Song of Olivier is the fourth episode of The Game of Music (The Music Game), the project of incremental composition in which music, storytelling, and the worldbuilding of Solaria proceed in parallel. The piece was born during a period of transformation in the creative method: no longer the pursuit of a fully defined work, controlled and explained in every detail, but the attempt to leave room for imperfection, listening, and the discovery of form during performance.
The composition is dedicated to Olivier, a boy actually met in Burundi, who in the narrative world of Solaria becomes Anesh.
Genesis of the composition
The initial idea was to record some footage in front of a cave, playing guitar over a drone. The cave would directly evoke the place where, at the end of the previous episode, Ku meets the young Anesh.
The search for the location, however, did not lead to the expected result. Abandoning this idea produced an unexpected sense of relief and became an integral part of the compositional process. Giving up the cave meant giving up a non-essential scenic element and letting the music itself determine its own space.
Once back home, the piece was taken up again starting from some elements already established. The beginning and the general orientation of the composition had been defined, but their development was entrusted to a freer performance. The work therefore did not consist of starting from nothing, but of allowing a previously imagined structure to transform itself through improvisation.
Experience gained in jazz made it natural to let the musical material flow. The difficulty lay in applying the same attitude to a composition belonging to a much larger project, laden with narrative, geographical, philosophical, and symbolic correspondences. In Song of Olivier, improvisation is not used within a conventional jazz form, but introduced into the very heart of Solaria’s architecture.
The two musical dimensions
The piece arises from the meeting of two different dimensions.
The first is defined and recognizable. It consists mainly of a theme already clearly identified, presented both in the low register and in the high register of the guitar. The transposition of the theme between the two octaves serves not only to create timbral variety, but allows the same material to take on different weights and perspectives. In the low register the theme acquires greater density and rootedness; in the high register it appears more exposed, luminous, and fragile.
The second dimension is instead spontaneous. It is formed by ideas born during performance, improvised fragments and gestures not fully planned, progressively recorded in Logic. This component does not have the function of decorating the main theme, but of standing alongside it and calling it into question.
The two dimensions are organized as parts of a dialogue. The theme represents what is already recognizable and formulated; improvisation represents what can only emerge during the musical act. The composition does not definitively choose between order and freedom, but builds its form through their relationship.
A diagram sketched by hand in the work journal served to bring these two planes together. The form was not conceived as a rigid succession of sections, but as a path in which the defined component and the spontaneous one can alternate, overlap, and mutually modify each other.
From structure to freedom
The overall trajectory of Song of Olivier leads from a relatively structured initial condition toward progressively freer music.
At the beginning, the theme, the general design, and the compositional reference points are perceivable with greater clarity. In the course of the piece, however, the form seems to gradually loosen its own constraints. The improvised elements gain space and the music takes on a more open, alive, and energetic character.
The definitive form was therefore not imposed entirely before the performance. It began to emerge through the way the materials reacted to one another. The composition had been started as something structured and defined, but ended up taking on a much freer and more powerful quality.
This transformation does not entail abandoning composition in favor of improvisation. The theme and the prepared form remain the ground on which improvisation can acquire meaning. Likewise, the spontaneous parts prevent the structure from turning into a motionless and completely predictable object.
Listening as compositional method
A central phase of the work was devoted not to performance, but to listening to the recordings.
The improvised ideas were listened to repeatedly, at home and while traveling by car. The purpose was not only to identify errors or verify technical precision, but to understand what was really happening in the music. Each piece of material was evaluated for its emotional impact, for its ability to generate a direction, and for the creative possibilities it contained.
In this process, composing did not necessarily mean adding new notes. It meant listening, listening again, and recognizing what had already emerged, distinguishing gestures endowed with an inner necessity from those simply produced during improvisation.
Song of Olivier thus also arises from a reversal of the usual relationship between doing and listening. Listening does not intervene only at the end, as a check on the result, but becomes one of the tools through which the composition takes shape.
This way of working corresponds to the broader choice of accepting imperfection. Giving up absolute control does not mean indiscriminately welcoming any result, but listening with sufficient attention to recognize what appears alive.
The three performances
The final version was chosen among three complete performances.
The first possessed vitality and spontaneity, but not sufficient precision. The third was more precise, but had lost part of the energy and naturalness present in the first. The second performance was at the point of balance between these two extremes and was therefore used as the final version.
The choice of the second recording makes concretely audible the principle that guided the entire work. The best performance was not the one free of imperfections, nor the freest one in absolute terms, but the one in which precision and vitality managed to coexist.
Imperfection is thus welcomed not as an autonomous value, but as a possible consequence of living music. At the same time, precision remains important as long as it does not stifle the presence, the risk, and the intensity of the performance.
Olivier’s song
Within the composition appears a short musical segment derived from a song heard in Burundi.
Olivier was at the time a boy of about sixteen or seventeen years old, who had fled from the war. During the encounter he sang a song tied to the experience of the conflict. In one passage of the song a phrase appeared whose meaning was: “free yourselves from the wild spirits.”
A fragment of that song has been inserted into Song of Olivier as a direct tribute to the boy. The material does not constitute merely an external quotation, but introduces into the composition the concrete trace of a voice, an encounter, and a story actually lived.
The fragment also establishes a relationship between the personal dimension of the author and that of the character. Olivier is not simply the model from which Anesh derives: his presence continues to be recognizable within the music, even before the narrative transformation.
The piece within Il Gioco della Musica
Song of Olivier belongs to The Game of Music, but it was published without accompanying the video with a detailed explanation of its architecture. The choice stems from the desire to allow the music to be encountered directly.
Information on the creative process, on the world of Solaria, and on the symbolic connections remains available in the journal videos and in the pages dedicated to the project, but does not constitute a necessary condition for listening to the piece.
This choice represents an important change compared to previous works, in which the music was often accompanied by very detailed explanations. In Song of Olivier, the architecture remains present, but is not placed before the experience of listening.
The composition can therefore be perceived autonomously, while its connections with the story and with Solaria’s symbolic system remain as further layers, accessible to those who wish to explore them.
Narrative and symbolic meaning
In the world of Solaria, Olivier takes on the name Anesh. The character initially finds himself in a cave, where he meets the butterfly Ku. Ku’s arrival can be interpreted by Anesh as the search for a shelter, but it is not necessarily caused by the storm or by an inability to continue flying. The butterfly may have headed to the cave deliberately, to reach the boy and guide him.
After the encounter, Anesh and Ku begin the journey toward Faknos, the great city tied to technique. Song of Olivier is thus placed at a moment of transition: the boy is still bound to the cave and to his own solitude, but he now stands on the threshold of a journey.
Anesh’s guitar is a gift received from his father when he was twelve years old. The father was a carpenter and also possessed some skills close to those of a luthier. In handing him the instrument, he said to him:
You don’t have to become someone. You only have to learn to listen to yourself.
The phrase originally belonged to the story, but during the composition it acquired an autobiographical meaning. The process through which Song of Olivier was born consisted precisely in listening to one’s own improvisations, recognizing what the music was trying to become, and choosing the performance in which it had remained most alive.
The theme of the piece is therefore not only Olivier or Anesh, but listening as a form of orientation. Listening to oneself does not mean closing oneself within one’s own identity, but recognizing a direction capable of relating one’s own experience to that of others.
Even the passage from the real boy to the imaginary character does not erase the original story. Olivier remains present in the quotation of his song, while Anesh symbolically continues his journey. Reality enters the imaginary world without being replaced by it.
The phrase “free yourselves from the wild spirits” takes on a broader value in this context. It can refer to the war from which Olivier had fled, but also to the inner forces that prevent listening: the need for control, the fear of imperfection, the obligation to prove something or to “become someone.”
Song of Olivier thus represents a moment in which the construction of Solaria temporarily stops expanding through new explanations and begins to free itself of what is not necessary. Let go are the cave as an obligatory setting, the complete control of the performance, and the necessity of exposing every symbolic correspondence.
What remains is a musical form founded on the dialogue between definition and freedom, precision and vitality, real memory and imaginary transformation. Anesh’s journey can begin only after this act of listening.