The title of the work comes from the term Ricercare whose etymology means a composition that tends to the research of possible developments about a musical idea.
In fact the original need was to explore technical possibilities, and to explore harmonic, melodic, rhythmic and communicative possibilities about single gestures, about single instrumental situations inside brief compositions whose duration weren’t more than two or three minutes.
Besides there was an other need to give a formal and logical reason to the whole composition that didn’t reduce to a simple combination of single pieces, of single Ricercari. So, on the one side, the making up of briefs compositions complete and autonomous in themselves, on the other side, the need of a unity that allows the coexistence of different matters.
Aim is to avoid stylistic choices that have univocal character, but to thicken disparate matters in an unappeasable accumulating process. Different matters that have to be organized by composer in a form solution and, after this operation, they are able to live together and to nourish one another too. In this way we can give life to a musical speech whose significance is more complex and wider in comparison with single elements that compose it.
Before ending composition with the last Ricercare , to better underline its function of queue, of final piece, has been inserted a little Interlude, inside which there is the attempt to suspend the time rolling by of Ricercari, not going on developing and inquiring into a musical idea, but intentionally shattering musical matter and speech. In fact, inside the Interlude, to every instrument was committed only one enlarged bar of the second Ricercare. Bars that are broken off by some moments of silence. In this way we obtain an Interlude rarefied and suspended in its simplicity, but not uprooted from the composition structure, because it is a memory of lonely fragments of the second Ricercare.
In this way it is possible to instil a “breath”, a rest before the end. There was the consciousness that this solution could be applied elsewhere in the composition and become not only a rule but even an opportunity to emphasize single Ricercari: to insert some frames, some fragments of frames or simple comments on the Ricercari in the composition. Not only, but also the silences of the Interlude could make rich the metamorphosis of thematic matter between a gesture to another.
So two anticipations of the last piece of composition have been put near the second Ricercare to create some rims that isolate, prepare and make a leave of the piece. Besides, some seconds of silence help in wrapping up everything in a coating of precariousness that has influence on the perception of the time inside the composition.
Lastly, at the end of the fourth Ricercare, there is a recall of the musical gesture of the first Ricercare. Every single piece is alternated by fragments of other Ricercari that have the function like an Interlude and keep themselves at anchor to the structure of the whole composition.
It is clear the aim of the two main needs inside the composition: the first is to explore some definite musical situation that have the possibilities to exist isolated too, having a own formal organisation; the second need is to distribute single Ricercari in a complex musical respite to give a form to single forms. The composer tries to recognize and emphasize that “inner necessity” of coexistence able to give to single gestures, to single musical ideas, a direction within time. The rule - nourishing the composition and co-ordinating the different elements - is not necessarily a dialectic relationship between the single parts, but a character of complementarity and complexity that enriches the musical cells, using connections which, although sometime can be loosen, are never poor in communicative logic.