IMPERFECT CANON
SCORE SCORE MIDI MP3 (2.72 M - synthesizer of Finale 2004)
An unison canon is constituted from at least two parts that perform the same melody to regular intervals of time. So, while the second voice exposes the theme, the first one continues it with a process of continuous imitation that can also continue up to the end of the passage.
The dodecaphonic 
technique, foreseeing the continuous repetition of a series and of his variations, is lent a lot to be used in this compositiv form. In the Imperfect canon, sometimes using series astride the two bawls (as if the melody were formed, for example, from five notes of the flute, from that following of the violin and from the six one remaining of the flute), I have introduced in the imitative procedure between flute and violin some small “imperfections” that their melodies slightly make different. Even, toward the end of the composition, almost as it it was about a fugue, you can notice a real stretto, with entrances more and more brought closer (enough unlikely situation for a canon, where the temporal bewilderment among the voices should not change).
To notice that dodecaphony has been used above all historically for inventing new harmonies, a lot dissonant and distant from classical tonality . Here the same technique (with some license) is used for obtaining a “tonal” dodecaphony, where the consonances are privileged and the dissonances, also when they are sourrer, appear as passing notes. Moreover, not only the beginning of the piece seems almost in C minor and the end, even more clearly, in C maior, but a little in the whole piece you can hear the echo, more or less evident, of various tonalities .
The occasion that has pressed me to compose this piece is enough banal (external member to the examination of maturity, which I participated unwillingly, badly paid and in an unfortunate examining board where the job was the double one in comparison to the others; as if it was not enough with the feeling, sometimes, of the uselessness of what I did). You can notice, especially in the measures 54 and following, the sense of anguish and impatience that each of us tries when he doesn’t see a meaning in what he is doing.
I have wanted to give an ideological meaning to this composition (see comment in the home page): the small differences between the melody of the flute and that of the violin, that make “imperfect” the canon, are a little as those among the characters, the habits, the ways of live of two friends or, even more, of two persons in love: it isn’t necessary to eliminate them because there is a true harmony, provided that each of the two parts succeeds in perceiving them as enrichment of itself. From this point of view, the imperfection of the canon remembers, in the life, that perfection which is so difficult to draw near (above all because it cannot be simply the result of our good wish).
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(The score is available in .MUS for Finale 2003 or .pdf for Acrobat Reader format)
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