for flute and guitar (Zurich 1969)
dedicated to Carlotta Stocker
Duration ca. 6'

It is by no means fortuitous that the first surviving compositons by Ermano Maggini (1968) were composed to texts by the Zürich author Hans Schumacher. In the fifties and sixties his circle in Zürich was made up of poets, authors and artists including Hans Aeschbacher, Friedrich Kuhn, Otto Müller and, last but not least, Carlotta Stocker. Spatial concept was not merely an acoustic theme for Ermano Maggini. The rapports with painting and pictorial creation are clear throughout his oeuvre. Ermano Maggini dedicated the first instrumental work, Cinque Disegni for flute and guitar (1969), to the artist Carlotta Stocker whom he valued highly and with whom the link of artistic friendship was early established. Similar phases in both their lives, such as the Ticino and Zürich periods, created parallels between them (see monograph Carlotta Stocker NZZ Verlag 1995). In August 1971, in Verscio near Intragna, the artist attended the original performance of the Cinque Disegni (Performers: Marlis Joss, flute; Ermano Maggini guitar). In 1972 Carlotta died unexpectedly in Zürich, at only fifty-one. In 1971 Ermano Maggini was still an active performer at concerts, playing the classical guitar, which he also taught. Later on he no longer appeared in concerts. The performer was totally eclipsed by the composer. In the early seventies he underwent a major change. Ermano Maggini said that he had found his language and that he had destroyed all his earlier compositions, composed on the basis of fugues and dodecaphony. Afterwards, Maggini only once included his instrument in a composition. This was in 1987, with the Torso IV for violin, double bass and guitar. However, as Edition Müller & Schade shows, he composed several works for flute in the seventies (cf. also CD Edition Jecklin Szene Schweiz, JS 311-2, 1995, as well as discography and index of works).

Evi Kliemand, Fondazione Ermano Maggini Intragna

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