Nene Valse

Written in 2021, this song is dedicated to an ancestor of mine, Antonietta Colantuono, who died of typhus a century ago. She was 12 years old and was about to leave for Rome to study singing at the Santa Cecilia Conservatory.

This composition is combined with a short story, "The swallows always return in spring", in which I imagine to create a dialogue with the little Nené in the old mountain house and she tells me about what she has experienced: the war, the illness, the death.

The composition is a portrait of Nené, in the form of a waltz, a macabre waltz that represents a way to unite with her. There is nothing elegant about Nené: she is an awkward girl who dances in her own way, her dance is an impetuous run.

Every time she stops and talks to me, the music becomes sad, sweet, but it is a heartbreaking sweetness.

This composition, like all those that are part of my recent recording project, testifies to the decline of an era; in this specific case Nené Waltz is also the waltz of death.

From a stylistic point of view, I chose the key of A minor because when I thought of this waltz I had already started the Symphonic Pieces and I wanted this piece to constitute the fourth movement, a sort of tetralogy dedicated to my Molise origins. Furthermore, in the key of A minor I saw a livid, indeed, macabre tone. The recurring theme is confused initially, distant, then gradually resurfaces and is enriched with new variations, becoming increasingly more impetuous and desperate. The rhythmic parts represent the leaps of the young protagonist, the more lyrical ones are her sad singing.

Like all my compositions, this one also acquires a cyclical progression and a narrative meaning, because Nené is not just an image, but a character who lives in my memory, to whom I have given a precise meaning.

In a dark period of my life, in which the past seemed a burden and the future an enigma, her frank and direct manner gave me new answers and above all new expectations, and with this song, with its daring ending, I want to give my personal testimony and a heartfelt representation.

As regards the philological path that underlies my recent recording work, Nené Waltz and the Symphonic Pieces are both a way to overcome the transience of time and space, in the name of memory that overcomes its limits and gives meaning to our existence.