Alberto Alassio

9 December 1983

Italy

BEMBE

“This piece is built on two elements: a bembe, whitch is an Afro-Cuban rhythm,  and the computer-assisted composition. As I have been  studying  and  using  computer-assisted  composition  software  lately,  here  I have tried not to use it but somehow to manually give the idea of a score generated by a computer  that  acts  on  the  given  rhythm  like  a  cellular  automata,  maybe  two  cellular automata,  having  here  de  facto  two  different  voices.  There  are  plenty  of  counterpoint techniques being used and sometimes, when there are none left, the music just stands still as if it was rotating on itself, not being able to go further. Near the end of the piece, there is a section in which the sustain pedal is used for the whole time;  this part should represent the image  of  an  overloaded  system  that  is  trying  to  start  again  with  its  initial  algorithm  and when it's obvious that it isn't able to continue anymore it slowly fades away, finishing to express the instructions which had already been given.”