Mauro Lanza & Andrea Valle: Systema Naturae

Schallfeld Ensemble

It is as if you have walked into a car mechanic’s workshop: a network of different gadgets sprawled around and between the performers’ feet. As the ear unravels the twisted tangle of acoustic threads of the ensemble, the eye discovers that what is on the floor are not mere trinkets, but a carefully entangled nexus of computer-controlled mechanical and prepared instruments.

Systema Naturae is about discovery. It is a meditation on the process, rather than the act. It depicts the ways in which we classify, organise and most importantly give name to the minutiae of the natural world. The project draws inspiration from two traditions: phantasmagorical catalogues of animals, plants, and minerals, such as the medieval bestiaries, herbariums and lapidariums, and Linnaeus’ taxonomy exhibited in his work Systema Naturae.

Each composition in the cycle is structured as a catalogue: a collection of short pieces with fictitious Latin names thematises individual branches of nature or natural sciences. Through a four-part “play” – Regnum Animale (2013), Regnum Vegetabile (2014), Regnum Lapideum (2016) and Fossilia (2016/17) – Mauro Lanza and Andrea Valle created a vast, wide-open metaphor of the world that reflects our own histories of observation and categorisation. Through an amalgam of medieval imagination and rational classification, the cycle explores the way in which history and modernity can coexist in sound.

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Composer Mauro Lanza was born in Venice, Italy. He is known for combining classical instruments with unconventional sources of sound such as toys, sound machines, and different found objects. His music is also often used in interdisciplinary projects such as dance and video-opera.

Andrea Valle is a composer and researcher from the University of Turin, whose work combines computer programming and analogue instruments. For example, in the project Vedute della luna scritte in Braille, he uses the hybrid instrument Rumentarium, which he built and programmed himself, to create a piece based on Galileo’s descriptions of the Moon's surface, in which motors, tins and various found objects produce unusual, weightless sounds.

The Schallfeld Ensemble is a contemporary music ensemble based in Graz, known for their innovative concert formats and collaborations with young composers. Founded in 2013, the ensemble brings together musicians from eight countries who combine chamber precision with live electronics and improvisation.

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Schallfeld Ensemble:
Zinajda Kodrič, flute
Helene Kenyeri, oboe
Cristian Molina Avila, clarinet
Matej Bunderla, saxophone
Simon Klavžar, percussion
Patrick Skrilecz, piano
Samuel Toro Pérez, guitar
Lorenzo Derinni, violin
Francesca Piccioni, viola
Myriam García Fidalgo, cello

Davide Gagliardi, sound design
Andrea Valle, electromechanical devices and scenography

Mauro Lanza and Andrea Valle: Systema Naturae

           Regnum animale, for violin, viola, cello and electromechanical devices
     Regnum vegetabile, for flute, oboe, clarinet, violin, viola, cello and electromechanical devices
   Regnum lapideum, for flute, saxophone, percussion, piano, guitar, viola, cello and electromechanical devices
   Fossilia, for flute, oboe, clarinet, saxophone, percussion, piano, guitar, violin, viola, cello and electromechanical devices

supported by the Austrian Cultural Forum and Italian Cultural Institute