16 artisans, 4 female voices, 1 speaker and 1 percussionist . Giorgio Battistelli

Giorgio Battistelli > Experimentum Mundi

A piece of immaginative music to accompany selected texts from "Encyclopédie française ou Dictionnaire raisonnée des Arts et des Métiers" by Diderot and D’Alembert (Paris 1751-1777)

Over 25 Jears ago the composer Giorgio Battistelli brought sixteen craftsmen together in a theatre in Rome – all sixteen of them from the italian village Albano Laziale, like him – and let them do their work according to a detailed score: carpenters, bricklayers, blacksmiths, grinders, cobblers, chiselers and bakers. The music of Experimentum Mundi comes from the close observation of reality. The craftsmen create the soundscape while exercising their craft – through knocking and beating, sawing and turning an earthy rythm comes to life. And while that happens, a wall and a shoe, a barrel and bread dough are made.