MusMap takes a peek at what the members of the site are up to. In this first "Snapshot" we take a look at the Italian born and UK based composer Simone Spagnolo's new ballet, "Once You're Gone". See details about the upcomig performances in the MusMap Event Calendar; May 21st and June 6th.

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Can you tell us about this new ballet and how this project came about?

This is a first attempt of collaboration between me and the choreographer, Danielle Griffin.
We met through a university contact in the music department of the London Middlesex University. The ballet, both its music and choreography, are going to be performed for the first time as Danielle’s graduation final project on the 21st of May and then afterward it will participate to the London Oxford House festival on the 5th and 6th of July.

Me and Danielle have met actually few time during the ballet rehearsals and we have discussed mainly bout the ballet’s meaning and structure. It can be said that she had already the whole ‘plot’ in her mind and would have liked a music going along with it and enriching the message.

‘Once you’re gone’ aims to describe an ended love yet open to further loves. It is not a tragic drama, it rather aspires to suggest loving hope. This simple starting point is enriched by a dancing representation of diary notes. The choreography refers and expresses through the dance itself a list of feelings and memories coming from an old diary Danielle found. This diary, in the choreographer’s mind, might have been the source of the whole ballet, but I am not sure about this.

How was your approach to the music for the ballet? Were the methods you used very different from the way you usually work?

My approach to the composition is based upon those elements Danielle had in mind. The ballet is danced by five dancers and is mainly divided within two large sections. In the first one there is an alternations of dancing duos and trios which are referring to the love narrative. This section is accompanied in the music by an alternation of two different themes which symbolise the duos and trios happening in the choreography. The second section, shorter than the first, is depicts the diary memories. The choreography expresses this through simple and effective gestures rather than using conventional dance, while the music acts more introspectively leading to the ballet’s climax where all the similar and contrasting emotions and memories are combined in a rich contrapuntal texture.

From this and my previous experience I found the compositional approach different only from two particular points of view. The first definitely is dealing with timing. As for film music I had to calculate the timing and length of phrases and sections. These have to fit with dancers’ movements and gestures, and with the choreographer’s usage of duos, trios and tutti. It is for sure less strict than film music as the collaboration with the choreographer allows that, but timing is anyway an element that the composer has to strongly consider.
The other aspect that alters the compositional process is due to the fact that is not anymore one brain working on the outcome. The composer and the choreographer are both equally in charge of the product and both have to consider the other’s point of view, his comments and wishes to modify the other’s work. I found it a bit like a two persons’ composition where, almost a team work.
I believe this last point is not a difficult matter to solve. It is instead a great exercise that allows the composer to face its audience and working partners, providing those limits that enrich someone’s knowledge.

How much influence did you have on the structural aspects? Was it mainly up to you adjusting the music to choreographer's wishes for the structure of the piece?

I actually didn’t have much freedom at all in terms of structure. I had to model the music and its sections to her initial idea, which I liked very much straight away. Thus yes, she had special wishes and I already knew the structure when we first met.
However my artistic freedom is largely applied within the music itself: the choice of themes, their organizations and employment when constructing emotional meanings.
Probably the strongest artistic freedom is hidden within the harmonic structure as it is designed to create a fluent sense of pleasant instability due the narrative’s feelings and memories. The harmony is composed by a continuous subjects’ shifting by major fifths. This shifting occurs with a high density, every one or two bars. At the same time the given interval allows the music to modulate fluently with no particular emotional surprises. This process automatically creates an ongoing, endless and instable harmonic movement which never generates an harmonic target or a defined resolution. This effect aims to recall the relationship between the love’s past and future thoughts and the diary memories expressed through the dancers gestures. 

(Pictures taken at rehearsals for the ballet. (c) Simone Spagnolo 2008)