Painting was not, as many affirm, the first profession of Sebastiano, but music, as besides singing he delighted in playing various instruments and especially the lute, on which he could render all the parts without accompaniment”, writes Vasari. This is why I’ve sought, in this work, to imagine the great painter taking up four lutes at once and coming to pay us a visit with them.
Sometimes we hear him talking to his own paintings. Other times he speaks to the music of his age. In one case he twirls with his great friend Michelangelo, in another he’s moved to tears. In a third I’ve taken him to play in Greece, in a fourth we hear him travelling from Venice to Rome. Inventing as I go along.
What I’ve done, obviously, is neither a piece of philology or a reconstruction. My “Musica per Sebastiano del Piombo” is the tribute of a composer of the present to the musical côté of a great Renaissance artist.
Nicola Campogrande

4 lutes

Duration 40”

Commission
Museo Nazionale di Palazzo Venezia, Roma

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