Produced in 2003 for the sound art department of a german radio station, “Il Fiore della Bocca” is one of the most controversial text sound compositions by Alessandro Bosetti. Composed exclusively with the voices of physically and mentally handicapped people, the piece displays an impressive richness, depth and variety of sound, covering the full range of musical possibilities of the spoken voice; from heavily processed to completely unprocessed, naked and direct. The piece has an ambiguous nature that lies somewhere between an experimental radio play and an extended, powerfully voice driven, noise composition. Bosetti has taken an impressive journey into what is commonly perceived as “disturbing”. He has thus engaged in a process of transformation and metamorphosis with both the sound materials and their perceptions in order to develop musical beauty out of these “abnormal” voices.
A long series of conversations, where spastic, aphasic and larynx-less persons are confronted with examples of “deconstructed voice” (in the tradition of experimental music and sound poetry), has been the core of a two year long intimate relationship with those speakers and the starting point of the compositional process. All commentaries, reflections and reactions had been recorded in order to create a new composition with those collected materials. Similar to his other text sound pieces like “African Feedback”, “Everyday Objects”, “The Listeners”, “The Mouth” or “Zwölfzungen”, conversations, human interaction, comprehension and misunderstanding are essential to this piece. Since it’s premiere on Deutschland Radio Kultur in 2004, it has been performed many times; in presence of the original speakers and in several live multichannel performances which provocated a wide and passionate range of reactions and discussions. “Il Fiore della Bocca”, is intended as a piece in the form of a flower, either one of the red roses Claudia is singing about in the middle section of the composition, or a mouth-flower, as the title suggests. Also, a flower close in inspiration to the weathered, ephemeral and dying flowers that Zeami used to describe the quality of Nô theater actors. It’s a piece based on love, human interaction and the contemplation of differences which reaches the point where the extremely different becomes the same.
Recorded and composed between September 2002 and August 2003 in Milan and Berlin.
First broadcasted by Deutschland radio Kultur, October 24th, 2003.