31 anatomie Notturne - Nadir Vassena

Commissioned by the Quartetto Arte and premiered in Basel in 1999, Nadir Vassena’s 31 Anatomie Notturne invites the listener into a shadowed landscape of fragments, whispers, and elusive gestures. The title - “thirty-one nocturnal anatomies” - suggests both multiplicity and intimacy: thirty-one small dissections of the night, moments where sound exposes the fragile body of silence.

Rather than unfolding as a continuous narrative, the work moves through a constellation of short episodes - aural sketches that hover between presence and disappearance. Each “anatomy” seems to focus on a specific texture, articulation, or resonance, as though the composer were tracing the contours of sound under low light. Breath, air noise, tone, and key-clicks intertwine with pure pitch; the saxophones sometimes merge into a single breathing organism, then splinter again into isolated cells.

Vassena’s music often balances precision and sensuality. In 31 Anatomie Notturne, rhythm is fluid, and silence becomes a structural material rather than an absence. The quartet’s voices - four alto saxophones - emerge as shifting strata of one instrument: a single entity viewed from different depths. The listener senses the gradual erosion of boundaries between timbre and texture, between sound and gesture.

The nocturnal world here is not serene but investigative. Each fragment feels like a study in perception: a quiet experiment in how far a tone can stretch before it vanishes, how close to silence a phrase can breathe and still remain alive. Through its microscopic focus, Vassena creates an atmosphere both intimate and unsettling—where tension and stillness coexist, and where each moment seems on the verge of disintegration.

31 Anatomie Notturne stands as a meditation on fragility and form, on the anatomy of listening itself. In the darkness, sound becomes tactile; the ear replaces the eye. What remains is not a melody but a trace - a collection of delicate nocturnal impressions that continue to resonate long after the final breath fades.

(Program note by Don-Paul Kahl)

EBM Performance Record:

2018:
22 September 2018 - Tallinn, Estonia - SoundPlasma Festival