Io cammino muovendo le dita

For me, composition has always been, above all, a game of mosaics. I enjoy its artisanal, constructive, architectural aspect. But if I’m asked to explain the mechanism, to reveal the secret of my workshop, I cannot. Some musicologists have done so, offering me astonishing analyses of my scores, showing how the relationships between sections, the harmonies, the assembling of melodies fall within a specific system, with its own logic, a series of rules, a set of procedures. Yet I am not aware of it, because for me composition remains an intuitive gesture, where ear and brain marry each day, and then set my pencil in motion.

To begin a piece, however, I must be moved. Not because I wish to “express myself through music” – I leave that to the performers – but because that game of mosaics, the Lego of composition, only works if, at the outset, there is a thrill. Often it is an image; other times, a story; still other times, a performer, whose attitude, skills, and spirit I know. And then there are cases when the emotion comes from encountering a text, from words that, intuitively and instantly, strike me, lodge themselves in my heart, almost asking to be evoked by a piece of music.

That is what happened with Io cammino muovendo le dita. The piece, in fact, would not exist if Francesca Dego had not introduced me to a wonderful poem by her father Giuliano, which contains rhythm, beauty, intensity, and – if read carefully – even something resembling a small story. I can only be grateful to her, deeply grateful. And now I hope that something of all this may reach your ears.

(Nicola Campogrande, September 2025)