The use of electronic music composed by Vittorio Gelmetti for the soundtrack of Antonioni’s first color film Il Deserto Rosso, contributed greatly to the film’s aesthetic complexity as well as the displaced psychological underpinnings of it’s characters. Rarely heard before in cinema, this example of early musique concrète would serve as a harbinger of the now, widespread use of electronica in film and television. -NC

Vittorio Gelmetti belongs among the earliest and most significant pioneers of electronic music, not only because his earliest compositions date to the mid-1950s, but also because he was self-taught and drew his inspiration not from other electronic music composers, but from Schoenberg, Webern and latter-day Stravinsky. And yet he is very little known or listened to today, even by connoisseurs of early tape music. His LP releases are hard to come by, and only one rather parsimonious CD retrospective has been released to date.

Gelmetti’s music, especially his work from the 1960s, represents something new, if not radical, inasmuch as it accumulates elements of musique concrète (the electronic transformation of pre-recorded sounds), as popularized by Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry; the elektronische Musik (purely electronically generated sounds) of Herbert Eimert and Werner Meyer-Eppler, as well as the later Musik kosmische of Stockhausen; and the aleatory universe of John Cage. There is also a spatial, sometimes theatrical element to some of his works, especially those composed specifically for film or television. What resulted was something very few at the time, especially outside of Paris and Cologne, could appreciate.

Gelmetti rejected the frigidity and ambivalence of other electronic and concrète musicians, preferring a warmer touch in his composition, one that would trick latent memories, and perhaps also create an oblique amusement, for the specter of Dada is never far behind him. If we were to divide Gelmetti’s available works into two, the majority would constitute continuous layered sound sheets and what might called entonnoir drones, not unlike the Xenakis works of that era, but otherwise quite unusual for tape-based musicians of this vintage. His remaining works, those not written for television or film (including Red Desert), are early examples of sound collage.

I would argue that Gelmetti’s most significant and underappreciated innovation is to be found in these works, for they are collages not in the sense of Ives’ text-melody juxtapositions, nor of Schaeffer’s “Étude aux chemins de fer”, or even Burroughs-Gysin cut-ups. They are a real, inspired, and playful use of samples—of plagiarism—, thus serving as precursor to the Plunderphonics exercises of John Oswald and friends, Negativland hi-jinxes, and nothing less than hip-hop, house, and second-wave industrial music. Gelmetti sources radio broadcasts, bits of unidentifiable jazz and pop music, and notable classical composers such as Wagner, Bach, and Beethoven, while abstaining from recorded environmental sounds. He took few of these collage sensibilities forward into his career as a composer of film and television scores, however, so it is these, in combination with his drone-sequence works, which stand at the pinnacle of the oeuvre of this little-known Italian innovator.

Nevertheless, it is his film and television scores for which he is best remembered. Indeed, several Italian newspapers carried the headline “Morto Vittorio Gelmetti, musico Deserto Rosso” when Gelmetti died in February of 1992. His works for television are often scenic, making use of lighter tones and broader, more adaptable forms, for the sake of both changing scenes and for human motion within the scenes. Cues from classic poetry are abundant, as are parts for chorus and traditional musical instruments, as well as references to his earlier dronescapes—especially in his score for Antonioni’s Red Desert. His final, unfinished piece was an electro-acoustic choral piece for male voices entitled “New Year’s Eve Toast”.

Gelmetti rarely consorted or collaborated with his peers in the world of electronic music, nor did he consider himself part of the avant-garde, instead, he occupied a rather isolated and unfashionable position in the world of broadcast composition and cinema; never a long-term in-house composer, never with a studio workshop of his own, and never a public personality. He did, however, endure as a considerable creative authority, perhaps unconvinced of his own force and influence.

Nous Irons À Tahiti (1965), Vittorrio Gelmetti
From the compilation Musiche Elettroniche, Nepless 1997