Alessandro Cipriani

Biography

After ordinary musical studies Alessandro Cipriani completed his studies in composition and electronic music at the Conservatorio di Santa Cecilia in Rome. He created a number of pieces involving instrumental music with electronic processing, including a string quartet and magnetic tape, entitled "Quadro", and a 60-minute work for piano, percussions and magnetic tape, "Il Pensiero Magmatico" (Magmatic Thought) written in collaboration with Stefano Taglietti. Cipriani then became interested in establishing concrete connections with the music of cultures that are dissimilar to the classical and contemporary western tradition. A fundamental piece by Cipriani in this context is the trilogy concerning Islamic, Jewish and Gregorian religious chants, composed by the author from 2001 to 2007 in various stereo, quadraphonic and 5.1 versions, both acousmatic and live. In these works Cipriani re-elaborates some traditional chants of these three monotheistic religions, while maintaining a strong connection between the original voice, its comprehensibility and its electronic processing. The three pieces are "Al Nur (The Light)", based on an Islamic chant, "Mimaa'Makim", based on a Jewish chant, and "Aqua Sapientiae/Angelus Domini". Alessandro Cipriani’s collaborations with musicians from various different cultures have led him to reflect on the relationship between local cultures and global culture in relation to electroacoustic music. These reflections were documented in a special issue of the magazine "Organised Sound", edited by Cipriani and they were followed by further collaborations with musicians representing various cultures such as the Sami singer Tuuni Lansman, the Iranian percussionist Mahammad Ghavi-Helm, the Chinese musicians Song Fei and Fan Wei Qing, the Berber performer Nour Eddine Fatty., the South African performers Ann Masina and Dudu Yende, the Ghanaian actress Dorothée Munyaneza, the Korean singer Min Ji Kim, and the Japanese singer Matsutoyo Sato (in the soundtrack of the movie The Girl from Nagasaki) directed by Michel Comte, which was selected for the 2014 Sundance Film Festival in the “New Frontier” section.

One of Alessandro Cipriani’s most intense collaborations was with the visual artist Alba D’Urbano. Following their meeting, in the eighties, a number of audiovisual works were produced, including 4 videos, 4 video-installations with sound and "Rosa Binaria: Memories", an interactive sound installation on sixteen channels, which was shown at the Leopold-Hoesch-Museum of Düren (Germany).

After a period during which he concentrated on making soundtracks for various documentaries and videos by Giulio Latini and Silvia Di Domenico, in 2001 Cipriani began a long collaboration with the composers of Edison Studio, which led to a variety of collective compositions, in particular the soundtracks of the four silent films The Last Days of Pompeii, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Blackmail and Inferno. The latter soundtrack was issued in 2011 in a 5.1 surround version on a DVD of the film restored by the Cineteca di Bologna for the series of "Cinema ritrovato" (Rediscovered Cinema).

Educational publications

Alessandro Cipriani’s publications in the field of the teaching of electronic music are of international interest, in particular the textbook "Virtual Sound" written in collaboration with R. Bianchini. His research in the field of education then led him to collaborate with Maurizio Giri. This collaboration resulted in a textbook on sound synthesis and signal processing (based on the Max software) "Electronic Music and Sound Design" Vol.1 and Vol.2. These textbooks are English translations of the Italian texts "Musica Elettronica e Sound Design" Vol.1 and vol.2