INTERVIEW WITH MARCO BETTA, composer of operas, symphonic and chamber music, works for the theater and cinema – Betta was artistic director of the Teatro Massimo, engaged for the past 30 years in composing music by bringing together the ancient Sicilian musical cultures with the main techniques of contemporary music.
Mark Betta he is a composer, he was born in Enna in 1964, where his father worked at that time, but already at the age of 9 he moved to Palermo where he began to study music, with a guitar given away by his uncles and this is how his love began for the art of sounds, an idyllic story that continues to this day.
At the age of 13 he is involved in the music his parents listened to, it was the 70s and the turntables were experiencing a golden moment for Rock, with Pink Floyd, the Beatles, Led Zeppelin and many other musical groups who, with their albums, entered in Italian homes in a historical period of complete social renewal, it was the years of the economic boom where even musical tastes were renewed. And this is how he began to re-read in a different way the music that belonged exclusively to the classical authors very dear to him.
At the age of 19 he graduated in composition at the Palermo Conservatory under the guidance of Eliodoro Sollima. He later perfected himself thanks to three masters whom he calls "fundamental compasses", Armando Gentilucci, Salvatore Sciarrino and Francesco Pennisi.
In 1982 he made his official entry to the Spaziomusica festival in Cagliari with "Triplum" music composed for two flutes and a cello. Her musical language seems fascinated by ancient polyphony and ancient Greece, where there are invisible sounds where a certain connection with popular culture appears alive, which re-emerges superfine and capable of enhancing a sound that is not heard.
A man who expresses an evident and subtle sensitivity for all violence and abuse towards society, or rather man, and this is how in 1992, to remember the victims at the station on August 2nd, he composed the music for a concert to be held in the Piazza Maggiore. His harmonies in this composition appear like sentences in a long letter from a writer discussing his time.
In 1993, like many other young people, he finds himself a spectator of a particular and very difficult period for Palermo, repeated political and mafia events that mark the history and memory of the Sicilian people. Marco remembers the explosion due to the assassination attempt on Borsellino, he was not far away and remembers that noise as a moment he will never forget. “It's like a never-before-heard sound that enters the brain and is placed in a file or, better still, a sound that marks a precise date on the calendar, a day that enters life and survives each passing day”. And it is the memory for the victims that lives in Marco and that often accompanies him also in his compositions, dedicated to his Sicily, to the people and to what makes his land a place rich in cultural and human capital but also very conflictual in a status social not always easy.
Among his compositions for music as a soundtrack for films we mention, Aldo Moro the President (2008), Le cose che resta (2010), Long live freedom (2013), Through the eyes of another, The manuscript of the Prince ; in the classical discography: La Mennullara, Le corde di Sicilo and the latest Opera for music and film by Robertò Andò, a sound reinterpretation taken from the famous painting "La Vucciria" by Renato Guttuso on texts by Andrea Camilleri, where the music together with the words accompany the images of the film with the actors Francesco Scianna and Giulia Andò, whose first performance was last February 7 for the inauguration of the 2015 symphonic season of the Teatro Massimo in Palermo.
Marco, can you suggest a principle that explains music?
"When I write alone, I'm like a writer and this is how I tell my time, because music is not translatable, a feeling or emotion that remains suspended, music evokes feelings as Steiner and Schopenhauer already said"
You compose music for different disciplines, Opera, Ballet, Film, Chamber, Stage music and more, what is it that inspires your complexity of translation or musical composition?
“A film script is in shadow and music is that part of expression that becomes light, because music is the sister of all the other arts. In the script of a play, whatever it is blends with the aspects of the others, and this is how the music pervades feelings and creates a different atmosphere”.
Leonardo da Vinci in the first part of the Book of Painting is dedicated to the "comparison of the arts". Leonardo compares painting with sculpture, music and poetry, defining music as the younger sister of poetry, what do you think is the connection?
Music is the soundtrack of poetry as a "melody - orchestra - harmony". Word and Music are always linked to each other and like a large diary of events with dates, moments, moods, or better still a large album of photographs that tell a silent story.
I find in you a great sensitivity made up of narrated images, a narrating composer who loves to surround himself with harmonies of great cultural depth, can I define your discography as "committed"?
“I have never thought about this term, I have always worked as a writer, with great passions and influenced by the places where I live, like everyone else, now I am in front of the window and in front of me I have a Palermo on a not too sunny day but in it is part of me”. There is music everywhere as there is light everywhere, each of us interprets it for his moment but it is always something infinite ”
What advice would you give to a young person who wishes to become a composer?
"The times we live in are terrible, it's a difficult period, but today we are in a new century and it will still be very long, so I see many ideas being born, there is the possibility of erasing the blackboard because the 900 is already past history and leaves us with a long hug. Young composers today find land destroyed as if by a great war, so they can build something truly new”.
A different and better future for music, I understand from your words?
“Today the train runs fast without ever stopping, but being on the run means breathing freedom, composition. The avant-gardes of the 900s are over, we have to see the future positively, there will be plenty of room for musical composition”.
With a see you soon, I conclude my beautiful dialogue with the composer, author not of operas but of a large book that collects the most beautiful music that the mind already keeps secretly and forever in that "album of Marco's photographs".
