Our first day of IMFA began with a typical Italian breakfast of hard rolls, jam, and strong coffee. After some orientation awnd a short Italian lesson from Stefano, who will also teach composition with me, we had our first seminar. This week, we are focusing on music and sound in place. We took a short walk along the Rilke Trail, which begins just outside the UWC campus, and continues along the coastline. This is the same path that Maria Rainier Rilke walked in 1912 and which led him to write his Duino Elegies, which begin with this wonderful line:

Wer, wenn ich schriee, hörte mich denn aus der Engel Ordnungen?
(Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the orders of angels?)

The path where Rilke walked in 1912.

Our first task is to collect sounds from the environs, which will become the basis of our first composition project: a musique-concrète style composition for electronics, to be “performed” on a concert on Sunday.