeri (conductor)
Publisher: Rai Trade
Duration: 50’ca


Schema
One of the most symbolic ancient earthquakes in Western civilisation is a cyclical, recurring earthquake which for centuries made churches, both Eastern and Western, "quake": the terraemotum that represented the liturgical climax of the Tenebrae.
The Office of the Tenebrae, in ancient Christian tradition, required that, in Holy Week, on the evenings of Wednesday, Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, in the presbytery of the principal church, fifteen candles be lighted on a large triangular candelabrum. At the conclusion of each Psalm, one of the fifteen candles would be extinguished, so that the consecrated space passed slowly from light to darkness. The last candle, at the apex of the candelabrum, would be carried behind the altar after the singing of the Benedictus, to reappear again, still lighted, only at the conclusion of the earthquake that recalled the death of Christ.
Each of the candles represents a "witness", an exemplum that recapitulates the universal significance of the Parousia, i.e. the coming of Christ into the world: a progress paradigmatically per aspera. The extinguishing of each 'attendant' candle represents a piece of evidence to be challenged, a sort of obstacle standing between the faithful and their faith.
Only at the end of the progression, just a moment before darkness, does the descent into the lower regions seem to halt, allowing us to glimpse a faint halo of light: the very last remnant of hope is in fact embodied in the majestic candle that, even removed from the sight of the faithful, persists in burning. It is precisely during this suspension of time, at the moment when darkness is like a complete negative epiphany, that the earthquake erupts.
In the early Christian Church, the faithful would generally emphasise this phase of the liturgy by violently banging a series of everyday objects — pots, pans, cutlery, hammers, scythes, anvils — as an acoustic representation of the tragedy.

The candelabrum from the office of the Tenebrae, as reproposed by 3e32 Naufragio di terra, will be represented by seven witnesses, actual survivors of the catastrophe, who will, by their exact placement in the performance space of the basilica, assume the form of a giant candelabrum. Their voices represent the tongues of flame that burn and are then extinguished. Each story ends with a cadential formula, which is the same for everyone:
"At 3.32 A.M. on the 6th of April 2009 the earth split open beneath him."
It is the signal for leaving the "stage" and disappearing behind the altar.

Composition
The dramaturgy, as Guido Barbieri has conceived it, recalls the disciplined sound of choral prayer, a solemn symbolic vocal celebration. At the same time it presents the almost tactile concreteness of the speaking voice that recounts and bears witness to the affliction of the earthquake.
But Naufragio di terra also evokes the whistling of the wind, the violent upheaval of clods of earth, the toppling of houses, objects and people, and present desolation.
It is a memory transformed into music, made up of extreme contrasts, ranging from the silence that penetrates the interior of the basilica, making the faint flames flicker on their candles, to the thundering rumble the faithful reproduce in order to represent the earthquake and exorcise the darkness that descends as the candle flames are progressively put out.
The Basilica of Santa Maria di Collemaggio, built in the 1200s and restored in 2010, gives witness to both the continuity of tradition and the tragic discontinuity engendered by the earthquake, through the gutting of the interior, particularly in the area of the altar. This damage is left painfully visible by the restoration: the octagonal piers are propped up by yellow supporting bands, the pointed arches of the side aisles have been taken over by shiny metallic tubular scaffolding, the ruined ceiling is now patched with thin transparent plates through which one can see the sky and hear atmospheric sounds and the creaking of the architectural 'prosthesis', generating a new, now acoustic instability.

The choruses are called upon to represent the moments just before and after 3.32 A.M. on the 6th of April 2009, the hellish instant in which everything was turned upside down, the "shipwreck on dry land" which we experience as spectators, terrified but safe.
Each narrative spoken by a witness involves a different placement of the choir singers, who at times invade the performance space of the basilica, or strike symbolic attitudes, or instead move about like a surging crowd of animals in flight, now hidden, now visible to the audience. Their voices are a connecting link, a suspension bridge between the witnesses and the public: they listen and react, and with their sighs and cries, their laments and prayers, they portray the scenes summoned up by the survivors.
As performers they bang themselves and also a variety of metal and whistling objects they are carrying in their hands: they are like people seized by panic, caught in the tension of their own personal earthquake and in the liturgical one as well, the symbolic and cathartic terraemotum at the conclusion of the Office, before the final darkness as the ancient portal of the basilica is thrown open to let the light and the wind have their say.

Basilica di Collemaggio (foto Marco Innamorati)