No Verticals (2022) · for alto saxophone
composed for and premiered by Alberto Cavallaro at Festival Mixtur
premiered on 09.10.2022, Escola Superior de Música de Catalunya (ESMUC), Barcelona (ES)
instrumentation: Alto Sax.
duration: 2'15''
notes: the title No Verticals comes from a stage direction in Samuel Beckett’s Breath, where he instructs that some random objects should be placed on stage: “Rubbish. No verticals, all scattered and lying." This image of horizontality became the conceptual seed for the work — a music that inhabits a space of stillness and suspension, filled with a quiet sense of ritual. The sound stays closed and far away, but flexible and flowing. Three recurring figures form the structure of the piece: the transition from a single tone to a multiphonic, alternating between expansion and contraction; the breath-like sound of air, often serving as a threshold between registers; and a high, unstable bisbigliando, adding brief flashes of light to the darker atmosphere.