Roberto Toscano

Regarding my aesthetic, I suppose I should start by paying tribute to the immediate influences that have shaped my musical language. Mainly composers out of eastern Europe who are best known for their works after the Second World War: Penderecki, Ligeti, Kulenovic, and Lutoslawski in particular. I am greatly interested in the music of Messiaen and Scelsi, to name but a few composers from western Europe that have had some lasting impact in how I view composition. In more specific terms, I would state that my work concerns itself with the distortion and expansion of musical gesture by means of texturing and/or the sculpting of sound. Gestures are contorted, distorted, expanded, contracted, exploded, and/or deformed so that they may be heard as having new formal implications – functioning then as variations from its original state. The rejection of narrative is also important to my work. In my program notes to "...Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion" for symphony orchestra, I allude to how this delicate balance between gestural abstraction and influence is achieved: "...Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion" is in no way programmatic; it is not an attempt to describe Francis Bacon's triptych by way of sound. Here I hope that the work functions on a more abstract level than that. Consequently, what actually drives the construction of the piece is connected to the perceived energy in whatever has served to inspire it. An important aspect connected to this given energy is how it can be manipulated to form musical gesture. In turn, gesture can be expanded and/or distorted to provide the work with all its needed material – here 'gesture' inspires and dictates large-scale form. In speaking of his own work and the need to capture what he deemed as the 'immediacy' of a given subject, Bacon stated that an artist must "crystallize the moment of one's existence". Ultimately, regardless of what has served to inspire it, a work must come to stand on its own.

Roberto Toscano (born 1982) is a Brazilian composer who currently resides in the United States. In 2010 Roberto became the first Brazilian awarded the Toru Takemitsu Composition Prize in Tokyo, Japan. His music has been premiered and broadcasted in South America, North America, Europe, and Asia.