Pietro Grossi, "Combinatoria"

This rather unusual anthology compiles the nascent works of pioneering electronic/computer composer Pietro Grossi and several of his contemporaries and collaborators. Unsurprisingly, the music assembled is often quite challenging, discordant, minimal, somewhat primitive, and historically important. Unexpectedly, however, several of these 40-year-old pieces sound like they could have been recorded today. I am not sure how much direct influence Grossi may have had on the contemporary electronic avant-garde scene (given the historic rarity of his recordings), but he certainly anticipated and explored many now-commonplace elements of extreme/outré music decades before the rest of the world caught on.

Die Schachtel

Pietro Grossi began his musical career as a celebrated cellist, but became fascinated by electronic music's potential in the late '50s and threw himself into it whole-heartedly.In 1963, he founded the S 2F M (Studio di Fonologia Musicale di Firenze) in Florence, which became both an educational center and a place for like-minded iconoclasts to record their spectacularly uncommercial music.That interest soon expanded into the composition of computer-based music in 1967, an ambition that later blossomed into the research and creation of very early music software.All of those activities made Pietro quite instrumental in the advancement of the music that he loved, even if his own recordings have fallen into relative obscurity.Pietro was not content with just being a cellist, professor, composer, and software designer though–he was also a rather unconventional and rigorous theorist and his ideas and ideals provided the foundation for many of the compositions included here.

The first half of this double-disc set is a bit of a broad-stroke overview of '60s Italian electronic music.Of the nine pieces, only the first three are by Grossi and all are excerpts from lengthier, highly conceptual pieces.The first two do not hold up particularly well today, but they were certainly quite forward-thinking and adventurous for their time, being among the earliest forays into sound installation, ambient music, and phase-shifting.The third piece, despite working with the same primitive technology, is markedly more complicated and rewarding however.As with all Grossi pieces, there is a very cerebral underpinning: "OM" is comprised of several overlapping and oscillating electronic permutations of patterns from Bach's "Musical Offering" performed by Grossi and his students.(Spoiler alert- it does not sound at all like Bach.)

The rest of the disc is rounded out by solo works of Grossi's students, colleagues, other composers who recorded at S 2F M, and two pieces recorded at Italy's other two electronic music centers (NPS and SMET).Obviously, given the time period, there is a very limited sonic palette available: nearly every piece is built upon slow-moving and sparse analog electronic tones.Despite that handicap, several of the pieces manage to achieve an impressive depth and complexity through discordant harmonies and quivering oscillation.Vittorio Gelmetti's soundtrack for Michelangelo Antonioni's "Red Desert" and SMET's "EL 25" are probably the most unsettling and accomplished of the lot, but NPS's "Interferenze 2 (1967)" is also quite striking–its final 30 seconds are essentially Merzbow.

The second disc is devoted entirely to Grossi, however, and focuses on his computer-based work.The sequencing is truly bizarre, but it is bizarre for a reason: Pietro had a firm belief that his works should remain "open," which meant that he encouraged other composers to elaborate upon them and envisioned music as a collective experience.Those ideas of flux and interactivity provide the structure for everything here: 22 pieces spanning from 1970 to 1985 are included and it is suggested that the listener use the "shuffle" function to "create infinite variations."Also, several of the pieces are themselves variations and permutations upon works by other composers (Scarlatti's "Sonata 119" and Bach's "The Art of The Fugue").

As a whole, I found the second disc to be somewhat exhausting and markedly less rewarding than the first, but several individual pieces were quite good.Notably, the material is often quite a bit more complicated than Grossi's work from the '60s, which turns out to be both a blessing and a curse (Pietro was maybe a bit too fascinated with his newfound ability to string together inhuman clusters of dissonant bleeps).I actually preferred the cold, ominous ambience of the eight "Sound Life" pieces to everything else here, which are not too far removed from Grossi's pre-computer work.They would have been perfect as the soundtrack for 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Unfortunately, the rest of the album is mixed bag: I did not like the digitized Bach interludes at all, many pieces sound quite similar to one another, and I did not quite understand the value of the two silent pieces.Maybe I should have utilized the "shuffle" function more.There are a few other likable pieces scattered about though, ranging from an approximation of an especially spirited game of Asteroids (one version of "Create") to an approximation of that same Asteroids machine having an absolutely apoplectic freak-out ("Monodia").The "'80s arcade game"-style pieces also share quite a bit of textural and structural similarity to recent noise music at times (or to several Raster-Noton artists, as a Dusted critic insightfully pointed out before me).

I had an extremely difficult time formulating a firm opinion of Combinatoria, as it is equal parts flawed and fascinating.As a history lesson and an introduction to very obscure music and ideas, it is fairly successful.As a listening experience, it left a lot to be desired, as many pieces now sound dated, ridiculous, repetitive, or painfully shrill.However, there were also a handful of rather stunning works.Obviously, the more dated-sounding pieces are unavoidable victims of electronic music's four decades of further evolution beyond these recording sessions, but I would have much preferred a more discerning and brief selection of his major works.This retrospective definitely piqued my interest about both the man and his work, but Combinatoria is too uneven, frustrating, and overwhelming to be a definitive overview.

Samples:

• Vittorio Gelmetti, "Modulazioni Per Michelangelo"
• Aurelio Peruzzi, "Studio 1"
• Pietro Grossi, "Monodia"