Lucia Ronchetti’s four-year position as Venice Music Biennale art director comes to an end with a Festival rich beyond any expectation: taking place over sixteen days, Absolute Music is a collection of concerts and lectures that will show the meaning of music as self-sufficient language and the ontological nature of sound. We will learn about the state of the art of this alchemic, totalizing discipline and walk into the workshop of some of the most rigorous, inventive composers and performers as they churn out scores, programmes, coding – all without any extra-musical or visual references. The Biennale will comprise ten sections, one of which is purely theoretical: conferences, meetings, round tables, lectures in cooperation with the Biennale’s Historical Archive of Contemporary Arts will investigate the speculative features of music, the relationship between musical tempo and the phenomenology of listening, the cognitive and hermeneutical issues in the production and enjoyment of new music, and the essential philosophical issue of the meaning of music and its linguistic, communicational language. To the traditional European matrix of written contemporary music, founded upon the development of music as an autonomous discipline, the Biennale added the vast repertoire of electronic music and improvisational music, helped by increasingly sophisticated recording technology. At Absolute Music, we will meet influential protagonists of the global electronic and digital music scene as well as performers and improvisers in the field of experimental jazz who will showcase the digital processing and treatment in all phases of creation, production, performance, distribution, and listening of music. Ronchetti’s three earlier Biennales all focused, in some way, on non-absolute music: in 2021, text and word; in 2021, theatre; in 2023, digital technology. Her last Biennale will instead focus on this precise distinction, fully aware that the ‘absolute music’ category Bienmay help us build new, unusual, original trajectories, such that they can embrace Luca Francesconi, Unsuk Chin, and Beat Furrer as standard-bearers of new symphony and involve certain areas of research jazz as a legitimate foray into the vast territories of contemporary music. They will cast light on the persistence of counterpoint and find exceptions to the old theorem that says that voice is incompatible with absolute music. In the end, the ten sections of the Biennale are a divertissement and, at the same time, a playful attempt to integrate, connect, analogize, work on exceptions, build common paths, pair masterpieces with debut works who one day might be, and light up a few flames here and there—they might not burn forever, but they may illuminate our path for a while…

The idea of ‘absolute music’ will be central in the upcoming Venice Music Biennale, as has been central in the passage from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century. The nineteenth century saw absolute music coming about for the first time – music that was freed from any outside references and grew into a central element in the affirmation of a collective consciousness, of a national and European culture. Why did you pick this essential theme for your 2024 Venice Music Biennale?
I wanted to tell the story of musical creativity from different points of view, with the greatest possible openness in terms of techniques and styles, all while keeping a vital link with the history of Venetian music and musical institutions. I wanted to establish a deep bond between the Music Biennale and the City of Venice, such that the audience that is interested in music will feel more involved. The 1500s-era Venetian school, thanks to theorists Zarlino and Vicentino and important composers and instrumentalists who worked in San Marco like Andrea Gabrieli and Claudio Merulo, built the compositional and performative base of instrumental music’s expressive autonomy, a kind of music that is free from any textual underpinning and presents itself as a generation of sound shapes projected into soundspace. Thanks to this laboratory of compositional research that Venice hosted for centuries, music generated masterpieces of instrumental art: speculative, virtuoso- worthy, not in need of any textual or programmatic intentionality. An example would be Vivaldi’s Estro Armonico released in 1711, which will be in the Biennale’s programme. The term ‘absolute music’ was coined by Wagner in 1846 to define its very impossibility, a mirage quality of music. Over time, it became a goal of composers, some of whom became the greatest alive. In this sense, the Biennale collects several trends of modern pure music elaborations by musicians and composers in the fields of contemporary written music, electronic music, jazz, DJ techniques, and AI-based research, highlighting that part of contemporary musical production that is independent of artistic hybridization, but aims as using a non-verbal language – like that of sounds – in communicational and exciting fashion.

The choirs of the 2021 edition and the musical theatre of the 2022 edition, last year’s digital music, and absolute music today: a programme that embraces compositions by young authors with those by artists who made history in the late 1900s (Grisey, Benjamin, Rihm…) Overall, it seems that there is a sort of general plan made of connections, references, assonance. Is it so?
The four themes of the last four Biennales complement one another, because they highlight different aspects of modern music composition and draw a possible map of sound-based creativity. I purposefully avoided to list in our programme any large work of the historical avant-garde because I think they’re well-known enough. I focused our efforts, including financial efforts, on more recent creative milieus that demand our attention. What we are looking at is a multi-style, multi-technological panorama that aims to be global, though of course is limited to my own blind spots. For this reason, it is important that another art director continue this research. Diversity breeds knowledge and culture.

We don’t want you to pick sides, but is there any moment of the past Biennales that moved you more than others? If so, why?
As part of an audience, I learned to appreciate the extraordinary compositional poetics that electronic music can generate in the hands of refined composers and programmers of the last generation, like sound installation Weather Gardens by English artist Louis Braddock Clarke and A Conversation Between a Partially Educated Parrot and a Machine, an exquisite work of performative electronic music by Canadian composer Estelle Schorpp. I found myself surprised and touched by the performances and installations of two enlightened composers and programmers: Marcus Schmickler and Paul Hauptmeier, though also Elena Tulve’s Sacra rappresentazione performed at the Cappella Marciana at St. Mark’s.

The Venice Music Biennale’s idea contrasts all prejudices on contemporary music and all lamentations on the detachment of music and audience. It all seems so vital, so lively. New generations and the cultural production industry seem enthusiastic and self-sustaining. Is it so? Or is it just the beauty of the Biennale dazzling us?
The Venice Music Biennale is a great institution that, on its own, represents a cultural production environment that is able to create excellent working conditions for composers and performers in every field. I maintain that it is an example to be followed. In this sense, we saw musicians, composers, programmers that are happy to have the possibilities the Biennale offers them, the places and installations, the creativity of the teams that supported equally the up-and-coming artists at Biennale College and established artists like Brian Eno, Christina Kubisch, Elena Tulve, Francesca Verunelli, John Zorn, David Lang. This year, we are looking forward to offering memorable musical experiences to Salvatore Sciarrino, Hristina Susak, Miles Walter, just to name a few. If artists are happy and satisfied of these possibilities then audience and critics will surely sympathize with them and understand how exciting it is to make this original, beautiful music.

We’d like to find out more about your take on the Venice Music Biennale as a complex organizational machine in terms of production and management. Scouting, projects, contacts, relationships with composers, performers, agents. Your criteria to pick commissioners, to run your budget, communication, logistics… surely, you cannot just improvise the Biennale.
This is my first important experience as an art director after Mary Angela Schroth’s and my Festival Animato in Rome. Many paths in this articulated machine are taken care of by the Biennale main office, whose staff positively supported me in my organizational choices. As far as art direction goes, it took a lot of study, and for each topic, I analysed the literature and international research published over the last ten years with the help of libraries such as the one at the Berlin Institute for Advanced Study, where I took up a residency, and our own amazing Historical Archive at the Biennale. I must extend my thanks to all my friends: curators, musicologists, and critics, who helped me in my research with books and articles. One thing I know is that an art director must always be current and active in their field, even academically. I made mistakes – I know that, too – but I gave my all, and I learned so much.

The Music Biennale College is an investment – what returns are we looking at?
Very positive ones, there’s no doubt about that. We were overwhelmed by the number of applications: 408 from 52 countries, all composers and performers under the age of thirty. So many important resumes, impressive projects, talent, intelligence, preparation, and positivity. It was very hard to choose among the several applicants. The ten we eventually picked are making a wonderful job under the guide of exceptional tutors: composers Luca Francesconi and David Lang, cellist Eva Boecker, violist Megumi Kasakawa, drummers Brian Archinal and Federico Tramontana, pianist Bertran Chamayou, producer and playwright Hervé Boutry, composer and sound engineer Thierry Coduys.

What will your next adventure be?
I will go back to composition full-time. I will be working on two large jobs, compositions commissioned by big European institutions that will keep me busy for at least four years, and I will also give composition classes at the Salerno Conservatory, which allows me to keep an active social role in our world.

Featured image: Courtesy La Biennale di Venezia, ph. Andrea Avezzù