CHE BELLA COSA
fl (picc), ob, cl, bsn, hn, tpt, trbn, kbd
Duration: 13:30
Date of Composition: 1990
PROGRAM NOTES:
The octet, Che Bella Cosa, (“What a beautiful thing”), comes from my love and interest in that art which primarily addresses the problem of beauty and only secondarily the endless 20th-century questions of technique, stylistic development in history, information systems, probability, statistics, etc. Thus, it was written “out of my head’ (with the right side of the brain telling the left side what to put down on the music paper), without methods, charts, or pre-compositional consideration. I only knew that I wanted to compose for synthesizer and winds because I like those sounds.
The title is from the famous song O Sole Mio, which was once touted as ‘the most beautiful melody in the world.’ The five notes that accompany the words ‘che bella cosa’ (similar to the beautiful descending flute line in the slow movement of Sibelius’s Fifth Symphony) found their way into the trumpet part about one quarter of the way into the piece.
The mood (and light) of this music, Latin, Mediterranean, was suggested to me by the tragic death of my friend from Florence, Gian Paolo Principe, a singer, composer, artist, clown – a commedia dell’arte figure, really. Thus, the Italian title, the Neapolitan song, the Mediterranean feel, and the sad trumpet solo at the end. To Gian Paolo’s memory Che Bella Cosa is dedicated.
-James Sellars