La lontananza nostalgica utopica futura

La lontananza is the result of Nono's collaboration with renowned violinist Gidon Kremer, who had premiered a number of contemporary and avant-garde compositions at the time. Nono and Kremer first met a year prior, in March 1987, in Freiburg, after a common acquaintance, Charlotte Geselbracht, had taken Kremer to Venice, Nono's hometown, one month prior, so they could meet for the first time. Nono promised to send drafts and sketches to Kremer so he could practice and learn the piece during the summer of 1988. Kremer, however, received no score until two days before the premiere, on August 31, when Kremer decided to travel to Berlin to meet Nono in person. Upon meeting, Kremer could listen to the tapes but only have a gander at a few fragments in some scraps of paper. After promising once more to give him the full score the following day, Kremer was presented with two pages of the score in the morning of September 1, and would complete the rest of the violin part during the remaining hours of the day. The score was complete and handed to Kremer at the Philharmonie at 6 p. m. and amounted to 9 whole sides of manuscript paper. The word "caminantes" is taken from a poem by Antonio Machado included in his book Campos de Castilla. The fragment, which Nono first saw on the wall of a cloister in Toledo, reads: "Caminante, no hay caminos, hay que caminar" (Traveller, there are no ways, but we must go). The piece was published by Casa Ricordi in 1989 and the authoritative recording was released posthumously in 1992 by Deutsche Grammophon. == Structure ==

The piece takes between forty minutes and one hour to perform, although the score specifies that it should have a duration of 45 minutes. It is scored for a solo violin and eight magnetic tapes. A performance also requires eight to ten music stands, located in many different places on stage as well as amongst the audience seating area. Nono specified that La lontananza is not "in any circumstance a concerto for solo and accompaniment", Tapes 3 and 4, however, have a definite structure, with five elaborations of one initial fragment lasting for about twelve seconds. This fragment consists of a slow melody on the IV string, played with the wood of the bow, with accents and sforzato intersparsed, joining dialogues and sounds such as exclamations, coughing and laughs, as well as ambient noises, such as the studio door opening and closing. This "assembled pseudo-working session" is specifically designed to resemble a live recording studio, upon which Nono later made repetitions with modifications. Tracks 5 and 6 feature other miscellaneous sounds prominently, i. e., sounds that do not come from the violin. Here, Nono mixes voices, conversations, coughs, laughs, and other electric sounds, such as metallic resonances, buzzes, bangs on doors, etc. The two tapes are constructed using a recognizable pattern that is 20 seconds long. Spatialization is present in these two tracks, as Nono was very concerned with the spatial movements within the tapes. Tapes 7 and 8, finally, follow the same formal structure as tapes 3 and 4. The tapes consist of an initial fragment that is around 12 seconds long and five reinterpretations and elaboration on the same original material. This initial material, however, can only be inferred, as each one of the repetitions rearrange the order of elements, the layers, and the dynamic settings of each element. After the first presentation of the fragment, the listener hears a gradual process of deformation which renders the end result hard to decipher. == Recordings ==

Authoritative version The revised version was recorded with Gidon Kremer in December 1990, in Laufen, Switzerland. Nono, who died a few months prior, was unable to supervise the recording himself and, because of this, Sofia Gubaidulina was in charge of supervising and re-arranging the tape together with Kremer. The recording was released by Deutsche Grammophon in 1992, together with "Hay que caminar" soñando. Other recordings The following is an incomplete list of recordings of the piece as of 2024: • Violinist Irvine Arditti and composer André Richard recorded the piece in December 1991 at the Experimental Studio of the Heinrich Strobel Foundation. The recording was released on CD by Montaigne in a series dedicated to the Arditti Quartet. • Violinist Clemens Merkel and sound engineer Wolfgang Heiniger also made a recording that was released on CD in 2001 by Edition Wandelweiser. • Violinist Melisse Mellinger and composer and dedicatee Salvatore Sciarrino also recorded the piece between July 3 to 6, 2001, at the Westdeutscher Rundfunk. The recording was released on CD by Kairos in 2003. • Violinist Tiziana Pintus and sound engineer Hans van Eck made a recording that was released on CD and digital download on May 26, 2013 by Sub Rosa. • Violinist Marco Fusi and composer Pierluigi Billone recorded the piece in March 6 and 7, 2020, in Brussels, Belgium. The recording was released on CD by Kairos in September 2020. == References ==