At 41 years old, Clara Iannotta is one of the main figures of contemporary music. His works, based on unusual timbres, create a space of originality as intimate as it is penetrating. After studying in France (Paris Conservatory, Ircam) and the United States (Harvard University), he settled in Berlin and teaches in Vienna.
Are you and your music the same?
Yes, even more. It is a mirror of what I do not see, I discover myself through sounds. It’s a bit like a diary, there are places in me that words can’t reach, but can be reached more easily with sounds.
After finishing a job, do you feel that you have exhausted the topic?
No, the piece is never actually finished. For three or four years I have no longer looked for an ending for my pieces. Either the time I have has passed or I no longer want to continue, so I stop. So I have the impression of always writing the same piece or of continuing to write the same piece. It is truly a photograph of an era.
A snapshot that lasts. And you follow the game because you are not looking for a balanced, articulated and planned way. Your music seems to evolve in a paradoxical way…
Absolutely ! Sometimes I have trouble following sounds I’ve written on paper. A year or two ago I talked about it with the composer Chaya Czernowin, with whom I studied at Harvard University and with whom he is now friends. I explained to him that I would like the sounds to move a certain way, but that I could see that they had to evolve another way. Then he told me to see them as children. We make them appear and then follow them, but we don’t force them.
First I create an abstract world that is sound, and as soon as I give it reality I have to follow it. Even if it takes me to a place that is very difficult to accept. This is also why I chose to stop my pieces cold. If we consider sound as a living organism, we can’t really decide when it ends, we just have to let it go when the time comes. In this situation, I don’t believe in death.
But it is very present in his works, particularly those that focus on the poetry of Dorothy Molloy. Do you not believe in it because the composition allows you to touch the infinite or simply because it represents a concept that you cannot imagine?
No, no, death is very concrete. Also, I had cancer in 2020 and since then she has always been close to me. I also lost my mother last year… My pieces are not dedicated to death, but they think about it. I don’t believe in death in music, that is, I don’t see the way of stopping organically in my pieces. How do we stop? Softly, through a diminuendo or, on the contrary, through an accent?
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