Suspended Souls by Michele Nobler

On this page I would like to spend a few words on my music and the reasons that led me to compose the album "Suspended Souls".


Creative process

The creative origins of "Suspended Souls" have developed some years ago, before the realization of the album. Especially the compositions "Evanescence" and "Addio" are the end of a youthful creative period. "Addio," as the title suggests, has been the seal of the creativity of those years and it has thrown many shadows on the music that would be composed. However, there were already seeds for future development: the first "Suspended Souls" is date back to that period. "Suspended Souls" at the time, was a completed improvisation yet, but completely different from the current version. I never wrote a true score of “Suspended Souls”, but only notes. So, I decided to compose a new music that could express the failure to recover the original piece. It was always lost, unrepeatable, suspended in time. The link of the first form of improvisation, never transcribed, and the current version , is the sense of evolution, growth, and loss. "Renaissance", on the other hand, represents the rebirth and the inauguration of a new creative period: the harmony follows the opposite course of "Addio", modulating from the tonality of A minor to its major relative C, in a positive rising. "Addio" has two versions: the one for piano solo (the original), and one for two pianos (current version). "Renaissance", on the contrary, was born as a piece for two pianos. "Remind", "Suspended Mind" and all "Kim Variations" are part of this latest production. The style differs considerably from the other compositions, simplifying and seeking less elaborate, with a minimalistic and emotional writing. I have kept my musical style despite the influence of some minimalist composers that are known for the production of some of the most exciting soundtracks of recent years: the coexistence of different styles in the same composition, the growing suspense and waiting for curiosity in listening. The "Kim Variations" have opened the way for this new way. The "Kim's Variations II", later temporarily "Kim's Variations I", re-use very similar style and harmony (although they are transported in another tonality), but give to two different works. The idea of these variations arises from the listening of improvisers who, with the accordion, played the arrangement of some movie soundtracks, making them, at times, more exciting than the piece they were inspired by. So, I also began to "play" with variations, trying to find new ways to improvise around the same harmonic plant. The "Kim's Variations III" are the result of an interesting post-production musical experiment with audio editing software. In this case, the "variation" was born by manipulating the recording of "Kim II", from which I got a sort of retrograde piece, to find a piano sound completely different from the classic one. After having followed the river of notes of "Kim's Variations," I felt the need for peace: if after the storm comes the rainbow, my peace is represented by "Suspended Mind", the most minimalist of the album. Very few notes, using the only right hand, enriching with the singing of birds, I can contemplate imaginary landscapes. Finally, "Remind" is derived by the simple melodic line of "Suspended Mind", which incorporates "Suspended Mind" from measure 7 to measure 17. The titles are not random: the peace of mind leaves the scene to the memory, then into emotion, sweetness and melancholy, disturbed by distant but not innocuous images.


"Emotional" Music

The entire album was composed on an emotional center that can be synthesized by a famous Heinrich Heine phrase: "Where words end, music starts." The stories of these pieces are based on unsearchable feelings that can’t be expressed by words. These stories that can not be told emerge through music and they remain suspended inside us, but they not disappear, they condition us daily, give meaning to our lives. Stravinskij tells "the music expresses nothing but herself", but the choice to organize time in a specific way and the decision to give a well-defined structure, leads to a sound organization that becomes the mirror of what we feel. Although this opens up a gap of incommunicability, taking away the certainty of what each of us feels listening to the same music, on the other hand gives us an infinite freedom to change the emotional image reflected in the musical mirror. I would complete Stravinsky's phrase: "Music expresses nothing but herself" with "nothing could mean everything, because music can be all". When we talk about absolute, the reverse of concepts is possible, and the question becomes more relativistic than we expected. At this point, there is a distinction between "ontological" sound, which "does not mean anything and is self-referential," and "psychological" sound, which is the our emotional interpretation. The emotional nature of a music, though based on the same ontological sound, is distinguished by infinite interpretations of the different psychology of individual listeners. The message has the same sound for everyone, but different meanings. This communicative discrepancy transforms the author's original message into several other messages. It is the richness of the musical language: to say much more than the author's original intention.


Piano Sheets

The desire to share this music led me to write a BOOK with PIANO SHEETS, which will be soon available in the best online stores and on my website.


Michele Nobler

Michele Nobler was born in 1986. He is Composer / Pianist / Organist in Florence, Italy.

Facebook