Ivan Fedele’s (Lecce 1953) catalogue consists of about 200 titles. It includes compositions, with and without electronics, of chamber and symphonic music (the Syntax and Lexikon cycles are important), works for musical theatre (Antigone from Sofocle, Thanathoséros from T . Tasso and Words and Music from S. Beckett), for the radio (Barbara mitica and Orfeo al cinema Orfeo on texts by G. Corti) as well as for the cinema (La chute de la maison Usher by J. Epstein) and the recent video-opera Galileo’s journey.
His music is performed by the major symphonic and chamber ensembles in the world and by the most accredited interpreters.
Ivan Fedele’s idea of music can be summarized with the expression “sculpting the sound”. A programmatic intention that is realized through the conception and evolution of musical matter and its forms through a figurative grammar (especially from the early period up to beginning of the new millennium) and, later, according to a generative grammar for which it is the sound itself that “tells” its story.
At the basis of his compositional thought, we find the perceptive aspect of the work, towards which all the strategies that give shape to the imagination are modulated.
The figures of P. Boulez and L. Berio were decisive for the composer’s maturity, as well as the meeting with F. Donatoni in the 1980s. Currently I. Fedele is a teacher at the Santa Cecilia National Academy. He was artistic director of the Music Sector of the Venice Biennale from 2012 to 2020.
Among the various awards attributed to him, there is the “A. Honneger” Prize for the whole of his work.