- ritorno dal nulla [return from nothingness]
- danza degli uomini spenti [dance of dead men]
- come il vento sospinge le foglie secche [like the wind blows dry leaves]
non vogliono, camminano draws its inspiration from a passage in Primo Levi’s Se questo è un uomo [If this is a man], which describes the music and soundscape of the concentration camp. The title and movement titles are drawn from this text and correspond in a loosely programmatic fashion to the music. There is a certain beauty in the collisions of culture and catastrophe, in the extremes of things that meet, from the breaths of a slowly waking man to the crashing chords of the marching band, and it was this beauty that fascinated me.
Premiered as part of the University of Manchester’s Student Showcase of new works on May 12th 2008 at the Martin Harris Centre for Music and Drama, Manchester.