Composizione a Due is the first composition I wrote. It’s a work for trombone and five double basses, created while I was still a student at the Pesaro Conservatory. The trombone part, however, can be played by any other instrument, as long as the performer can move freely around the room while playing.
Five double basses are positioned around the audience, with a conductor at the center, and play a precisely written score. The spatial arrangement is considered in the score to generate spatial effects that must be clearly perceived by the audience. The solo instrument, on the other hand, has an aleatory score, with intervention times set for each section but random and independent of the double basses. At first, its interventions are quite discreet, but then as the piece progresses, they become increasingly intrusive. The soloist’s function is to disrupt the performance, which in the double bass part is a rigorous score with shifting timbres and chords that vary precisely over time. And so the trombonist enters and exits the room noisily, emitting sounds that have little to do with the context of the performance, causing confusion among the audience.
The piece was performed only once, in the spring of 1975, in the Pedrotti Hall of the Pesaro Conservatory by a group of Conservatory students directed by Giampiero Taverna.