Pietro Grossi was a cellist and composer, born in Venice in 1917. From 1967 until his death last year he
experimented with digital media: presenting computer music software at the Venice Biennale in 1970 and in the
same year organising one of the first experiments in telematic performance through a telephone line between
Pietro Grossi was a cellist and composer, born in Venice in 1917. From 1967 until his death last year he
experimented with digital media: presenting computer music software at the Venice Biennale in 1970 and in the
same year organising one of the first experiments in telematic performance through a telephone line between
Rimini and Pisa. By invitation of lannis Xenakis, he presented another telematic concert between Pisa and Paris in
1974. Deeply opposed to entrenched ideas of musical virtuosity, copyright ownership and artisanship, he developed
software that produced open, unfinished compositions, then distributed these around the world "to be used for
various compositional purposes". As soundscape artist Albert Mayr writes in his sleevenotes to Battimenti:
"Obviously his intentions were misunderstood and ridiculed (the golden age of plunderphonics was still far away)."
His last works were electronically produced and individually unique books derived from his Homeport project of
automated visual processes.
If we cast our minds back to the excitable 1990s, when Future Sound Of London were hailed as future sound of the
universe for their telematic concert between London and New York, or when Koan, software was praised for its
services to generative music Grossi comes to light as an unsung visionary. These two releases come too late for him
to enjoy that recognition, yet they give a more realistic historical context to concepts that are not so new or
radical after all.
The CD from Ants, a Rome based label, contains four versions of a composition called Battimenti, created in 1965 at
Grossi's S 2F M studio in Florence. Each version is a different mathematical permutation of sinewave combinations -
two, three, four and five frequencies - all of them producing beats that vary according to very slight pitch
differences. Other composers were thinking along similar lines during the 1950s and 60s (La Monte Young and Steve
Reich in the US, for example, or Toshiro Mayazumi in Japan), but I don't think anybody else was quite this
systematic. Since each piece maintains the same basic pitch, the only variations coming from different wave lengths
of beat frequencies, the effect is remarkably austere, its purity only alleviated by the poetic fluctuations that
come more clearly into focus with concentrated listening. I suspect that Ryoji Ikeda and Pan Sonic will be buying
this CD, if they don't know Grossi's work already.
(...)
As to why Grossi should be such an obscure figure, despite his prophetic work, the answer may lie with the
zeitgeist of the 196Os. Neither dressed up in Indian clothes nor bent on career building, Grossi just carried on
quietly working away at his theories. Late in the day it may be, but I'm happy to discover him.
