Del maravigliarsi [2022]

for soprano and piano

duration :: 10’45”

First performance :: Ben Smith and Patricia Auchterlonie — Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (UK), 21 November 2022

In 1489, Leonardo da Vinci compiled, presumably for his own private reference, a list of open anatomical questions: uncertainties about the body and its workings, its affects, its processes, the way things linked together, the way things felt.

This setting of part of that list (“Which nerve is the cause of the motion of the eye so that the motion of one eye moves the other / of closing the eyelids / of opening the eyelids / of lowering the eyelids / of closing the eyes / of opening the eyes / of raising the nostrils / of opening the lips with the teeth shut / of pouting with the lips / of smiling / of astonishment”) is meant as an etude in openness, in submission to a cultivated lack of mastery, in being held productively in suspension everywhere all of the time, in not knowing what comes next or what will happen.