COMPOSITION IX, OBOE SONATA No. 1 (2026) – ca. 10′
Instrumentation: DUET – OBOE & PIANO
License: © 2026 Alexandre Casaccia (SACEM). Released under CC BY-SA 4.0
PROGRAM NOTE
In Composition IX, Casaccia continues his exploration of memory and consciousness through a musical lens, weaving a sound world that is simultaneously lucid and unstable, intimate and estranged. Conceived in early 2026 specifically for eminent oboist Matteo Fòrla, principal oboe of the “Fondazione Arena di Verona”, the sonata represents a confluence of technical maturity and philosophical depth—where the structures of chamber music collide with the surreal logic of dreams.
The piece explores the fault lines of memory, the hidden fractures within memory itself—those places where recollection shifts, falters, or unexpectedly resurfaces. Rather than following a traditional path of thematic development, Casaccia’s writing moves through a process he describes as deformation: not the transformation of musical material itself, but of its surroundings. Motifs return as ghosts displaced in new contexts—familiar yet strangely re-signified. The result is a sonata fully grounded in what has been called Casaccia’s oneiric style: a dreamlike atmosphere where temporal clarity dissolves and musical gestures seem to hover between intention and accident. Echoes of melody and rhythm recur throughout the piece like fragments of half-remembered dreams—refracted, layered, and subtly displaced. These recurrences are never mere repetition; instead, they function like memory itself—subject to erosion, distortion, and sudden revelation. The dialogue between oboe and piano intensifies this hallucinatory effect. The oboe line, at times plaintive and lyrical, at times jagged and urgent, weaves through a piano texture that is both anchoring and destabilizing. A dance-like pulse sometimes emerges—ritualistic, glitched, uncanny—before being swept back into the shifting ground of the composition’s mysterious architecture. Formally, the work resists linearity. Episodes interlock, recur, and fold into one another, suggesting a recursive structure shaped less by narrative progression than by associative drift—like memory itself, or the unfolding logic of a dream. The composer’s interest in visual art, particularly in the spatial tension of Kandinsky’s abstract compositions, informs the piece’s structural and gestural vocabulary, offering a multi-dimensional space where time and form dislocate.
Composition IX thus emerges as a meditation on perception: how we recognize, misrecognize, and reinterpret the world through the fragile architecture of memory. It invites the listener to inhabit a space where clarity and ambiguity coexist—where what is known is constantly slipping into what is imagined. In this, Casaccia’s music resists closure, choosing instead to linger in the spaces where meaning remains evolving.
SCORE & PARTS
PERUSAL SCORE available below
SCORE & PARTS available upon request